NEWS

Help is available for Detroiters with backed-up basements from storms

Bill Laitner

Detroit Free Press

The Great Lakes Water Authority has increased its staffing and operation hours at a sewage pumping station on Detroit’s east side after an intense rainstorm caused sewage-laced backups of storm water in basements across wide swaths of Detroit’s east side.

"In response to the substantial rainfall in early July, the Great Lakes Water Authority (GLWA) has added staffing to its Conner Creek Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) facility so that it is manned on a 24/7 basis,” said Amanda Abukhader, quoting from a statement issued this week by the Great Lakes Water Authority.

The authority is a consortium of Detroit and Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties created out of Detroit's bankruptcy that oversees the distribution of water and sewerage services to Detroit and its water customers in the region.

“In addition, in preparation for the predicted rainfall that occurred earlier this week, GLWA placed staff at its two pump stations located near the CSO, which are normally automated,” said the statement released by Abukhader, who works for FleishmanHillard, a public relations firm retained by the authority.

Residents across much of Detroit’s east side suffered backups of sewage-laced storm water after rainstorms on July 8 and again on Aug. 16. The authority operates many of the pumps and large transmission pipes formerly operated by the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department.

Although DWSD and members of the Detroit City Council have held two public meetings about the backups, and managers of DWSD have walked door to door to ask residents whether they needed assistance on cleanups and financial aid for losses, the authority is responsible for constructing and maintaining the system’s larger components, such as the giant sewage treatment plant in southwest Detroit that serves millions of users across southeast Michigan, Abukhader said.
The authority is reviewing its plans for capital improvements to see whether it can accelerate improvements that would prevent future basement backups, she said.

“This includes a $22.5-million infrastructure project scheduled to begin this fiscal year and which is now being given top priority,” said the rest of the authority’s statement that Abukhader provided Friday.

DWSD officials said this week that the deadline for submitting damage claims from the first incident, on July 8, is at the end of the business day Monday.

“They can get the claim forms from our website or at any of our three offices,” said DWSD spokesman Bryan Peckinpaugh. And they can turn them in at any of those offices: 735 Randolph in the downtown; 15600 Grand River on the west side, and 13303 E. McNichols on the east side, Peckinpaugh said. All three offices are open 8 a.m.-5 p.m., Monday through Friday. The Randolph office is open 8 a.m.-3 p.m Saturdays.

But it's unclear how much financial aid, if any, that DWSD will offer residents who sustained losses. DWSD Director "Gary Brown is very intent on determining how we’re going to respond to those claims,” Peckinpaugh said. Already, DWSD has paid for contractors to clean basements of some of those who’ve called 211 to complain of the health hazard, he said.

Although DWSD officials have said they don’t know how many Detroiters were victims of the damaging storm water, its staff has distributed literature to 3,500 homes in neighborhoods most affected, he added.

Many residents, fearing health problems and the onset of mold on walls, had basements cleaned after the July inundation, only to see more storm water surge in this week. One elderly woman who has lived for half a century in the Jefferson-Chalmers area, but who declined to give her name, told the Free Press she spent $1,400 in July to have a work crew remove sodden belongings, then flush and disinfect her basement walls and floors — only to have more water appear this week.

DWSD and the Great Lakes Water Authority have jointly hired engineering consultants who are studying Detroit's basement backups, officials of both said. The consultants' report is expected to be complete within four weeks, they said. Elsewhere in southeast Michigan, scores of residents in Lincoln Park and other Downriver communities also suffered sewage backups in their basements, Lincoln Park City Attorney Ed Zelenak said.

Contact Bill Laitner: blaitner@freepress.com