Millions of gallons flow from mid-Mich. sewers this week

LANSING, Mich. (WLNS) — A heavy rainfall in mid-Michigan often leads to sewage and wastewater overflows, and this week has been no exception.

To be more exact, the city of Jackson dumped more than 300,000 gallons of sanitary sewage overflow, while the city of Lansing expelled nearly 20 million gallons from its sewers, and East Lansing unloaded more than 21,000 gallons in just one of its two sewer discharge events.

In Jackson , “the City’s water infrastructure was put under extreme pressure,” and “wastewater and storm water systems [were] at maximum capacity,” officials said in a Facebook post on Thursday.

These overflows and discharges have flowed into Sycamore Creek, the Red Cedar River, the Grand River and other bodies of water.

Those are just a few examples of effluent flows from July 9-12 throughout the state of Michigan, as reported by the Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy.

These expulsions are generally of three different types :

• Combined sewer overflows (CSOs) are discharges from older sewer systems, which are designed to carry both storm water and domestic sewage (collectively, “combined sewage”).
• Sanitary sewer overflows (SSOs) are discharges of raw or inadequately treated sewage from municipal sewer systems, which are designed to carry domestic sanitary sewage and not storm water.
• A Retention Treatment Basin (RTB) is part of a facility that is designed to capture combined sewage long enough to treat and disinfect it. An RTB discharge usually happens when a large rain event causes an overflow of this kind of facility.

As reported by EGLE , Problems that lead to an excess of SSOs, which involve raw or undertreated sewage, include the following:

• Too much infiltration and inflow from groundwater through the cracks
• An excess of snow and rainwater flowing into the sanitary system
• Groundwater from footing drains and house leads connected to the system
• Undersized sanitary systems with too-small sewers and pumps
• System failures because of tree roots growing into the sewer
• Sections of sewer pipe settling or shifting so the pipe joints no longer match
• Sediment and other materials that build up and cause blockages

When EGLE becomes aware of “chronic SSOs” in a given area, the agency takes enforcement action to require the municipality to address and correct the problem.

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