Litigation involving the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department was settled last year, but with an uncertain leadership situation in the department's top echelons and a growing sludge removal crisis, it seems the water department is still far from satisfying the terms of a 33-year federal lawsuit. Department Director Pamela Turner, along with two other top department officials, are planning to resign. Turner has “expressed interest” in resigning, according to Dan Lijana, a communications manager for Detroit Mayor Dave Bing, but a retirement date hasn't been confirmed. Like many of Detroit's problems, the root of the water system's woes is the city's declining population. “Why we have not been able to satisfy all the consent judgments is because of the poor economic condition of the region where we live,” said U.S. District Court Judge John Feikens, who has had oversight of the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department since 1977. “If we still had the economic conditions of the 1950s, we could do it.” Feikens' control of the department is the result of a sprawling federal lawsuit concerning everything from wastewater disposal to city-suburb relations. The lawsuit was settled by a consent decree, the conditions of which haven't yet been met. Detroit's population has shrunk by more than half since its apex in the 1950s, to about 800,000. The remaining customers don't produce enough revenue to maintain the water system's infrastructure, Feikens said, much of which dates from that era or earlier. “When you reduce revenue from that number of people, it doesn't diminish costs,” he said. “It costs almost as much to make 500,000 gallons of water as 2 million.” An influx of cash from the federal government is helping, he said, but won't be enough to foot the bill for all necessary repairs. And that's at the heart of the continuing judicial oversight. “Infrastructure is a great part of holding up the success of satisfying the consent judgments,” Feikens said. “If we had the money to repair the infrastructure, it would solve most of them. ... There will come a time when all the consent judgments are satisfied ... we're rapidly coming to that point, but we're not there yet.” The Southeast Michigan Council of Governments estimates that upgrading the water system will cost roughly $20 billion, a price the judge says is out of the water department's reach. It's crucial that suburban communities play a more active role in the water system, Feikens said — and that means footing the bill for breakdowns in the system outside of the city. A major milestone was last year's creation of a water council, he said, which gave the suburban communities that purchase water from the city some say in the system's governance and placed responsibility for some repairs for system infrastructure in Oakland and Macomb counties in the hands of those governments. “People started saying, "we're real customers of the system, and we need an operational voice,' ” Feikens said. “The suburbs now have a voice in the operation of the system” through the water board, a model the judge likened to the regional authority that controls Detroit's Cobo Center. “We now have a settlement between the city and the suburbs in which both sides are given a voice in what the rates are.” Another pressing need is the removal of sludge, the semi-solid material that's left after wastewater is treated. The city terminated its contract with Texas-based sludge hauler Synagro Technologies after officials from that company were implicated in a municipal bribery investigation. The Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment has sent a warning letter to the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, saying the system is well over the legal limit for sludge storage. Finding landfill space for sludge is always a challenge, Feikens said, noting that system maintenance had fallen since the system contracted with Synagro for sludge removal. Maintaining the water system requires a high level of regional cooperation, said Eric Zeemering, a Michigan native who's an assistant professor in the Department of Public Administration at San Francisco State University. Zeemering is the author of an article on Feikens' long involvement with the water department that will appear in the scholarly journal Public Administration Review later this year. “One issue we have to think about is the cost that will be necessary to continue to bring a complex wastewater system into full compliance with federal and state regulations and to continue to serve a sprawling and expansive metropolitan region,” Zeemering said. Expectations for clean water continue to increase as awareness grows about how environmental quality plays a role in economic development, he said. Nancy Kaffer: (313) 446-0412, [email protected].