TRAVERSE CITY — The region experienced record-breaking water levels — but Traverse City’s sewage and water infrastructure held the damage to a minimum, officials reported Monday in a study session with city commissioners.
“I think it helps us sleep better, and it helps drive us to look for the next big thing that could prevent the next occurrence,” Project manager for Jacobs Engineering Mark Huggard said.
Jacobs Engineering operates the wastewater treatment facility for Traverse City.
Both Huggard and the city’s Director of Municipal Utilities Art Krueger updated the commission on how the infrastructure performed during the heavy rain and flooding of mid April.
The city’s investments worked, they said.
“We wanted to tell that positive story that it pays to invest in your infrastructure for those kinds of unexpected times that you know will come, possibly someday,” Krueger said.
The city invested more than $30 million in the sewer and water system, spreading across four projects in the past five years.
Krueger said during their presentation that river levels across the city were the highest ever, breaking the 2014 record.
“April 14, compared to that high record in 2014, it was actually 1,120 cubic feet per second, which is about a 92% increase over that record,” he said. “That’s just almost unheard of to break a record like that.”
Krueger said this amount of water puts a lot of pressure on sanitary sewers, collection systems, and wastewater treatment plants. He said that the millions of dollars of properties were at risk because of it.
Despite the high waters, he said the infrastructure remained intact and did its job, limiting damage and flooding.
Traverse City’s mayor Amy Shamroe said that the city wasn’t going to come out unscathed, but agreed that the city’s framework still helped tremendously.
“We know that some of the riverbank was affected around Fishpass, which I think led some people to think that there had been a failure, or the design wasn’t correct,” Shamroe said. “It’s just a lot of water.”
The city will now focus on updating and maintaining the sewer lines.
After Huggard and Krueger’s presentation, Drain Commissioner Andy Smits spoke about what a drain commissioner does, and what he can and can’t do. That included determining which areas to drain, what kind of land he is allowed to assess, and what it takes to get the commissioners to evaluate certain land.
