Untreated sewage overflows in multiple Ypsilanti

MLive file photo

YPSILANTI, MI - An intense deluge of rain on Wednesday night and Thursday morning, Aug. 23-24, led three Ypsilanti-area sewer pump stations to overflow, spilling untreated sewage into water bodies including the Huron River.

The Ypsilanti Community Utilities Authority reported the overflows just after 3 p.m. Thursday, and Director of Wastewater Operations and Compliance Sree Mullapudi pointed to the nearly five inches of rain that fell in roughly three hours the night before as the primary culprit.

“It just came all of the sudden and in such a short period,” he said.

The overnight storm qualified as a “500-year” event for a three-hour time period, a downpour with a 0.2% chance of happening at any given time, according to the Washtenaw County Water Resources Commissioner’s Office.

Read more: Parts of Washtenaw County get almost 5 inches of rain in 3 hours during 500-year storm

The rain led to overflows at YCUA’s Emerick Pump Station at 561 Emerick Street, the Willow Run Pump Station at 3120 Airport Drive and the Snow Road Pump Station at 3282 Snow Road, according to the YCUA notice.

Officials learned of the Emerick and Willow Run overflows around 6 a.m. Thursday. The Emerick spill ended at 6:45 a.m. and the Willow Run overflow ended at 8 a.m. the same day.

The Snow Road overflow, detected at 9:48 a.m. Thursday, stemmed from a sewer vault outside the pump station on the south bank of the Huron River and spilled sewage into the river and the ground nearby. It also lasted longer. Preliminary reports show the overflow ended around 12:35 a.m. Friday, Aug. 25, Mullapudi said.

Nearby, Augusta Township officials reported a sewer overflow of 250 gallons of raw wastewater from a manhole on Bunton Road between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. Thursday, due to issues with a lift station in a nearby community not being able to keep up with the flow, according to a news release.

YCUA will be conducting sampling on all the affected water bodies near its pump stations, reporting those results to state regulators and the Washtenaw County Health Department, Mullapudi said.

“I can confidently say people are not affected by this because these are not drinking water sources, the affected water bodies. But I think for recreational purposes I can only tell after I collect the samples and analyze them,” he said. “With the amount of surface runoff I think the effects may have been diluted much more, so I don’t see any immediate health effects.”

“I don’t see any immediate danger to people as along as they stay away from the affected water bodies, in this case Willow Creek, Huron River and Belleville Lake,” Mullapudi added.

The wastewater operator said through the the storm on Wednesday night and during the rains on Thursday night he was able to successfully manage the flows coming into the Ypsilanti-area wastewater plant. It’s designed for an average of 51.2 million gallons per day, but officials were seeing between 70 and 80 million gallons per day during because of the downpours, he said.

“It was a a lot of excess water coming into the plant, but we were able to manage that part,” Mullapudi said.

Want more Ann Arbor-area news? Bookmark the local Ann Arbor news page, the Ypsilanti-area news page or sign up for the free “3@3 Ann Arbor” daily newsletter.