Red Cedar Sewers

From Great Lakes Wiki

By Jackie Franzil and Danielle Masterson

After a summer rain, a sluggish conglomeration of sewage often lies at the mouth of the Red Cedar just before it flows into the Grand River.

Families walking through Lansing’s Potter Park at the river’s mouth notice it.

“If you go on a hot August day you can smell it before you see it,” said Richard Hinchon, president of Hinchon Consulting, a Lansing environmental consulting firm. “It’s enough of a pollutant load to really create a problem.”

The smelly mixture is largely comprised of residue from the East Lansing Sewage Treatment Plant, said Hinchon who has studied the ecosystems of Michigan’s waterways for the past 40 years. The East Lansing plant is legally permitted to discharge up to 76 million gallons of pollution into the Red Cedar River every day.

There are 16 public and commercial facilities with pollution permits for the Red Cedar River and some of the smaller creeks and rivers that drain into it. The industries include excavating companies, gravel mines, petroleum storage tanks and tool manufacturers.

About half of those permit-holders are sewage treatment plants. Combined, these commercial and government facilities are legally permitted to discharge up to 145 million gallons of wastewater into the surface waters of the Red Cedar watershed every day.

Contents 1 Dishonorable Discharge 2 Mixed sampling record 3 Sewer improvement project 4 Septic systems 5 Swim advisories 6 Permit to discharge 7 Related Links

Dishonorable Discharge

Across the state, there are close to 1,800 facilities with water pollution permits issued under the federal National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System.

Most pollution permits that the state issues go to community sewage treatment plants. In the Red Cedar watershed that includes plants operated by East Lansing, Fowlerville, Hamlin, Handy Township, Mason, Webberville and Williamston. In addition, some communities share their facilities. For instance, Okemos sewage goes to the East Lansing treatment plant.

All of these plants discharge into the Red Cedar or into streams and rivers that flow into it. One indication of whether sewage is properly treated is whether the water into which it flows has too much E.coli bacteria. And like many Michigan water bodies, the Red Cedar has had bacterial problems. Every week, the river is sampled and tested by the Ingham County Health Department at ten sites within Ingham County. The results are posted here.

Mixed sampling record

Last year, the river met guidelines for safe swimming 75 percent of the time. It was considered safe for wading more than 80 percent of the time.

Ingham and Livingston counties tested water bodies in the area that drains into the Red Cedar in 2001 and 2002. Of the 27 sites in Ingham, three were labeled good quality, 11 were poor, and nearly half were rated as medium quality.

Of the 12 Livingston County sites, six were of good quality. Four were found to be medium quality and the remaining two were poor.

While Ingham County continues to sample for bacteria, Livingston County no longer does. Livingston lacks public swimming areas, said Matt Bowling of that county’s health department. While past earlier tests have received good results, the public is encouraged to do testing on its own.

There are three ways sewage can cause problems: Combined Sewer Overflows, Sanitary Sewer Overflows and septic systems.

Combined Sewer Overflows or CSOs happen during storms in communities that combine snow, rain, sewer and industrial wastewater for treatment. The combined sewers can get backed up and bypass treatment, discharging raw or partially treated sewage into rivers and lakes.

They are actually designed to occasionally discharge extra waste water into rivers. Today, 746 communities in 32 states have combined sewers systems. That totals 9,348 outlets that discharge raw or treated sewage because of a CSO. In a 2004 report to Congress, Michigan had 262 such outlets, including 86 in Detroit. Second to Detroit is Lansing with 30 outfalls, although most of those are in the Grand River, downriver from the Red Cedar.

East Lansing had one CSO incident in 2004 that dumped 1.3 million gallons of diluted raw sewage into the Red Cedar, according to DEQ records. Lansing had 45 CSO events in 2004, with 420.444 million gallons of pollution dumped mostly into the Grand River, which is downriver from the Red Cedar.

East Lansing has one Red Cedar outlet for CSOs. It’s on Kalamazoo Street, just south of Bailey Hall.

Sewer improvement project

But there is a $33 million sewer improvement project scheduled to be completed in 2006. The plan is designed to eliminate East Lansing’s overflows into the Red Cedar River by capturing the combined sewage and rain water in a basin, holding it long enough to disinfect it. Along with the 2.6 million-gallon basin, the project includes a 5.5 million gallon retention tunnel and a project to separate sewers.

Sanitary Sewer Overflows – SSOs – happen when raw or inadequately treated sewage is released into lakes and rivers from pipes that carry only sewage – not storm water.

Lansing had 17 SSOs in 2004. Fifteen of these events amounted to 9.016 million gallons of raw or partially treated sewage, according to DEQ reports. Most of the pollution went to the Grand River, but the receiving water body is not listed in some cases.

Septic systems

Livingston County, a newer and less developed area than Ingham, has no combined sewers. Vicky Atkinson, a Livingston county administrative assistant, says about 70 percent of the county’s population uses septic systems. Since most of the septic systems in that area are not that old, few problems have arisen.

But septic systems can cause problems due to inappropriate design and poor maintenance. Some systems have been installed at sites with inadequate or inappropriate soils, excessive slopes or high ground water tables. Those conditions can cause water contamination. Failure to carry out routine maintenance, such as pumping the septic tank every 3 to 5 years, can cause solids in the tank to migrate into the drain field and clog the system.

Septic systems last about 30 years, said Gary Roe, a supervisor in the Ingham County Environmental Health Department. This varies with the amount of people the system serves. Roe says there are about 14,000 septic systems in Ingham County.

Septic systems are not regulated near as much as sewer systems, said Bill Haun, an environmental health specialist at Ingham County Health Department. The owner of the septic system must check to make sure the system is working properly and call the local health department if toilets are backing up or odors are present outside.

Regardless of the source - septic systems, CSOs, SSOs – raw or partially treated sewage causes water quality problems.

Swim advisories

The 2002 Michigan swim season - the most recent the EPA has made data available - had 209 swim advisory days. Seventy-four days of those were due to contamination from sewage from CSOs, SSOs or broken sewer pipes. An additional 30 advisory days were the result of sewage contamination from septic systems.

Bacterial levels are posted weekly here for the Red Cedar under “Community Surface Water Sampling.”

The original concept of the pollution permitting system, established in 1972, was to eliminate water pollution by 1985. Twenty years past the deadline, water pollution remains a potential public health threat.

In 1993, 54 people died and 403,000 people suffered illness in Milwaukee after the city’s drinking water purification system failed. The situation was blamed on heavy rainfall.

In April 2005, Michigan Congressman Bart Stupak introduced the Save Our Waters From Sewage Act to stop an EPA proposal to let sewage plants meet their permit requirements by diluting raw sewage with partially treated sewage during heavy rains. “In major cities throughout the country, billions of gallons of sewage are dumped into our waterways each year,” Stupak said in a press release.

EPA eventually withdrew the proposal.

Permit to discharge

Some say the pollution permit system has done a good job of helping control pollution.

“For cities and industries the permit system has really done its job,” said Hinchon. “We’ve got a handful of chronic problems. Dischargers that don’t meet their limits, don’t come close to meeting their limits and have a long way to go before they ever will. But they kind of give everyone else a bad name.”

Others say the program is ineffective because it favors the industries that hold the permits. “It’s basically just become a permission slip to pollute,” said Bethany Renfer, the Michigan program coordinator for Clean Water Action. The environmental group started several initiatives to change the permit system, including forcing the state to charge industry fees for permits. “In Michigan we were issuing those permits at zero cost,” said Renfer. “But to make matters worse, Michigan taxpayers were paying for the system.”

In 2004, Clean Water Action lobbied for fees based on the amount of pollution an applicant was allowed to discharge. But the final law created a system in which all applicants pay the same fees. “In my opinion this is in no way adequate,” said Renfer. “Taxpayers are still paying millions of dollars for these permits.”

In 2004, the state loaned to Lansing $14.3 million to fix its sewers. As of 2004, Lansing has received nearly $127 million in such financing. That year, the state also loaned $9.6 million to East Lansing to eliminate the overflow of untreated combined sewage to the Red Cedar River.

While the Lansing Wastewater Treatment Plant discharges treated water into the Grand River every day, it only discharges water into the Red Cedar when it is experiencing CSOs. Currently, the Lansing system has only two Red Cedar outfalls for CSOs. One on Hazel Street at Pennsylvania Avenue is scheduled to be eliminated by 2019. Another at Wilson and Herbert streets will be eliminated by 2014.

Fixing the system takes time and money.

“The situation is improving at the expense of the people who live here and pay the water and sewer bills,” said Hinchon. “We’re dealing with a sewer infrastructure that was created sixty, seventy years ago. It’s going to take time to fix.”

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Related Links

Red Cedar River (Michigan)
Red Cedar Storm
Red Cedar Floods
Red Cedar Wetlands
Red Cedar Farm
Red Cedar Groundwater
Red Cedar Pharmaceuticals