Sheridan Township
Sewer Project
BY
CASS
Committee for an Appropriate Sewer System
Early in2006 your township council under the direction of Supervisor, Dave Lu, began to examine the possibilities and cost of extending the City of Fremont's sanitary sewer connection to include more of the residence including those on the southern and western sections of the Fremont Lake. Since the firm of Moore and Bruggink of Grand Rapids, MI, had been the designers of the original city sewer system and the extensions, they were the first and only firm contacted.
Moore and Bruggink directed the township to apply to the State of Michigan's Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) for a grant to fund a initial design study. The application resulted in a grant of over $30,000 which was then paid to M&B by the township.
In the spring of 2007 the design report from M&B was given to the township and made available to the public at the Library in Fremont.
THIS DESIGN WAS A CARBON COPY OF THE DESIGN THAT THEY HAD SUBMITTED AND WAS PAID FOR 30 YEARS AGO!!
Proposed sewer District
For the details of the plan
Unfortunately, this plan is virtually identical to that designed by Moore & Bruggink in 1977 and rejected by the landowners because of significant technical and legal flaws
BUT WE HAVE PAID FOR IT TWICE!!
FLASH BULLETIN!
10/31/08( Halloween) we have an even scarier situation. On Oct 15 the state of Michigan Dept .of Environmental Quality (DEG) who had been evaluation the design submittal for approval for a low cost loan, We have just now found this out by direct communication with the key project manager in Lansing.
He stated that the plan as presented was totally unworkable and since the state funding is very tight recommended that the funding request be put off until next year. He said that several alternative design, namely the STEP system or combination of step or grinder system would be significantly less costly as well as far less intrusive on the properties.
Yesterday we found out from the Supervisor that he intends to go forward in spite of the obvious problems and fund the project using a much higher rate bank loan. This with the knowledge that the system cannot be built as designed and has significant technical flaws. The people at Moore and Bruggink have been pushing hard for this approach to protect their proposed $250,000 final design fee.
This does not make sense! The bank loan is more costly, the present design will not work and is not cost effective (according to the experts in Lansing), and the DEQ must approve the final design before anything can be started . Also the $10,000 grant from the state that was used to buy the design proposal the second time will have to be paid back to Lansing if any other financing source is used!
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