MICHIGAN
The following information was taken inpart from an Investigative Report prepared by Clarence William Cromwell and published by the Owosso Argus Press on March 18, 2001.
Please refer to this article for the complete report.
Dam Inspections:
The state of Michigan requires inspections on dams that are six feet or more tall, or that hold back a pond of five or more acres. Dams are under the authority of the Department of Environmental Quality, Land and Water Management Division.
The DEQ also has the authority over repairs and improvements to all dams. Michigan's oversight of small dams began in the early 1990's.
Seven of Shiawassee County's 14 dams fall under autority of the law known as "part 315," the dam safety section of Michigan's Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Act.
OwnerMackinac GenerationOkemos, MI
Description: Built in 1904 on the Shiawassee River, just west of Vernon. Used as a hydroelectric power station for Consumers Power. In 2001 it consisted of a concrete spillway and 460 feet of earth embankments. Former powerhouse had been abandoned and partly removed. Dam is 17 feet high and normally creates an impoundment of 75 acres. Principal spillway consisted of four weirs, each 20 feet wide.
The dam was raised five feet more to 17 feet in 1928. The right embankment was raised four feet after the dam failed in 1974. Original gates were replaced with stoplog gates, which were later removed for fear of dam failure incase they could not be removed in an emergency.
DEQ reported in 2001 that the previous inspection recommendations of 1985 and 1997 were not carried out.
Owner: Village of Byron
Discription:
Built in about 1847, today it consists of 185 foot earth embankment and two separate concrete spillways, a six-gate spillway near the former mill building of Byron Manufacturing. Also a two-gate spillway across Saginaw Street, at the edge of the 104 acre Millpond. The spillways are just over seven feet tall.
Embankments were rebuilt in the 1970s and the early 1980s. In 1986, levees and embankments were again raised.
One wall of the millrace spillway was replaced in 1995. The Byron Dept. of Public Works also improved the spillway gates by welding new I-beam tracks to the exsisting dam structure. Other DEQ recommendations have not been carried out as of 2001.
Owner: City of Corunna
Description: The all concrete dam was constructed circa 1850s to provide power for a mill. The dam consists of a 200 foot wide overflow spillway across the Shiawassee River, just north of the downtown area on North Shiawassee Street. It has a 25 foot wide stoplog bay section on the right bank of the river. The dam is 10 feet high and creates a seven foot head of water covering a total of 17 acres.
According to a 1997 DEQ report, the dam was in poor condition.
Owner: Misteguay Creek Intercounty Drainage Board
Description: Dam consists of 1,660 feet of earth embankment and a reinforced concrete spillway. There is an additional 340 foot emergency spillway.
Improvements in 1997 included replacement of inlet walls and in 1998 included, removal and replacement of concrete outlet walls. DEQ recommendations have been followed and all work completed as of 2001.
Owner: Lake Manitou Residents Association
Discription: This dam consists of a 385 foot earth embankment and a 17 foot wide, 18 foot high metal pile spillway. All DEQ recommendations have been carried out and the report concludes withGood condition.no deficiencies in 1997.
Owner: Scenic Lake Property Owners Association
Description: The dam consists of a 1,400 foot earth embankment, about 14 foot high, when measured from the bottom of the streambed. It holds back 175 acre impoundment. The spillway consists of a four foot concrete catch basin and drainpipe.
The DEQ reported in 2000 that the the dam was in Good condition,,,sufficient spillway capacity.
Owner: Eva Cummings
Description:
Consists of a 620 foot long earth embankment with a clay core, 21
feet high. It creates a 22 acre lake along an unnamed tributary to Spring Brook Creek.
The spillway consists of a 30 inch pipe spillway with a concrete drop inlet and timber stoplogs. An additional 12 inch drainpipe ubder the embankment can be used to drain the lake if necessary.
The DEQ reports that all recommendations have been completed.
Owner: Michigan Department of Natural Resources
Description:
Located on an unnamed tributary to Vermilion Creek, west of Woodbury Road and south of Bath Road. The DEQ reports in 1995 that the dam was in good condition and that the DNR conducts annual inspections.
Moon Lake Dam:
Located on a tributary to Vermilion Creek in the southwest part of the county.
Hospital Dam:
Located on the Shiawassee River in Owosso northwest of the Memorial Health Care Center.
Sugar Beet Dam:
Remains of the dam located on the Shiawassee River near Chipman and Oliver Streets in Owosso. Formerly created a head of water for the Owosso Sugar Factory, at the west end of Oliver Street.
Owosso Dam:
Located 200 feet north of the Main Street Bridge on the Shiawassee River.
Aginaw Lake Dam:
At Aginaw Lake located on Rowley Creek.
Geeck Road Dam:
On an unnamed tributary to the Hovey Drain.
By CLARENCE WILLIAM CROMWELL
Argus-Press Staff Writer......Oct. 2001
Last month, when he heard that the Shiawassee River was within inches of overtopping Shiatown Dam, Michigan dam safety engineer Paul Wessel grabbed a thick file of records a cell phone and a state car. Wessel works for the Dam Safety Office at Michigans Department of Environmental Quality, Division of Land and Water Management. From the dam programs offices, near the Michigan National Tower in downtown Lansing, he sped to the remote site of the dam, just west of Vernon. There was little he could do.
Fortunately, for county emergency officials and the residents of 20 homes directly below the dam, the river level lowered on its own without getting much closer to the top of the dam.
Wessel and other officials at the dam safety office have known for years that the Shiatown Dam is distressed. The most recent dam inspection warned that debris in the spillway should be removed ? so that it would not clog the dam and cause the type of overtopping that almost occurred Feb. 13. The inspection also warned that earth embankments are in need of repair; when the dam came close to overflowing, emergency workers had to sandbag a low spot on the left embankment to keep the water from rushing over the top, where it would wear a gully through the earthen part of dam. Those same repairs, described in a December 2000 inspection, were outlined in a 1997 inspection of the dam, but have remained undone.
The condition of dams around the county, differs widely. While some dams are well-maintained, at least three of the countys dams are in poor shape. Some dams are more than a century old and are not aging well. Some owners cant afford the expensive repairs that certain structures require. And the state office in charge of dam safety only reports on the repairs that dams need; it lacks the funds to help the owners of decrepit dams and it lacks the power to penalize them if they do not make repairs. The states three dam safety engineers monitor 2,500 dams statewide. Of those structures, 950 require periodic inspections. In addition to inspections, the dam safety office must monitor repairs, new construction and expansion of dams.
The inspections can be performed by any licensed engineer, but branches of the state and also counties cities and villages can request that the DEQs dam safety office perform the inspection.
Often an inspection shows that the dam needs a great deal of repair or a higher level of maintenance.
Sometimes, they dont have the money and it can be difficult, said Jim Hayes, a dam safety engineer for the DEQ. Dam repair is not inexpensive and Michigan is not one of the states that has funding to pay for such things. The village of Byron has handled the operation of the Byron Millpond Dam for decades, according to Village Clerk Cheryl Green. When the river rises, public works employees drive a backhoe across the village and use it to lift the heavy stoplogs from four spillways, allowing more water to escape and preventing the floodwaters from overwhelming the dam. The village took over operation of the dam because nobody else would claim the 154-year-old structure, Green said. But what began as a practical necessity turned into trouble when the state tightened dam safety regulations, in 1990. Now the village is faced with having the dam inspected every five years and performing the repairs. And the Byron dam needs plenty of repairs.
The dam safety office called for extensive upgrades of the dams levees and dikes in 1992, and the village has still not completed the work because of the lack of funds. The village has no budget for dam repairs, or even maintenance, according to Green.
Repairs to the dams concret spillway were done when a contractor was hired by the state to replace two bridges across the river. When water was released from the mill race, workers saw that the dam was severely undermined, to the extent that one of its inlet walls was ready to collapse.
While the mill race was dewatered, bridge workers voluntarily performed repairs to one of the dams spillways, including replacement of a concrete wall. The village provided the materials; a village employee also repaired the dams stoplog gates while the water was low.
The Millpond Dam has not been inspected since 1994, a year before the spillway repairs were performed, because officials at the dam safety office apparently forgot to perform an inspection requested by the village in 1999. As a low-hazard structure, the Millpond dam must be inspected every five years under the states dam safety regulations, and the village must provide a copy of the report to the dam safety office.
Cheryl Green said the village requested an inspection of the dam in 1999, when the dam was due for one. She faxed the Argus-Press a copy of a March 25, 1999 letter from the dam safety office acknowledging the request and confirming that the inspection would be done. The letter was signed by Richard Sorrell, Chief of the DEQs hydrologic studies unit.
A copy of Greens March 22, 1999 request is in the dam safety offices files. But the inspection was never done, apparently because the request was not entered into a database that tracks dam inspections and requests. Jim Hayes, an engineer for the dam safety office, said that the request could have been overlooked because of an error in managing the database.
The city of Corunna, faced with the maintenance of its own aging dam, built in the mid-1800s to power a mill, has appointed a committee to consider the future of the structure. The city has made little progress on the safety recommendations included in a 1997 inspection of the dam.
Corunna Superintendent of Public Works Tim Crawford said the city may demolish the dam rather than absorb the costs of repairs, a project that would take anywhere from five to eight years.
Crawford said theres no way to know whether the dam can be repaired ? or how much it would cost ? until the dam can be inspected below the waterline. The dams 200-foot overflow spillway lies entirely below the surface of the river, so the only way to assess its condition is to dive behind the dam during summer months when the river is at a lower stage.
The states dam safety engineers can only inspect as much of the dam as they can see from the shore.
A 1997 dam inspection indicates that the structure is in poor condition. Although it is not in danger of an immediate failure, the right abutment wall and the entire overflow spillway should be inspected, the Dec. 3, 1997 inspection report states.
Flow patterns over the dam at that time indicated that the top has become unevenly worn; whirlpools just upstream of the dam indicate cracks or voids in the spillway wall, which could lead to settlement of the spillway wall and loss of stability. Corunna does not designate funds in its budget for dam repair or maintenance, according to City Treasurer Jeremy Boyd.
The dam is due for its next safety inspection this year, but the underwater inspection will not necessarily happen so soon. Crawford said the DEQ has already been asked to perform this years inspection of the Corunna Dam.
The Shiatown dam has lately been the most problematic, but its future looks much better than that of the other two aging dams in the county. The dam needs a number of repairs, but the current owner, Mackinac Generation, has failed to perform any inspections, despite numerous warnings from the dam safety office, according to Wessel. As a result, necessary repairs have not been made, he said.
Wessel conducted an inspection of the dam in December of 2000, because DEQ records indicated that the dam had become state property, due to failure to pay property taxes. The dam safety office performs inspections for all dams owned by the DNR, the states largest owner of dams.
As it turns out, the state treasury has begun proceedings to take over the property, but the process has not yet been completed. Now the heat is back on the absentee owner of the dam, said Byron Lane, director of the dam safety office.
It is our intent to have them do the repairs and the cleaning that need to be done, he said. Were presuming that the owner is still responsible for it. The earth embankments need repairs and brush removal, and the concrete spillway and abutment walls require extensive repairs for cracks and spalling. The spillway was clogged with timber and other debris, preventing the dam from discharging water at its full capacity.
Shiawassee County has already requested that the state pay for the emergency response this month when the river nearly overtopped the Shiatown Dam. The county spent more than $15,000 during the first 24 hours, according to Barber. A contractor opened an emergency spillway trench past the embankment of the dam, so that water could pass around the structure, rather than spill over the top of it. For now, the situation with the dam has been stabilized, Barber said. The emergency spillway is still in place, so that if the river does rise again it will not come so close to spilling over the dam.
I feel very comfortable with the dam, now, he said. Now the county will ask the state to perform the rest of the repairs and maintenance needed on the dam, Barber said. He estimated that it may take as much as $1 million to make the dam meet state safety regulations. Those repairs would probably be funded by the state only if it took possession of the dam.
Neither the county nor the dam program can force the owner of the dam to repair it. But the dam safety office has the power to contract repairs and then take the owner to civil court to recoup the costs.
Thats not likely to happen unless the dam is a severe problem, according to dam safety engineer Paul Wessel, of the dam safety office. The dam safety program is already stretched thin by responsibilities of inspecting dams and reviewing repairs and expansions of dams around the state, said Wessel, who performed the most recent inspection of the Shiatown Dam.
Wessel said the dam program does not have funds to repair dams. Dam safety engineers are so busy that they have to shift their attention to the most dire situation of the moment, and for the time being, that is working in favor of Shiawassee County residents.
Shiatown moved to the top of the list temporarily because of how close it came to failing a few weeks ago, Wessel said. But so far, theres been no move on the part of the dam safety office to take control of the dam. Dam safety officials appear to be waiting for the state of Michigan to seize the dam in a property reversion process that is related to unpaid property taxes on the dam.
The dam safety office is most effective when dam owners are conscientious about repairs and maintenance, and when they have enough money to do repairs and maintenance promptly. The Lake Manitou Residents Association is one of the countys better dam owners. Lake Manitou lies east of M 52, between Bennington and Garrison roads. The association has complied with all the DEQs requests and recommendations, after past inspections.
The association also tripled the size of its spillway some 15 years ago, at an expense of about $30,000. The dam now has more than enough capacity to withstand a 100-year flood, according to Jerry Meyer, vice president of the association. Were in good shape, Meyer said.
One reason the association is in that shape is that membership is mandatory for the 115 owners of the property that borders the lake. Their annual dues of about $250 provide for regular maintenance, for the state inspections every five years and for training seminars to make the associations officers better stewards of the lake. Where dams lack an organized and powerful neighborhood association, neighbors might make due by rolling up their sleeves and opening up their checkbooks whenever they can.
Only 15 residents live around Cummings Lake, just south of Lake Manitou and Garrison Road. Eva Cummings is the sole owner of the dam that forms the 22-acre lake along an unnamed tributary to Spring Brook Creek. But most neighbors are willing to contribute to the costs of inspections, according to Leslie Fayling, Cummings grandniece and financial guardian. The most recent inspection came to $153.88 per resident. About 10 of the property owners cooperated, leaving Cummings to pay four shares of the inspection. The neighbors also share the cost of weed control in the lake, which came to about $300 per resident this year.
Cummings herself has paid for brush removal on the banks of the lake and other minor maintenance. One of her neighbors, George Braidwood, has gone out of his way to keep the spillway free of debris and to operate the dams stoplogs whenever necessary; he also took the responsibility of hiring a contractor to take care of this years weed control.
Fayling said her aunt plans to someday allow her neighbors to inherit the dam and the lake-bottom, and Fayling believes the neighbors will form a more organized lake-owners association when that happens. Its not a burden that they wish for, but one that theyll probably accept, she said.
We would love to turn the lake and dam over to the county and then have the landowners get taxed, Fayling said.
Lakes, Rivers, Creeks and Drains