Grosse Pointe Farms Residents, Council Ask Same Questions On Flooding

Flooded residents came to Monday's City Council meeting seeking answers on , many with raw sewage, during the . While they got some answers, the residents, as well as the city, are still wading through questions, chief among them being: Could this happen again?

The heavy rains that hit the Pointes and metro Detroit blew off manhole covers as city water pumps tried to keep up with the deluge. Rainwater and sewage flowed in to basements quicker than the residents could move out just a handful of belongings. , some of them trash picked by passersby unaware the items were contaminated.

What the city must figure out is whether the flooding was caused by an uncontrollable act of god or whether city pumps failed. The flooding mostly affected what's delineated as the city's Ridge, or inland, district of the city as opposed to the Lake District. The combined sewer separated in the late 1990s was a step that prevents the sewage from mixing with stormwater.

The inland district still functions on a combined system and has no emergency release into the lake as the Lake district does, meaning the city pumps at the Kerby Station must handle the flow, no matter how fast and heavy. There were homes in the Lake District that flooded, but not nearly as many or as severely. As of Tuesday, 288 homeowners—out of 4,000—had filed flood complaints with the city.

The city has asked Thomas Biehl, executive vice president of Hubbell, Roth & Clark, a firm of consulting engineers, to piece together what happened to cause the basement back-ups. It's a situation that at the least will lead to claims for restitution from residents and at the most end up in a legal contest.

Attorneys are already contacting residents about their potential for redress. Attorney Steve Liddell said his firm has already received at least a handful of calls from Grosse Pointe area residents in addition to calls from residents from many Detroit suburbs. It may also lead to future decisions on whether to undertake construction projects that could prevent a repeat of the situation.

While Biehl said there may be corrections, additions and renovations to be made, from the exorbitantly-high-cost sewer separation or adding an extra pump or installing diversions to take water into streets instead of basements, it should be noted that such a rain and its effects are extremely rare and may not be preventable even with changes.

Biehl told the council and audience that the rain was a record one-hour, maximum of 2.7 inches, as recorded at a rain station at the Country Club of Detroit. Overall, the rain that came down exceeded the so-called 100-year storm for an 18-hour and 24-hour period.

Because the downpour came on top of ground already saturated from heavy rainfall all month, the water had nowhere to go.

The water overwhelmed the pumps, every one of them operating, even the largest, which typically would operate only six minutes in an entire year, he said.

Further complicating the ability to handle the amount of water moving through city pipes were DTE power surges that caused the pumps at the Kerby Road pumping station to switch to back-up power several times. The switch leads to a slowdown in the pumps for 3-5 minutes and decreases their capacity for a precious amount of time during such a heavy rainfall, Biehl said.

The last time there was widespread basement flooding, about 500-600 homes, was in 1946, when problems were discovered and corrected at the Kerby pumping station, Biehl said. Two large pumps were installed at that time. All eight pumps were running during the latest storm, and for the first time ever there was still water in the wet well rising even as the pumps worked.

Councilman Martin West wanted to know what the residents want to know: "The logical question: Anything we can to so this doesn't happen again?"

Hubbell, Roth, Clark and the city will work to come up with more answers and likely have more to share by next month's meeting. In the meantime, residents can file claims with the city, which is insured, and also file claims with insurers if coverage is in place.

Erin Dilodovico, a resident in the 400 block of Moran, where almost every home flooded with sewage-tainted water, she said, is not concerned about the restitution as much as the peace of mind that preventive steps are being taken.

"All my neighbors, we lost furnaces, hot water heaters, you name it. For three days we were throwing out trash," said Dilodovico, who experienced severe basement flooding that led to a lawsuit 15 years ago. "The fact that this was being called a 100-year storm, and this happened in 15 years, I don't buy that."

Councilman Louis Theros said he hears the concerns and wants to help—if possible.

"I'm not going to sit here and say we have solutions. We have to find out what happened with everything," he said. "I've lived through it in my own house in the City and with my parents' house in the Woods. Let us continue doing what we're doing to try and figure out what the real story is."