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Macomb County will receive $4.5 million to reduce Lake St. Clair sewage overflows and Pontiac will receive nearly $1 million to replace lead pipes from over $10 million allocated to several area agencies to improve water quality.
U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow formally announced the federal earmarks as part of Congress' annual appropriations bill Friday during a news conference at the Chapaton Treatment Retention Basin and Pump Station in St. Clair Shores. The conference was attended by representatives of the funding recipients.
The $4.5 million allocation will help fund a $17 million project to reduce overflows at Chapaton by another 30% after they have been reduced by 30% in recent years, said county Public Works Commissioner Candice Miller.
Stabenow and Miller said the Chapaton project and the other projects are part of ongoing, regional efforts to reduce overflows that create dirty water and basement flooding.
"Water quality equals quality of life," Miller said. "The whole mission of this pump station is about water quality."
""We will have over $10 million specifically for Southeast Michigan related to water projects that I think will make a significant difference," Stabenow said. "It will help improve our quality of life, our capacity to be able enjoy our water, to be able to stay safe in our homes without worrying about it if there's a major storm.
"We want to swim in our lakes. We get our drinking water from our lakes. We want to be able to fish. We want to have the beaches open. We want to make sure the highways aren't flooding."
Stabenow also announced $800,000 for the city of Pontiac to help replace 8,000 lead service water lines.
"This funding for Pontiac will enable us to replace lead service lines in the city as quickly as possible so we don't have another tragedy like we saw in Flint," Pontiac Mayor Tim Greimel said. "It will allow us to do so in a way that minimizes the impact on rate-payers in the city so we can ensure affordability for our residents and rate-payers."
Of the rest of the funds, $1 million will go to Macomb Public Works for the Martin Sanitary Diversion Drainage District in south Macomb to reduce sewage overflows, $2 million to the Great Lakes Water Authority to upgrade the Detroit River interceptor, $970,000 to the city of St. Clair for to upgrade its water plant's pumping station to increase capacity and $1 million to Clay Township for the Clay-Ira (Township) interceptor to upgrade its water infrastructure.
St. Clair County Board of Commissioners Chairman Jeffrey Bohm said the county must improve its water capacity to facilitate development projects.
"This is really going to help us increase our water capacity," Bohm said. "We are on the short list for a major project expansion project in (a St. Clair County) township which is going to require up to 700,000 additional gallons of water a day. This is going to help to land some major investments."
The Chapaton project will involve the installation of rubber weirs, which Miller called "rubberized bladders," to further control water flow into the lake.
Chapaton handles water and sewer flow from all of Eastpointe and most of St. Clair Shores, and the Martin Basin provides the same for Roseville and the rest of St. Clair Shores.
Those two sites and a site along the Red Run Drain in Warren are the only places in the county where sewage overflows occur because the older communities do not have separate water and sewer system while newer communities do, Miller said. It would cost $400 million to separate the systems in St. Clair Shores, she said.
The sewage overflows from the county not only contaminate Lake St. Clair but contaminate areas downsteam, including the Detroit River and Lake Erie, in Michigan and Ohio.
"I don't know why Ohio doesn't sue us," said Miller, a member of the Great Lakes Water Commission.
The $4.5 million for Chapaton provides enough funds for a Public Works contractor to begin work on the project by the end of April, officials said. It will take about 1-½ years go complete.
The Martin project likley will start in early fall and also take about 1-1/2 years to complete, Miller said.
Miller is seeking additional funding from state and county shares of federal American Rescue Plan funds.
"If it comes to worse, we will bond" for any need remaining funds that would be paid off by rate-payers, she said. "The way it's going, it doesn't look we will have to. But we're going. We're going to fix this stuff."
In a related matter, Great Lakes Water Authority Interim CEO Suzanne Coffey told reporters after the conference that a study on the July 2021 basement flood in the Grosse Pointes should be completed in about a month or so but that the apparent cause simply was excessive rain overflowed the system. She noted 8 inches fell during the rain event.
"Eight inches is too much," she said. "It's a climate-change problem."
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