All joking aside, the request that Macomb County residents conserve water and flush toilets minimally on Super Bowl Sunday paid off on a rainy Tuesday.
The Macomb County Public Works office reports that the broken sewer line at the Fraser sinkhole came within two inches of overflowing into the Clinton River Tuesday night.
The wastewater inside the 11-foot diameter pipe peaked at 11 p.m. and officials said conservation efforts in the 11 affected Macomb communities on Sunday helped prevent the sewer interceptor from reaching capacity on Tuesday.
Some of the sewage and storm water was pumped into an alternative pipe but the temporary diversion could not keep up with the rainfall, especially when one of the pumps broke down and work crews had to feverishly make repairs.
“I cannot express my gratitude enough to the people who were working on Monday night and really, all of the people who have been reducing their water usage,” said Public Works Commissioner Candice Miller, who was keeping tabs most of the night. “People ask, ‘Has it really made a difference?’ Monday night, it was all the difference.”
While the area experienced a rainy January, officials said the rainfall on Tuesday was the heaviest since the Christmas Eve sewer collapse on 15 Mile Road.
The Public Works Office recorded 1.01 inches of rain in central Macomb County on Tuesday, with about 0.5 inches falling in a 45-minute downpour around the dinner hour.
If the underground relief valves in the sewer system had been opened, millions of gallons of raw sewage would have poured into the Clinton River, and from there would have flowed into Lake St. Clair. Miller described the moment as a “hair-raising experience.”
Here’s how Public Works described the situation in a press release:
Public Works engineers turned on the sewage discharge pumps to pump the sewage into the Clinton River when the level of sewage in the line passed 566.5 feet of elevation – 567 is the danger line at which sewage must be discharged or it will enter thousands of basements in Clinton and Harrison Townships. The sewage eventually reached 566.8 feet before it began to subside – less than 2.5 inches from capacity. The discharge pumps ran for about 15 minutes, but the gates never opened to allow the sewage into the river.
The crisis was averted, at least in part, due to the ongoing water and sewer conservation measures being taken by residents of the 11 Macomb County communities that make up the MIDD. Over the weekend, many residents and businesses in the MIDD took conservation actions – such as using paper plates to avoid running dishwashers – due to concerns over heavy restroom usage during the Super Bowl football game on Sunday. Those efforts resulted in total lower than normal sewer volumes on Sunday, meaning there was extra capacity in the pipes to hold Monday’s rain.
Meanwhile, the county’s Martin sewage retention basin in St. Clair Shores and the GWK Drain (formerly the Twelve Towns Drain) on the Macomb/Oakland County border both overflowed into the local waterways Tuesday night. No details on the amount of sewage dumped is yet available.
Photo: Courtesy of Macomb County Public Works Office
County engineers kept tabs on the sinkhole and the rainfall throughout the night on Monday.
