East Lansing Launches Water Quality Facility

With cities and nations throughout the world discussing environmental issues earlier this week, the city of East Lansing did its part.

The city celebrated United Nations World Environment Day by officially opening its $30 million combined sewer overflow facility, which is designed to improve the quality of water in the Red Cedar River, according to a report in the Lansing State Journal.

"We have already had an opportunity to test the system, and it meets the goals and objectives we planned for," Mayor Sam Singh said Monday at a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Of more than 30 Michigan cities undertaking CSO projects, East Lansing is among the first to bring its project to completion.

"This is a tremendously exciting development," said Kelly Dardzinski, environmental advocate for Public Interest Research Group In Michigan (PIRGIM), an activist group focused on the environment. "It's a huge step forward in making sure we have clean water."

"As people stroll by the river and maybe some day wade in it, they no longer will have to be concerned about what's in it. It should bring peace of mind."

Talk about dealing with combined sewer overflow problems has been going on for a long time, said Todd Sneathen, East Lansing's public works director.

Combined sewer overflow occurs when sewer systems that carry both sanitary sewage and storm water in the same pipe discharge into nearby surface waters during wet weather conditions, adversely affecting water quality.

"A CSO project was originally proposed in the late 1970s, but then grant funding dried up, and it was shelved until the early '90s," he said.

The East Lansing project, done in three phases, began in 1993.

"It's great to see something that's been on the books for as long as this has been be completed and working so well," Sneathen said.

Charles Bennett, environmental engineer for the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, said municipalities had two choices in conducting CSO projects.

East Lansing opted for a system of sewer separation and wastewater retention that allows proper treatment of water before it is discharged into the Red Cedar. The system includes a 2.6 million-gallon retention basin that greatly increases the city's ability to hold and treat storm water.

Lansing chose the other option and is completely separating its storm and sanitary sewers. City Engineer Dean Johnson said the 30-year project, estimated to cost $176 million in 1990 dollars, is about half completed.

George Hubbell, president of Hubbell, Roth and Clark Inc., engineers for the East Lansing project, said cities such as East Lansing are far ahead of the rest of the U.S. in dealing with water quality.

Source: LSJ.com