Bypassing the Truth: Shay and the 2012 PM Bayou Sewage Spill

[XLFD]

In the Ludington Torch's featured article The Sewage Hits the Fan, it was disclosed that a 2012 raw sewage leak exceeding 2 million gallons into the Creamery Corners drain/PM Bayou was left unreported to the local health department and the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ).  At the September 12 Ludington city council meeting, I relayed this information to the council and the city manager who was responsible for seeing that such leaks get reported to the proper authorities. 

He, John Shay, left the meeting without saying anything about it, nor did any of his fellow officials press him as to the consequences.  It was anticipated that at the September 26 meeting he would try to spin the situation so as to make it seem like he wasn't criminally negligent, ironically the same night as the first debate between the presidential candidates who have had to do the same in their lives. 

Fortunately, City Manager Shay broadcast that he would be talking about the issue in the Sept 26 LCC Agenda.  He even supplied data which had already been supplied to me in the city council packet starting on page 84.  He makes the claim that the record supports his handling the situation properly; conversely, it actually shows when supplemented with other public records that the City of Ludington made several errors and that Shay has once again been caught blatantly lying. 

Keep in mind as you read through this that if this is the way John Shay handles this situation, where raw sewage is actively seeping out of the ground, oozing into the nearby environment and observable to the public, how then would he handle a similar leak of pollutants into the air, water, and/or land of Ludington when it was more discreet?  If he cannot properly report an obvious ecological disaster, and falsely justify it at a later date as he tries here, can you be sure he hasn't managed to keep other secrets from you that negatively affect you and your neighbors' health? 

Here is the memo John Shay presented to the council (p. 84 of the packet):

Shay purports my accusations/allegations are unfounded/false, however, the truth and foundation of my assertions are within the very records he presents, and they point totally against his innocence of wrongdoing.  This may not be evident to those outside of the "spill reporting" business, so I tried to make it clearer at my public comment at this last meeting (at the 3:50 mark in).  I include links to my DEQ references and a blow-up of the proper procedures for raw sewage leak reporting.

September 26, 2016 Ludington City COuncil meeting from Mason County District Library on Vimeo.

"When the City has a significant leak of raw sewage there are three agencies by law that they must contact within 24 hours of detection.  In 2012, only the local newspapers were properly notified, the local health department and DEQ were not according to the records of all three public agencies. 

The record shows a leak was discovered on Sunday morning, November 25, 2012 when raw sewage was noticed emanating from the ground.  That Sunday afternoon, Sy Paulik of the DEQ was sent an E-mail from Rob Allard, sewer superintendent.  This is not how to properly contact the DEQ and report a raw sewage leak, the DEQ directives say that during non-office hours, the Pollution Emergency Alerting System (PEAS) must be called. 

PEAS then distributes that information to appropriate staff internally, as well as to contacts in partner agencies, callers to PEAS will receive an incident report number which can be used for future reference and follow up through the respective district office.  Because of the City's inability to follow protocol, an incident number was never generated, appropriate staff were never contacted, and there was no indication that the DEQ was ever contacted again until a report of discharge was sent by E-mail to Sy Paulik eight days later.

But this is also a violation of protocol, that discharge form by DEQ directives must be sent to the three agencies that are supposed to be initially notified, the local newspaper, the health department and either the PEAS or the appropriate staff at the district office originally assigned to the leak by PEAS. 

At neither time is there any record of the Health Department being notified, and even if we believe that someone from the city contacted them by phone two days after the spill (as noted in the report of discharge), the health department certifies that no records exist about a spill in 2012 in the creamery corners area.  Neither has the DEQ any public records about this spill [NOTE:  At least publicly available without a FOIA request, which I currently have pending with the DEQ].

John Shay tries to cover up his own ineptitude and mendacity in his memo to the council for this meeting by claiming my assertions are false, he even tries to say that the leak was "repaired without the need to bypass pump the sewage into the Creamery Corner's drain".  At the council meeting just after this leak was fixed, he said:  "There was bypass pumping of sewage into the lake."  [Listen to it fully below starting at 38:30 in] Why is bypass pumping directly into the PM Lake any better, John? 

121126LCC from Mason County District Library on Vimeo.

He also claims the health department waived E. Coli testing because of the cold temperatures and the small amount of raw sewage that entered the water, both are false:  E.Coli is not harmed by near freezing water it will just not reproduce as quickly and the leak was substantial. 

[I was stopped by time, I would have summated...]  The record clearly shows that the city did not properly contact the DEQ and health department at either of the two times they are required by law to do so.  The person responsible needs to be held accountable for the endangerment to the public health and safety by their actions and inactions."

If you saw a fire would you be proper in reporting it by sending off an E-mail to one of the local volunteer firefighters?  Or would it work out better if you called 9-1-1 instead?  John Shay believes Rob Allard did the proper thing in this emergency by sending off an E-mail to a DEQ official he knew on Sunday afternoon, right after Thanksgiving.  He was very lucky that it was seen at all before Monday morning. 

Had either city official called the PEAS number that Sunday, they would have started a more thorough investigation into the extent of the ecological implications; more scrutiny may not have been what they wanted.  Indications are that Chansy "Sy" Paulik never verified their eventual leak form submission, and that according to the DEQ, this leak never existed.  Why?

Records so far indicate this was a transitional time for Sy Paulik, she was transferred to the Kalamazoo DEQ District Office right around this time before dying in a weird incident in July 2013.  This move may explain why it wasn't passed along to her colleagues, it only existed in her E-mails and not the PEAS incident report system where it should have been.  It wouldn't be a surprise if the officials involved just hoped the particulars of the major spill would be lost, especially since nobody looks to have reported it to the health department until it was too late, if ever.

Recall in "The Sewage Hits the Fan" two county health department officials certified there were no records about any kind of leak in the City during 2012; even if the city's estimate of leakage (742,000 gallons) was correct, any competent health department official would surely not waive E.Coli testing since this bacteria would lurk around the bayou all winter long before becoming more active in the spring to the unwary kids that may still fish and swim in the bayou and nearby Copeyon Park. 

And Shay is now saying that there never was any bypass pumping in this incident even though he admits the same the very day the leak was fixed, corroborated by the minutes of the meeting which were approved at the very next meeting in 2012.  In this packet he perhaps unknowingly left in a recent E-mail:

Note that Chris Cossette worked as the second in command under Rob Allard during 2012, until he was promoted once Allard accepted the Village Manager position in Pentwater.  He would likely have been intimately involved with the processes of this incident.  Shay uses the term "As we discussed", as if Cossette needs to corroborate that aspect of the story now, since Shay made it clear to the public that there actually was bypass pumping back in 2012. 

Even though I created a two minute comment at the end referencing the amount of leakage, I refrained from putting it out simply because the meeting had already lasted an hour and a half, I was in a hurry to leave, and it would have been lost among those few remaining anyway.  Here's how I would have concluded:\

"John Shay has also called my calculations of the 2012 Thanksgiving weekend megaspill into question.  With the available data, I have calculated that the estimated leak was 2,050,000 gallons over a seven day period, the procedure I used is on my website, clearly explained, the number is conservative.  That much raw sewage would raise the level of the PM Bayou by three feet if a dam was put up underneath the Washington Street Bridge. 

The calculations made by the city have not been provided to the public, but they were put on a form which was never properly submitted to the DEQ or any other agency that the spill was 742,000 gallons over a five day period using the same data I received.  It is more likely that the leaks began nine days prior, and led to 2.4 million gallons of raw sewage being leaked.

Whatever the amount, there was an ecological disaster that John Shay did not respond appropriately to, and an environmental problem that he avoids confronting even now, putting this municipality at even greater liability by his weasel imitation. 

This 2012 leak went into a bayou that was already in terrible shape from the 15 million gallons of raw sewage dumped into it by the city in 2008 that the city mostly ignored, even leaving the remains of Madison Street at the bottom of the waterway.  Is it too much to ask the city to clean up its crap after itself, and protect the many businesses that depend upon the bayou and the PM Lake?"

To summarize:

 

1) the City never properly notified the PEAS or DEQ Branch Office of this leak or with the report of discharge form; it is not in their records, except possibly the E-mails of an official who died in 2013 

2) no health department records exist showing they knew anything about this leak, no health department official has been named who waived E.Coli testing as John Shay claims. 

3) Even the 'phantom' notification to the health department said to have happened over 24 hours after the leak was discovered is left unexplained as to its untimeliness in the discharge form.

4) The local media was never sent the discharge report form 

5) the City has taken zero corrective measures to come clean on this major raw sewage leak. 

6) the City seems to have deliberately under-reported the leakage by a factor of three.

7) John Shay's description of corrective actions (bypass pumping) has changed since 2012.  This is likely due to him discovering the illegality of the action without permission from state and/or federal agencies.

It's all there, and more sewage is likely to hit the fan once more of my FOIA responses get resolved.  The local media and officials are doing nothing other than trying to wash their hands of the two million gallons of raw sewage.  Pure Ludington in the John Shay era.

[Willy]

Excellent article X. For anyone who cares about Ludington your posts are a must read. You lay out the case for incompetence of City Government in a manner that can be understood by anybody. 

And again the Council demonstrates the ostrich head in the sand mentality. When important information is presented to them in a public forum they immediately shut it down with the time constraints excuse. Such important information that you provided should have been allowed to be voiced so that citizens can understand the scope of deceit that exist in Ludingtons Government.

[XLFD]

You may have noticed C. Dale Bannon coming up right after me in the beginning and taking the city's new enforcement of comment policy to task (and me too!).   The one thing C. Dale overlooked, however, was that the PM spill reporting was on the agenda in the comments from public officials. 

If it hadn't been, I believe Mayor PTK (Pummel-Torture-Kill) Holman would have tried to stop me from talking about that very subject.  We may still clash horns by the end of the year over their attempt to mostly silence the public on matters of public policy.  It seemed to me that Bannon was defending the city's restrictions, which is how the city elders interpreted it. 

It's embarrassing to the city officials present when they can't even tell John Shay that he told the majority of them in late 2011 that there was bypass pumping involved where raw sewage was sent into surface water (another crime) and that he (and Rob Allard) did not officially notify either county or state agency.    

[shinblind]

Just another nail in the coffin that Shay is building for the City. We should be used to it by now.

He is either incompetent or corrupt. But since he never makes a mistake that isn't somehow beneficial to him or his inner cronies I would bet on his being corrupt. Not only should he be removed from his position as City Manager but he should be fitted for an  jail-orange jumpsuit.