Two years after the massive Fraser sinkhole that created so much havoc, Macomb County Public Works Commissioner Candice Miller announced today that the disastrous sewer collapse was the fault of “human error,” but her office will sue several construction companies, claiming that their faulty work on an adjacent sewer system was to blame.
Miller’s announcement at a press conference this morning was rather benign, as she said “excellent companies” were picked to engage in widespread sewer improvement work in neighboring Sterling Heights and Warrren — and beyond.
But a subcontractor allegedly made several grievous errors which damaged the connecting sewer that eventually collapsed on Christmas Eve 2016, creating $75 million in damages.
Miller said prior sinkholes within a mile of the 2016 cave-in, in 2004 and 1978, were completely unrelated to the disaster of two years ago. In an area of converging sewer lines, with some massive pipes as much as 11 feet in diameter, a collapse also occurred in 1980 at the edge of the Detroit Edison (now ITC) corridor of high-tension electrical lines just west of the other sinkholes.
Tsunami of sewage damaged pipe line
Miller explained that in 2014 a “tsunami” of sewage water rapidly released into the sewer system mostly led to the damage that created the 2016 collapse in Fraser. Sewer improvements on an adjoining line required the closing of gates that allowed underground workers to engage in pipe improvements in dry conditions. When work was completed, the gates were supposed to be gradually raised over several hours.
But in May 2014 they were fully opened within seven minutes, which created a gush of sewage that was “like a bomb went off,” Miller said. According to a nationally recognized consultant hired by the county Public Works Office, sped-up reopening of the gates occurred on at least eight occasions prior to the 2016 sinkhole. In its insurance claims that will be filed in Macomb County Circuit Court, the county will argue that routine protocols were not followed.
That adjacent project, servicing sewage lines throughout Macomb and Oakland counties, was loudly praised by Miller’s predecessor as Public Works commissioner, Tony Marrocco.
According to Miller’s Public Works Office, the subcontractor in charge of opening and closing the underground gates was METCO Services of Detroit, which received a multi-year contract on the extensive sewer renovation work.
The conclusions announced today stand in sharp contrast to the post-mortem after the 2004 sinkhole, also on 15 Mile in Fraser, just a short distance from the 2016 cave-in. At that time, a flurry of court actions revealed decades of negligence on sewer lines in the Fraser/Sterling Heights area.
Sharp contrast to prior negligence
Based on a 2017 Deadline Detroit review of nearly 1,000 pages of court documents and an interview with a construction supervisor on the massive sewer repair project in 2004-05, negligence abounded over five decades.
The mounds of litigation revealed that two engineering firms who worked on the ’78 and ’80 collapses said they believed the entire sewer interceptor was compromised because of poor soil conditions. A recommendation for annual inspections was ignored.
The U.S Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers were brought in to study the sewer lines and found numerous weaknesses with its construction and design, particularly due to poor soil conditions.
In a 2007 federal court ruling, a judge found that Macomb Public Works was significantly at fault due to the lack of prior maintenance on the sewer pipes in the area.
Geographically, the 15 Mile Road sewer essentially represents a fork in the road to continue a meandering 22-mile pipeline, known as the Oakland-Macomb Interceptor (OMI), which provides sewer service to more than 850,000 suburbanites in 25 Macomb and Oakland County communities. That sewer line also includes a pipe – a tributary — going south through the ITC Corridor to Detroit. That is where the 1980 collapse occurred just south of 15 Mile Road.
Miller
It is on the bi-county OMI line where multi-million-dollar improvements apparently went astray, creating the 2016 sewer collapse, according to Miller. The resulting crater on 15 Mile the size of a football field affected a half-million people in 11 Macomb County communities for nine months. In the immediate area, the 9-month impact resulted in the condemnation of one home, the temporary evacuation of about a dozen others, and long-term awkward access to many local businesses.
Miller would not reveal the size of the claim that will be made in court but she said that the $75 million in direct repair expenses does not include “quite a bit more” of indirect costs that caused grief for homeowners and businesses.
However, any dollars won in a settlement or a court decision involving the insurance companies will not result in a refund to sewer users. Instead, it will be spent on repairing the “number of issues” that have been found in the sewer lines that require additional repairs.
Nonetheless, the public works commissioner vowed that that the county will vigorously fight any efforts by insurance companies to change the venue away from the Macomb County Circuit Court. A Macomb judge and jurors deserve a shot at handling this case, she said.
“We all saw it. We lived through it. We know what happened,” Miller said in the press briefing.
“We are reasonable people. And I understand that mistakes can be made. That’s why we have insurance.”
