Introduction

On November 25, 2012 there was reportedly a shear break in the sewer force main in the vicinity of First Street and Adam Street in Ludington's Fourth Ward. This break did result in a sewage leak into the Creamery Corners drain. When the City had to shut down the lift stations there was bypass pumping of sewage into Pere Marquette Lake for an unspecified number of hours; the repairs were allegedly finished by the end of the next day.

It was reported in the Mason County Press the next day with a caution by John Shay to avoid the PM Lake area until the break was fixed.  The Daily News reported that Shay had notified the DEQ, and that the leakage was "far, far, far less than what went in during the flood in (June) 2008.” though he could not give any estimate to the extent.  That night he would tell the Ludington City Council it was fixed, and offered no other precautions or additional information regarding the leak.

Nov 26, 2012 LCC minutes

Early the next year, the amount of money the City of Ludington spent on this leak was divulged with me sending them a FOIA request.  It showed that the City Manager did spend over $10,000 on an emergency repair without approval of the city council by contracting with Hallack, who was already in the area working on other city projects.  At the time, it seemed as if it may have been an appropriate use of the city manager's emergency spending prerogative.  But this year, I made some investigations into other aspects of this leak, enough to prompt another FOIA request.  I asked for the following records from the City:

"Communications (including evaluations, determinations, and notifications) between officials of the City of Ludington and the EPA, DEQ, and/or the local health department regarding the nature, extent, and environmental impact of this considerable raw sewage leak into the PM Lake."

As is typical of such requests, what wasn't included in the request (which was granted in full), was as interesting as what was.

The Ludington FOIA

The materials received from the City about this leak start with a letter from Rob Allard (retired superintendent of water and utility, now Pentwater Village Manager) writing a Sunday afternoon e-mail to City Manager John Shay:

"We discovered a leak in our 2094 sanitary sewer force main north of the corner of Adams and first Street this morning, Sunday November 25. The leak is flowing approximately 50 feet to the Creamery Corners Drain.  The drain flows into Pere Marquette Lake.

We are concerned that when we expose the pipe to make the repair we may lose the force main due to the location at a 45 degree fitting. We have mobilized a crew and began the surface and some subsurface preparation. We will need to insure that all the required parts and fittings are available before we attempt to make the repair. I will call you tomorrow and fill you in on the details."

Shay then responsibly mobilizes Hallack Contracting to come over and help repair the problem for a nice one day price of around $11,000, but nothing is in the written record until the next Monday when Allard sends this to Shay:

"Attached is the SSO report for the incidence occurring over the Thanksgiving weekend, November 22 thru November 26th, 2012. Additionally I have attached a signed signature page and a map of the location. Please let me know if you need any additional information."

Form EQP5857 Report of Discharge Sanitary Sewer Overflow Nov 2012.pdf

SSO 12-3-12 signature page.pdf

One may wonder where Allard arrived at the 720,000 gallons of raw sewage figure, he also included a chart comparing the WTP outflows and WWTP inflows for that period. 

The calculations he used as justification of that figure is not part of the public record, but there is reason to believe it is way off the mark.  Consider if we figure that the leak started on the 20th, since the three previous days, and the post-repair days, have the WWTP collecting over 100,000 gallons per day (GPD) on average (107,500) than is sent out at the WTP. 

If we presume that average of differences carried out over the rest of the time, in the seven days where the WTP flow is greater than the WWTP intake (negative numbers), we get not only the deficits of that week, which adds up to 1,298,000 gallons, but the additional 107,500 'normal deficit' for each of those seven days, in other words, 752,500 gallons.  The sum of that one week leak is thus 2,050,500 gallons of raw sewage leaked into the Creamery Corners drain, which flows into the PM Bayou where all those private marinas reside, and beyond. 

The reporting form sent to Shay also indicates that the local health department was not informed until Tuesday 11-27-2012, and that they should have been informed within 24 hours by law; it also says that testing for E. Coli was waived by the health department.  There is no explanation noted (as they should) for why the health department wasn't timely notified. 

But this isn't the only thing missing.  The FOIA request asked for any 'written' records between the City and the various departments about this leak.  I was given only records involving interdepartmental communications, nothing given to or received by the health department or DEQ.  This was quite odd, and required further investigation of those agency's records to confirm this apparent oversight.

The County Health Department FOIA

The county government runs the health department and the drain commission, so one would think they would have a bit of information on this 2 million gallon leak.  They had nothing other than a Miss Dig report from the drain commissioner:  2012 Miss Dig City of Ludington.pdf.  What's more revealing is, once again, what they didn't find.

Two officers of Health Department #10 wrote back that this very significant leak was unreported to them, and even to the state. 

Consider that a leak less than 1/2000th of what went into commercial Ludington waters was reported by a private business, but that City Manager Shay had all the information sent to him on the day the leak was found, had the DEQ report filled out and sent to him, telling that the health department and DEQ had been notified, and yet no records show that he did any of that, as it would have been part of the response. 

One presumes that Shay told his subordinate Allard that the two agencies were contacted to help him fill out his form, but then hesitated to send the form out because it would show that he lied when he didn't contact either in a meaningful manner, and that testing was never considered or 'waived' by the health department.

Legal Penalties

The DEQ report form is mandated by state law MCL 324.3112a, which mandates notification of the local newspaper, the DEQ and the local health department by someone who spills raw sewage into the land or waters of this state.  It notes the DEQ will promptly put such notification immediately on its website.  It mandates testing for E. Coli by the responsible party, who shall then provide those results to the local health department.  The friendly local news media was alerted that an incidental leak occurred, otherwise none of these were followed.

It also states that penalties for violation of that section are found at MCL 324.3115.  The criminal penalties in section two say that the Attorney General can prosecute for some stiff fines to the perpetrator, along with the potential imprisonment up to two years, and allows additional civil penalties for injuries to the natural resources of the state.

Section three says if a court determines the unreported 2,000,000 gallon leak "posed a substantial endangerment to the public health, safety, or welfare, the court shall impose a fine of not less than $500,000.00 and not more than $5,000,000.00".  Section four allows the court to add a million dollar fine and five year imprisonment for the responsible party if the same endangerment occurs. 

These are serious penalties for seriously negligent actions that are clearly existing in this case.  The gross, wanton, and willful recklessness of our city's experienced manager, John Shay, should be taken into account when the Attorney General decides what penalties to pursue.  This cannot be overlooked by the citizens of Ludington as a mistake, as it appears Shay skipped many mandated steps to endanger our health and safety.

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Well said jfc, bottom line is more scientific jargon excuses and drama to help continue to coverup facts and the DNR 500 page report of serious contamination. Gets the city mgr. and city gov't. off the hook of cleanup and penalties for ignoring this all these years. Mother Nature can only do so much, they have just been ignoring all this in the hopes she would clean it up naturally, but that too is another failed assumption.

Jimmy... such a pleasant reply..... thanks.

Duly noted.

Obviously I didn't catch response was only to Willy's post.

X, right on staying on point.  PM Bayou disaster cleanup is the utmost important concern.

Thank you for your support Brad! Means a lot! The cops and doughnuts/mcdonalds

legacy is very similar to Tamaracs!

I need to apologize for not delving into this more in the past.  I may have been thinking it was included in same DEQ report of 2008.  It is a very bad disaster for the businesses and residents.  And huge failure for city not to report it to state.

Before you go to next council meeting, you should have letters from businesses on PM Bayou and PM Lake stressing their concerns and hardships.  I'm sure you can get Tamarak and others, what about Karboskis..?  Can Aquaman get letters too?

Then they or someone must move onto state AG or DEQ.  ...Or..??

PM Bayou must be cleaned up and businesses compensated.

Normally I would say yes, that the City took care of the pollution deluge that came from the bayou but we're not dealing with an honest City. The leader is a known schemer and law breaker who has a track record of not following ordinances, codes and laws. Besides the human waste, the discharge at the bayou contained a toxic soup of contaminants with a mixture of feces, chemicals, poisons, ect. The bayou does not flow into a "lake". PM Lake is not a lake, it is a river. it does not sit and stagnate, it flows, so the plume of poisons did not take long to reach Lake Michigan. Many of the particulates in the toxic spill are measured in parts per million or even billion when deemed unsafe for human ingestion so it takes a minute amount of many of the toxins to harm humans. How can we really have faith in a City whose leader is not trusted to be honest about doing his job and how the water is being treated and if in fact it has been treated as required by law when he has been proven to do activity that is not in the best interest of it's citizens. Unless the citizens can test their water right out of their own faucets who is to say what is in the water and was the water really cleansed after the bayou disaster. First of all, was the treatment plant aware of plume of extra flow of contaminants? Did they adjust for the added deluge? If not was their a cover up to deceive any investigation that might result from a City of sick people? This all boils down to trust. Can the citizens of Ludington trust those in charge?

There is definitely a cover-up and spin going on concerning this leak in 2012, see the new featured article "Bypassing the Truth", wherein the City Manager effectively defends himself by saying he did everything right, when there was a definitive template the city was supposed to follow, which they didn't at many times.

John Shay is a man who cannot say:  "We didn't do everything right.  We didn't properly contact the DEQ through the PEAS network; we didn't contact the health department within 24 hours, the record says we contacted them two days later, but nobody from the city or the department made any records of it or the waiving of E. Coli testing by them for such a large spill, all of which should have been documented."

"When we sent in the leak report a week later, we should have also sent it to the media and the health department too, as well as whoever the PEAS designated as our DEQ contact.  Rob Allard does seem to have seriously underestimated the spill, I honestly cannot determine where the 742,000 gallon figure comes from."

Instead, he doubled down on duplicity.

Jummy

If your reasoning is correct then the dilution would negate any reason to report the spill because as you say there is no problem with 2 million gallons of sewage flowing into a fresh water river because it gets thinned out. I don't care what the Corps call it. The PM lake is where the river widens so it's still a river but  wider. Your assuming that the sewage was diluted with the entire contents of the river but in fact that's not what happens. Like any waters there are different layers because of density and temperature differences, also the currents. So I don't buy the dilution factors you present. I'm not a scientist but I do use common sense. It doesn't take a large amount of toxins to poison people and in my unprofessional opinion nobody should have gone into the PM river from the bayou to Lake Michigan until the Health Dept. declared it safe and I would have advised people to boil the drinking water until an outside entity such as the State declared the water safe to drink. There also should have been warnings posted from the bayou up the Lake Michigan coast until the water had been certified as being safe. But of course we will never know what the actual conditions were because of the way Shay handled the situation.

Jimmy... I get it and actually do appreciate your input and knowledge.

If you would, less prior opinions, how does Ludington citizens get the 2008 road debris and 2008/2012 overflow dredged out by the city if the city doesn't even acknowledge that the 2008 huge overflow even happened?  And is there a way to trace the funds that they received to clean it up from 2008?

....Sorry I is uneducated and not no science stuff, etc.... I former redneck, now city folk.

I just despise what the city did to this area!  Along with many others... more then 10.

Thanks Jimmy for the link to the DEQ showing the lack of any discharge incident report for the 2012 Creamery Corners leak, I took my source's from the health department's word for it that there wasn't any there or deeper in their records.

As noted in the "Bypassing the Truth" article, I have calculated that if there had been some barrier, like a dam, at the Washington Avenue Bridge, the two million plus gallons of raw sewage would make the PM Bayou area nearly three feet deeper.  That is very significant when you consider that much of the poop and other solids would linger around in the near stagnant waters of what was a fairly mild winter. 

A recent spill in Grayling (which would have the same DEQ District Office as ours) is in this article, and should serve as a template on how to react to such discharges of raw sewage.  The leak was about between 30-100 times smaller in magnitude than Ludington's 2012 event, the WWTP operator did E. Coli tests for a river spill and found the levels very high.  A river should have quickly diluted the leak in the immediate area, if we are to take Jimmy's expertise in that matter. 

But note the high E. Coli levels two days later on Monday.  I find it almost impossible to believe that any health official would waive E. Coli testing in the PM Bayou in 2012 given all the facts, but extremely plausible that our officials are lying through their teeth.

Remember what most likely happened with water lead levels when the Washington bridge was redone....

...And maybe this was mentioned in other posts...

What would happen to contaminate levels if they get around to dredging the PM Bayou..?

Are they ignoring everything to avoid the true costs..?

(I still believe it needs to be cleaned up and restored)

Well Jimmy, one thing's for sure. You HAD to be hired by the COL/Shay to join and participate here. Secondly, you have a decade long background & education in waste waters and their related treatment from WWTP's and are commenting in a very lengthy and political manner. Trouble is, that's all fine in theory, but what about the realities of this Bayou area? Have you visited or been here in Ludington personally and seen exactly what is true and real? I really doubt it very much. Show me how your theories align correctly and match exactly with the situation at hand, and how you would make it disappear from our Bayou. Theoretical physics say an elephant can hang off a cliff by it's tail tied to a daisy too, thanks, and how much you making on this deal? To help cover up the disaster and it's future cleanup? And btw, I have talked to that Brian guy at the DNR in Cadillac too, he's also full of theory and political nonsense when I called and talked to him in June about this matter. A fine example of how the State and City employees watch out for one another and hide the truths. However, if me or anyone else had contaminated that Bayou from the private sector, we would have been sued into the ground, heavily fined, and probably thrown into prison for years to come. Lastly, if you want to discuss this in person, and meet at Tamarac Docks for personal inspections of the disaster area, please advise. My opinion is that you will continue as seen recently, and decline that invitation to prove you theories are correct, lol.

This minor spill was cleaned up and reported asap. why not the bayou?

http://www.shorelinemedia.net/ludington_daily_news/archives/tamarac...

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