(Grand Haven Tribune) A piece of piping disconnected from a pump at the Spring Lake pump station, resulting in an estimated 85,000 gallons of raw sewage being discharged onto the ground and into the nearby Grand River.
Ryan Vredeveld, superintendent of the Grand Haven/Spring Lake Sewer Authority, said an alarm alerted the on-duty supervisor that there was a drop-off in flow at the pump station located at 213 South Division Street, near Tanglefoot Park in Spring Lake.
"We got an alarm around 7 a.m. Saturday morning telling us of a low flow in the process, at which point our on-call supervisor responded to the site," Vredeveld said. "At 7:35 he shut the pump off, he restored the pumping connections and was able to get the pump back online at 7:45 a.m. It appears the service at the station was disrupted from 5 a.m. until 7:35.
"We were able to calculate an estimation of 85,000 gallons spilled."
Vredeveld said that while that sounds like a big number, the pump station pushes around 1.5 million gallons of water a day.
Following repairs to the pump, Vredeveld reported the spill to the Environment, Great Lakes & Energy (former Michigan Department of Environmental Quality) as well as the Ottawa County Department of Public Health.
Kristina Wieghmink, public information officer for the Ottawa County Health Department, said the spill was evaluated and a no-contact warning was not issued.
"Based on the amount that was dicharged, at the rate at which it would flow into the Grand and dilute, and also given the weather conditions that people most likely would not be in the water, we did not issue an advisory," Wieghmink said. "It diluted so quickly, by the time it was issued, it would have been cleared up.
"The time of year certainly comes into play. It was reported to us, and we definitely take it seriously. We looked at all the data, the conditions and all the factors before making a decision."
The Spring Lake pump station is currently under construction as part of a major renovation to the system, which included a new force main pipe that was recently installed under the Grand River. Vredeveld explained that, during construction, there is some bypassing equipment in place, which is where Saturday's leak occured.
"This was responded to quickly, and the correction was made in a timely fashion," he said. "We did sit down with the construction crew, our engineering staff, and asked, are there things that we could do to avoid this situation again? Are there things we can do to improve this? We did identify some minor things that have been put into place."
In September of 2017, a power outage at the Grand Haven sewage treatment plant led to about 830,000 gallons of sanitary sewage released into the Grand River. In that instance, the Ottawa County Department of Public Health issued an advisory for the river from 1 mile east of the U.S. 31 bridge downstream to Lake Michigan.
In February of 2017, a leak was discovered in the pipe running under the Grand River. In that situation, it was estimated that 500,000 gallons of sewage had been released daily for more than a week before the leak was capped. A similar incident occurred in 1998, when a barge stabilization system hit the plant.
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