Thumb Reporter

Last night, at the Friends of the Shiawassee River Annual Meeting, the City of Owosso was honored to receive an award for the work done to reduce Sanitary Sewer Overflows (SSO). City Manager, Nathan Henne was able to accept that award on behalf of the city and shared a few words on why this recognition is so meaningful: 

“My wife and I own a farm along the river that has a special place in my heart because it's been in the family since 1955.

My mother's side of the family has been in Owosso since before Michigan was a state. I grew up here with my brothers and we're all still here. Mom lives right down the road and two of my brothers live on the same street as me, about a mile apart. The farm where my grandfather was born is right across the street from my house and then my mother grew up in the house we live in now. 

The river through this area is one of the best bass fisheries in the state, especially for fly fishing. My neighbor and I, we're always out there fly fishing. He catches stuff because he’s good at it.  But that’s not what it’s about for me. It’s peace of mind, really.  Standing knee deep in the river with a fly rod is one of my escapes.  So naturally, I have a personal stake in doing my part to make sure the river isn’t polluted.  My reach on that effort is more than most because of my professional obligation to the city and the condition of its sewer system.

Historically, older industrial cities have mistreated their rivers. That's just how they did it 100 years ago, but now it's different. The river isn’t just a resource for industry anymore, it’s a natural resource that everyone has the right to enjoy. If it's polluted, no one can enjoy it. So it's important that Owosso being the largest city in the county along the Shiawassee River does its best to make sure that the river’s health is up to par.  The way we do that is to make sure our sewer infrastructure is in good shape so sanitary sewer overflows don’t occur.

But don't fool yourself into thinking that this stuff happens without money. It’s a pesky reality that keeping up with the required maintenance and improvements is expensive.  And this is stuff that's hard to spend money on because it's mostly unseen, all these pipes are under the ground, and the Wastewater Plant is hidden way down by the river. So when people have to pay for things they can't see it's frustrating.

A lack of maintenance on the plant was mostly causing the SSOs. The sewer cleaning programs that we've done and the sewer CIPP lining that we've done have helped. There's still more work ahead, but a lot of it had to do with the plant itself. It just couldn't keep up because the equipment was going bad.  

The biggest SSO we had was in December 2013, when that ice storm hit. The city had no choice but to pump 4 million gallons of untreated sewage into the river. That had to do with the plant losing power. At the time it was running off redundant electrical services coming in from two different directions. That ice storm was so bad that it knocked both of them out. It's the only time that ever happened. Now the plant has a big diesel generator in case those redundant power sources crap out, pun intended.

Eliminating SSOs completely is our goal.  The last one we had was in 2021.  And it was a small one from the collection system, not the plant.  Continued rehabilitation of the sewer system is key but it’s important we keep at it.  There’s no rest for our efforts to maintain and improve the city’s infrastructure.  Ever.”

Original source can be found here.