FLINT, Mich. – A weekend of heavy rain pushed Flint’s wastewater system beyond its limits, prompting the city to discharge a mix of stormwater and treated sewage into the Flint River from its retention treatment basin.
The city said the discharge is no longer flowing into the river. Officials said the release was necessary because extremely heavy rainfall exceeded the treatment plant’s operational capacity and that discharges must occur whenever the plant reaches capacity.
Disinfected wastewater was discharged into the Flint River from Saturday morning until Sunday evening, according to the city.
Tonya Burns, Flint’s 6th Ward councilwoman, said sewage releases into the river have happened before. “We’ve had these problems where sewage has been released into the Flint River. It’s not the first time,” Burns said. She said her office often learns about the issue from residents. “When residents begin to complain of smelling manure or the sewage that is in the water. Particularly in my ward along my part because the river runs along there,” Burns said.
Dr. Donna Kashian, a Wayne State University professor and environmentalist, said overflows like this are fairly common in communities with aging infrastructure or systems designed to process only so much water. “This is fairly common. We see this whenever certain communities have aging infrastructure or the infrastructure is designed to only process so much water,” Kashian said.
Kashian said conditions this season may have worsened runoff. “Normally, this time, maybe we would have had more snow. We had this warm spell. The earth is still frozen and so you had this really heavy rain come in. It’s off-season and so it was higher impact because of the frozen surface too that the water had to go somewhere,” she said.
Kashian said increasing storm frequency and intensity are contributing factors. “Unfortunately, this is related to changes in climates and the increase in frequency and intensity of storms,” she said.
From an environmental standpoint, Kashian said discharges are harmful, but she said the alternative can be worse. “It’s an environmentalist and teaching environmental science. I would rather not see these discharges happening. The way to prevent them would be infrastructure changes but Flint has very older infrastructure and it’s not it’s not designed to handle all this water. So even though it can be harmful the alternative is worse,” she said. “You will see the water needs to be moved out of the system and with that it ends up being a discharge into the local waterways,” Kashian added.
The Genesee County Health Department is asking people to avoid contact with the river, specifically downstream west of the Mill Road bridge at Flushing Road.
In a statement provided Sunday evening, Jeanette Best, the city’s manager of water pollution control, said: “Due to extremely heavy rainfall this weekend, totaling nearly two inches, the facility experienced two incidents in which water was discharged into the Flint River. All state and federal requirements for treating the runoff were followed, and there is no reason for concern.”