Storm drainage has become a problem in parts of the Village of Lake Orion. A recently completed storm sewer study indicates the price for improvements will be as high as $520,000.
Doug Skylis of Rowe Incorporated told council members on Feb. 28 his company had found possible deficiencies in the capacity of the storm sewer system in the area that was studied
Improvements include removing and replacing existing storm sewers which are inadequately sized and those in poor condition.
Council president Bill Siver, after looking at the study, surmised there were 63 pipes in the study area and probably 46 or 47 of them needed upsizing.
‘We’re recommending a minimum pipe size of 12 inches, mostly for maintenance reasons,? Skylis said.
He also suggested the village consider reestablishing ditch grades along the streets which appear to have either been filled in over a period of time or have been intentionally filled in.
Employees of the Oakland County Drain Commission spent time this past fall in the village cleaning out the existing storm sewer system. OCDC was also asked to video inspect the system to find out the condition of the pipes.
Skylis said not all of the storm sewers in the study area were video inspected.
According to Skylis, OCDC didn’t maintain records of the locations of the sewers that were inspected. That made it hard for Rowe to correlate the information in the video with the location on the storm sewer map.
The study was based on a 10-year rain event (3.7-4 inches of rain per hour).
Rowe’s study indicated the village’s storm sewer system seemed to have have been originally constructed as a combined sewer system. It appears that sometime in the past the current system may have been the result of a sewer separation project.
This and other modifications has left the sewer system in disrepair in some areas and currently inadequate to pass the 10-year rain event.
The study included Washington, East Flint, Perry, Hauxwell and Florence Streets.
‘We’re going to need to discuss where we go from here,? Siver told the council. ‘I can’t see where we are going to find $520,000.?
Rowe’s study suggested the storm drain improvements could be divided into four different phases, but it would cost the village an extra $35,000 to do it that way.