GLWA’s Jefferson Chalmers pump station wins zoning approval: ‘We don’t want another 2021’

Detroit City Council members approved a rezoning plan and a package of community benefits tied to a contested $130 million pump station improvement project in the flood-prone Jefferson Chalmers community.

The Tuesday approvals are the final steps in the work getting underway for the Freud Pump Station Improvement Project.

The initiative has been under development for about two years and chiefly calls for the rehabilitation of eight underground storm pumps in the existing Freud Street pumping station and the construction of a new sanitary pump station approximately one-and-a-half blocks east of the current station.

The project, according to the Great Lakes Water Authority, would improve reliability in both dry and wet weather conditions, and it would reduce surcharging and combined sewer backups. The rezoning plan was approved in an 8-0 vote. Council Member Gabriela Santiago-Romero was absent. 

To prepare the land for the proposed station, GLWA purchased and razed 22 properties and lots in the residential neighborhood over the last few years.

Some residents who live near the project have voiced concerns, such as the construction activity taking place without final city rezoning approval; inadequate upfront community outreach by GLWA; the aesthetics of a utility pump station in their neighborhood; and possible noise pollution from the proposed five-story facility.

GLWA COO Navid Mehram has previously said the Freud Street location allows the utility to intercept two major sewer lines at the same point.

Jefferson Chalmers resident stunned by council move

Lifelong resident Vanessa Cartwright, 63, has lived in her current home for 30 years and said the pump station is directly across from her front door. 

She was stunned Tuesday to learn that the council voted on the plan, believing the vote wouldn’t yet take place. A public hearing for the rezoning was held May 7, where a majority of commenters spoke in opposition to the project. 

The issue was discussed in a council subcommittee last Thursday, which she attended. The proposal was intended to return back to that subcommittee this Thursday, but was walked on Tuesday for the formal session agenda. 

Cartwright said she doesn’t trust the water authority and believes that the project description and its impact on flooding in the community has changed over time.

An independent review found that three GLWA pump stations, including an existing facility on Freud Street, suffered electrical and mechanical failures during the June 2021 storm, with modeling suggesting that if those stations had been operational, an additional 336 million gallons could have been pumped. The report, however, also says that the intensity of the rainstorm “far exceeded the designed capacity of the wastewater system.”

“I don’t trust them (GLWA) because of the flooding from 2021. That was their fault, and we’re in the red zone because of what they did. They didn’t give us a bucket or a mop,” she said. 

“Why should we trust them to build some more (pump stations) when they can’t handle the ones they got there?”

‘We don’t want another 2021’

Since 2021, Jefferson Chalmers has been ruled a flood zone by FEMA, a designation that requires homeowners with mortgages to purchase flood insurance and imposes restrictions on neighborhood development and home repair.

LeJuan Council, a resident of Jefferson Chalmers and founder of the Detroit Area Disaster Recovery Group, said residents did not receive “any clarity on other proposed sites” for the new pumping station. Since 2021, her organization has been providing mutual aid and technical support to residents applying for FEMA insurance claims and seeking sewer line repair and basement backup protections from the city.

“We never got any commitment that this (pumping station) would stop us from future flooding,” said Council. “We don’t have any statements with clarity that lets us know what is the percentage, what is the likelihood that we will not continue to have sewage backups.”

District 4 Council Member Latisha Johnson said some neighbors have reservations and that other Detroiters outside the immediate area are supportive of the plans. She noted six months of conversations with the community have taken place on the pump station project. Several entities, she said, have agreed to provide benefits to the Jefferson Chalmers neighborhood. 

“It’s very difficult, but we did a lot of work with the community over the last six months, and we did our darndest to get everything that they were asking for, and the most important things they were asking for is what we really wanted to focus on,” she said. 

“We still have some work to do. We’ll continue to do it. I say to the community all the time, ‘my advocacy for our neighborhoods does not cease because of one vote we make.’”

Johnson read off a section of the list during the meeting and the entities that have made commitments to the community, including a $5-million investment in street, curb, sidewalk and other right-of-way improvements from GLWA and $75,000 for neighborhood beautification and mini grants.

Other commitments in the resolution include:

• GLWA will contract with an International Society of Arboriculture Arborist to review and recommend a tree planting plan for adjacent streets.
• The Great Lakes Environmental Law Center, in partnership with other community partners, will facilitate environmental justice training for residents to identify community goals and pursue air, soil, and water monitoring opportunities.
• An $11.2-million federal grant to expand neighborhood sewers was committed by the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department but is on hold after a FEMA program was cut by the Trump administration; DWSD says it will use capital dollars to fund the project if necessary.
• A portion of federal disaster recovery funds following the June 2021 and August 2023 storms will be committed toward repairing sewers and sewer lateral connections in alleys across Jefferson Chalmers. 

Jefferson Chalmers resident Council said that residents are still seeking a foolproof solution to get off the flood zone designation, and would have benefited from explicit allocation of funding for home repairs or flooding mitigation. The list of promises says that any additional resources for those issues “will be pursued and identified but at this time are not finalized.”

Johnson said some community members want assurances that everything is “above board from the environmental perspective.” To protect health, air monitors are being evaluated for the area, and a resident will be identified to act as a community liaison with GLWA about any concerns.

Some “misinformation” has circulated about the project and others have reservations about the aesthetics, including the city’s planning office, she said.

“We’ll continue working with the Great Lakes Water Authority that’s open to having it look more like an apartment complex you would find in a residential neighborhood,” she said of the design. “That was one of the greatest concerns. One of the other concerns was just having a utility building in the neighborhood.”

There are 25 community organizations in the Jefferson Chalmers area, she said, and efforts are underway to bring them all together to ensure decisions are being made collectively. 

“There are residents who are supportive of the pump station because they recognize that it helps to get them out of the situation they’ve been in for the last 15 years,” she said. “There were residents outside of Jefferson Chalmers pushing, saying, ‘Why is this taking so long, because we don’t want another 2021.’”

Johnson said the project is just one part of the solution to help bolster the system and minimize the likelihood of backups in the wake of the 2021 pump station failure. Seventy percent of households in District 4 were impacted by the 2021 backups, she said. 

Beyond this project, several efforts are in motion to help with flooding, Johnson said. Among them, underground stormwater tanks being installed by the Michigan Department of Transportation as part of an I-94 expansion and more.

DWSD Director Gary Brown, a board member of GLWA, said Tuesday that the council’s approval of the rezoning will move along much-needed investment to help protect east side residents during storms.

“This approval allows the project to proceed after an extended review period, which GLWA utilized to address community feedback and incorporate preferences to adjust the project design, delaying the original construction timeline,” he said.

“Securing this $130-million investment is important to Detroit and the region to update our current infrastructure and to be better prepared for the next big storm to reduce basement backups on the east side.”

He called the group of opponents “a small minority” and said, “they wanted some community benefits, certainly didn’t like the design of the building, so we changed it based on their input.”

While benefits for neighbors aren’t required, GLWA committed to them in writing, Brown said. 

“We want to live up to our commitments; it’s the right thing to do,” he said. 

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