By Georgia Thelen
Review Staff Writer
Hubbell, Roth & Clark (HRC), the Village of Lake Orion’s engineers, started inspecting the village’s sanitary sewer system May 2.
As of Oct. 14, HRC has inspected 126 of 349 manholes in the Village of Lake Orion: 52 of 126 manholes were in good condition, while the remaining 74 are reported to be in poor condition.
In October 2015, the village was approved for a $663,300 SAW Grant through the state of Michigan.
The SAW Grant is to prepare asset management plans for the sanitary sewer systems. The asset management plan created by HRC includes GIS mapping, manhole inspections, pump station inspections and sanitary sewer televising.
The entire project must be completed within three years, by October 2018.
The SAW Grant pays for the cleaning, televising and condition assessment of all 59,385.1 feet of manholes and sanitary sewers.
Thus far, HRC has found several problems during their village manhole inspections, including leaking joints, root entry, deposits, sag, cracks and a few broken pipes.
There are also 16 pump stations, 12 being ejector pumps and 4 being canned pumps, which are projected to all be inspected by winter 2016.
Moving forward, HRC will be completing their assessment, completing a business risk evaluation, determining maintenance needs, and completing a water rate study.
Village Council President Ken Van Portfliet questioned HRC about any ideas they had to off set costs to residents.
HRC representative Karyn Stickel said the village would need to look at improvements with the county to get rid of the current excess flows.
“We haven’t had any major changes to the scope of the project,” said Stickel.