Detroit Local Emergency Planning Committee, 3.13.2025

9:38PM May 13, 2025

Speakers:

Keywords:

Emergency planning

financial report

site plans

off-site emergency response

grant application

ICS training

hazardous materials

emergency preparedness

community engagement

sewer project

tunnel boring machine

construction hazards

air quality

emergency response plan

public notifications.

Bear with me.

Any other commentary, move out of the next section. Correspondence. Mr. Robert Brown from our office, written correspondence. No sir, not many

correspondence

that have come from the office. 302, site plans. Update, we have a total of 96 sites currently in the system with emergency plans down Sergeant Millhouse? Are you able to confirm that we have 99 correct

notice our status quo. We're still looking more as we

contact the company, still 96

but we should have more facilities.

We have emergency plans for all the 96 sites.

Yes, those are called off site emergency response plans for all United States of our sites.

Thank you, sir. Alright, moving on to the financial report. What you see before

you move? Yes, sir. Anybody here know that their company's site plan to not update? Please let us know. Some someone knows about a site that is not updated. Check your system.

It financial report. Cash is here. It's in everyone's email. As of today, May 13, 2025 we have a balance of $43,722.43

it shows our expenditures, $105 for our February 2 meeting, for food and $22 in banking fees. There could be some more deduction from this when we do our safety fair that's coming up this summer, which we'll talk about the end. But that'll be printed out, and it's always here for anyone. You know, we operate all off donations too, so from our partner companies, that's where we're at, federally or state receipt. So all this money comes from you people here in the room. Thank you, and we try to spend it very, very carefully.

Can I ask a question of Elder Neal mom? I Millhouse.

Sergeant Millhouse down in order is getting ready to ask you a question. Go ahead, Donna,

where are we in terms of our grant for this current year, for 2025

the application has been submitted for the 2025 grant. It was also that we have received the 2024 grant. And that was a total $1,950 material emergency preparedness grant. And preparedness grant received and deposited so that that target should be on the financial report. Also, application has been submitted to 2025 grant. Okay?

Thank you.

Thank you. Any further questions on

the school? I just

want to share with the group. We do receive annually, a very small grant to support this committee. And as you can you know her, it's very little money, but that's every year, and it's based upon Sergeant Neil house submitting those updated reports. And sometimes we get a little more money for a new report, and we get so much for each updated report, just because we have so many new things this year, I just wanted you all to know where we get money from and the eligible expenses includes for to run this meeting and. Is there's one other eligible, I can't think of what it is, right, but there's one other thing.

We're also able to

support exercises. Also

support exercises and we're also able to support training, specifically ICS training from 101 2783, 400 ICs. So the committee can also support

and that just triggered, for me, what it is emergency preparedness, and then funds can be spent to support this.

So does anybody here you are familiar with all the ICS training or training it goes from 100 all your pain, so 300 400 course, that you come in and you get trained with on site. We have to pay them that so we can support those really important because when the first responders come out there, we're starting to deal with emergency. That's when we should already know what's going on during that emergency. Of course, not the time to learn who's doing what, or who's in charge of this or that, and so we're all speaking the same language as Captain facilitating we all got here, there was so many acronyms. Nobody knew what they were talking about. So we have to respond to your facility for interviews. We want to make sure we're all talking the same language, same page, and understand what the ICS structure is all about. So Captain wheelhouse always has a good list of Windows training is going on. So if you need to get your people, your company will train. So we turn that chaos into organized are the ICS training that includes the third training

agreement.

Training the community versus response training. Because what we believe, what we know, is when you call 911, you're waiting for a first responders, the first responders you so we want the community know what to do in the meantime, by the way, for hire police to show up. That's that search the people in your community will look to you for guidance during emergency financial surgery, includes stopping the bleed. What to do in various emergency information to go bags and things like that emergency that arises you to

further expand on that. So the Incident Command System levels 102 100 are available to take online. Captain here just completed a week or two ago. If you have a facility that's a 302 site with hazardous materials, or in a hospital, setting, utility setting, any of these critical infrastructure, there's no reason not to get every one of your employees trained, at least to the 100 200 level. That's everyone from the janitor to to the secretary. Everyone in tweet should be 100 200 then when you start having the response people in your organization, then we get them in the 300 400 104, sir qualified, I'm not sure we can Find out, though it's going to definitely in there. We arena. What it is that the system, command system, is a tool used for first responders to handle any emergency. So you could take a Detroit police officer that is trained to ICs, pick him up, knock him down on the wildfires in California. Now we're not trained to fight fires, but we know how to handle emergencies. It's the same process and language that we're going to use across the country and across our region, when something like this big happens, that we're all speaking the same language because understand you're in these facilities, there's an emergency, you don't get to call 911, and go Detroit, fire, Detroit Police Department, are here and walk away. You're going to be in that command post with us to help make these decisions. Now I'll make the decisions for you if you want for your billion dollar company, but it goes so much better if you're sitting next to help in making that decision. Like I said, when all the emergency when I get I don't want this CEO. I want the gator. Did they know more about a facility? So that's very important. I can tell you that everybody at PBS has a 24 hour head Walker, course mandated. And. Wing and eight hour refresher, put you on the spot. Jeff, how many days safety? Days 15, because you start doing things like safety and security, you got to do as a culture for your organization. Just can't be a few people carrying that load. Everyone in your organization's got to be the culture. And people that treat it, places that treated organizations that treat it as a culture, have very safe operations, those that don't have a lot of accidents and a lot of money lost to accidents. We have Miss Norland down there during our facility, as well as Paul Jones, he came in and talked with the team and always inviting anyone that's interested. Everybody's 7am we meet our entire team on a Safety Camera. That's a good habit. Everyone gets to train and to bring my organization, up to professional level, costs a lot of money, really does it doesn't have to cost us, don't, but just just knowing that we speak the same languages. One other thing, we've trained a lot of fire new firefighters and how to have handle hazardous material at our facility, and Ken Terry, our plan manager, does a great job. Training we had a couple years ago, we had four different classes. Come in. That's great. It doesn't happen in the public sector. If you guys in the private sector, reach out to each other, go learn from each other. Take the example we learned earlier. We've been down Detroit. Private sector partners, talk to Jeff, talk to other good people here.

We can't Bucha. You guys have stuff over there where police we didn't know they had some stuff. They responded very well. They got bleach and things like that.

Everybody's got stuff with chlorine. Everybody's got stuff, and we don't know exactly what you have. So that private sector thing is paramount for us to understand that. So we send first responders know what's going on. So you guys, you guys are so important. That's why next time we have the next quarterly meeting called meal house to be here. Make sure we have good refreshments. And we get this many people showing up, we make sure they have more than just donuts. So we're going to hug everybody up next meeting. So make sure you show up again. I don't want to see empty chairs next time. And we finally get lucky and go somewhere like the

LCA or something like that. If I can, I check with the president our company, our next meeting. You're welcome to come to our facility. Again,

we do, and not because you're important. Sometimes we have to bribe you to get you there. But it keeps becoming everybody's talking the same way communicating with them. You guys are the most important part of this

whole piece. Thank you. Access the online portion. Yeah, it's through FEMA. If you do FEMA training, ICS 100 you'll get a link to it. Captain put you on the spot. If

you go unbroken, you're probably taking an hour, maybe two, probably

you get distracted, even you can get up and walk away and come back to come back next day. In our business, we're all mandated to do certain amounts of training, right? This is something that's very, very helpful, because we if something happens at one of your facilities, it's probably going to turn into a mutual aid situation. And it's important you to know that us, the first responders, speak the same language as the guys coming gales coming from Dearborn or certainly heights that are going to help us, our federal partners. You should be there speaking the same language with us, because I don't want to make the decisions and

be careful with that timeline. The captains of the genius, we got six masters degrees. He's a quick study. So just timeline, stress it out a

little bit, but it's a great thing you need to do training. This is something that's worth worthy. Alright, anything else on that we started at the financial report and how it turned into ICs, I don't know. Okay, we're gonna move on to the hazardous materials incidents or releases of evacuation Detroit Fire Department, anything to report? No,

and that's no reportable releases since our last week.

Key for the record, then we're going to indicate no report for for the hazardous

incidents. That's good enough, right? Moving on. Health Department update. I don't Paul Jones is in the room. Is there anyone here from the city, Detroit Health Department? Alright, we'll check with him offline. If there's an update, we'll send it out to the email now, he was here about the mutual epidemic policy in Richmond, primarily Detroit, we do have a report out from Henry Ford Hospital down the line. You can put Christopher on the hot seat if he could find out. Moving on, public notifications crystal Pico,

information about today's meeting went out through to the public, into the media, through the city's social media channels, as well as to our 300 plus media sources. And since the last LAPC meeting, there have been no other requests for public notifications.

I have Ryan Marshall on here, folks, there are cookies and bottled water. Someone's thirsty, just raise your head and don't be shy. Okay, moving on to our hospital subcommittee. Christopher, good afternoon,

good afternoon. I apologize I couldn't be there in person today as a note. I did send all of all of the action items. I'll speak to Claude, Donna and Darren yourself as well. So no need to take fingers notes. I said at all, I suppose also, first of the question about measles. So as as as indicated, there is a nationwide measles outpouring. The state of Michigan has seen nine conversion cases in our region, in Oakland and Macomb County, I suppose, closest to the city of Detroit, measles is a highly infectious disease which actually recently was eradicated where it was in general population. So it's unfortunate to see in the country a few 1000 of these cases. It is highly contagious, and the number one prevention measure is vaccination. So our public health departments and health systems are pushing messaging to patients about measles vaccination, because the vaccination is highly, highly effective against disease transmission. So any other particular questions about measles before I move on to the report that

looks like a crystalline

All right, so I'll start first, kind of with the sad news. Everyone has probably seen the activities in Washington, DC and a lot of questioning about program funding. Specifically in regards to your healthcare infrastructure, a majority of our preparedness is funded by a program called the Hospital Preparedness Program, or HPP. Unfortunately, the Trump administration had zero to how the proposed budget in 2026 for the HPP program, and so it does not look like that program will continue to exist, and this will have an impact to healthcare preparedness in the city, Detroit, the region and the state. What does some of this mean? For example, the regional health care coalitions, region two south, region two north, in our area, may cease to exist, or they may cease to exist with their current funding, funding streams, and we'll have to look to additional funding opportunities to south as an example, receives around $600,000 annually for its operations, and they support activities in the city of Detroit, like the Detroit marathon Grand Prix, activities such as that. So that is challenging to hear, and we're keeping our ear to the ground, because every day there's news out of Washington DC. Some other impacts more applicable to the hazardous materials space is the program bed, run, me, E, D, E, R, U N. Is a medical countermeas program available to all first responders. It's fire department EMS and hospitals. And this is primarily for organophosphate or agent exposures. Large fires where we have cyanide involved, and even medical countermeasures or medications. And the med run program is funded through the HVP program, and so the state of Michigan is currently weighing if that program could continue, if the HVP funding is cut another. Whole potential impact would be the burn surge program. So there was a burn mass casualty. I know recently we had a apartment building a gas explosion in the city of Detroit, and that was, although there wasn't a number of burn patients, that is a similar event where we could see a burn mass casualty. Farmington Hills actually had a burn mass casualty at a similar apartment building explosion. So the bird search program is also funded by the HVD program. And last but not least, I would say the BLS basic disaster life support and advanced disaster life support course series has already been discontinued by MDHHS. So the last course offering will be coming up in a couple weeks in June here in Detroit, and that program is no longer being funded by mthhs, which is the healthcare at the state government level here in the state. So again, not very fun news about funding into the future, and again, some applicable hazmat disaster implications for the city of Detroit. That funding is cut along the lines of cut positions. Unfortunately, the manager position at the Detroit was deemed non essential, and Katie Clark is no longer with the VA so just just bringing that back to the group, because I know she attended our past meetings. The Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response is moving from its own operation division back to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and so again, more details to come. We're not sure where the impacts are, but Healthcare Preparedness on the national stages is definitely changing. As far as training opportunities, we are looking to host several courses in fall of 2025, and as soon as we have the course flyers for registration, I'll make sure we'll distribute those for sharing to the LEPC partners. We are targeting hazmat fire marshal division purchase management partners in Detroit, specifically around special event preparedness. We want to make sure we're as prepared as possible. So as soon as I have those course flyers, we'll send them out. And as I already mentioned, the advanced disaster life support course, we have two opportunities to take that, June 6 through June 9, and I sent that over for sharing to the LAPC group, as well as a special pathogens conference training opportunity, which is free up in Lansing that's open to again, any of our public safety or private sector partners in this space for upcoming exercises, we have the region to South healthcare coalition is hosting a bed run tabletop exercise on June 18, from 10 to 1130 and your Local hospitals are participating. And EMS Week is next week, so I shared the activities from Detroit Medical Center and Henry Ford, your two houses in the city on EMS Week activities. So with that, I welcome any questions that could pass.

I have one question, the program that you indicate indicated would be eliminated after you spoke about the burn mass casualty program. What was that program?

The DLF, decent disaster life support and advanced disaster life support. So these are courses which have been hosted in the city for a number of years, and we've trained hundreds of possible personnel and first responders, and that course, we've already received notice that the state, pending budget reductions, is no longer funding that course. So there's a it's approximately 1555, $0 per student that we would have to pay more privately. For instance, students,

thank you. I have a question on that those programs too, Chris, who's who should take that course? Is it who's important to attend? Is it someone with medical training already,

police officers, police officers, firefighters, EMS, personnel, emergency managers, really, anyone who could be in a position that you mentioned the CERT team earlier. Like those are, those are great. The bbls is more entry level course. The advanced course is steps it up a little bit. But great courses. And like I said, unfortunately, we might see a reduction in those offerings just with the funding being cut by the state. So we're working on, again, all of these men run the healthcare, COVID surge and the training opportunities. We're working on kind of A, plan B or Plan C, pending funding elimination or funding reduction, because the budget is not final until it's final. So our current budget year runs through October 1 of 2025 so after that, there could be some significant impacts.

Chris, is it possible? But private partner could pick up the funding for that, let's say the members of their team, and invite guests,

exactly, and that's really what. We're discussing right now, you've got, you know, two large health systems in Detroit, the city of Detroit, and about four large health systems in Metro Detroit. And the medical control authorities such as de or hems are primarily funded through the health systems. And so that's some of the discussions occurring at a high level. Our system leadership is, do we continue to fund these programs? Just the health systems fund that cut a check each year to keep that continuing, that's way above my mid range. Okay?

Well, we put it out there. Maybe some of our private partners can get together and talk about a good program. All right. Any other questions for Chris? I questions for Chris new business, I think we already talked about the 302 part. That's our private partners, 302 site facilities during chemical release statuses and updates. Any of our 302 partners have any releases that we don't know about? I want to talk about. Do zero, pediatric about any of our other partners in the room? Anybody have anything? Any of our partners online have any reports to regarding the spill or incident?

Excuse me, I'm from banking industries. Once again, I'm Mary Kay, I don't have any releases to report, but I do have a possible prevention. Hopefully, we just redid our fire suppression system, and we're just relating on the final inspection. The old system is down, the new system is up and operational, just waiting on that final report, just here to maybe put a bucket, but no releases for report and no changes to the to the facility, either other than Brandon piping, larger pricing, like

our director says we're in the business of zeros, we'd like to hear zeros. So that's a good thing.

Can I ask our fire guy present, if it's possible for you to follow up on that? Okay, that's my vision.

Next issue is the grant that Donna and Sergeant Millhouse reviewed. We went on to Item C under new business. 2025 Detroit, Local Emergency Planning Committee, emergency preparedness fair, we are scheduled, and Sergeant Millhouse jumped in if I get this wrong, June, 21 2025 from 10am to 2pm at the Kennedy rec center. I know last year we had great participation from our private partners, from PBS, from Marathon. I'm sure I'm missing some I think, Mr. Snare, I think your organization, the village organization contributed quite a bit. So we're going live again at the county rec center. We encourage everyone to attend. If your organization would like to set up a booth to explain to the public what you do, it's a good thing, because it's always better to get ahead and have the public on your side. If you're in a dangerous business which we are, feel free to think about setting up something there on display, something a trainee, something for people to see. It's also a great spot to recruit people. If you have a hiring issue retention of people, this is a great spot to hire people within our community. If they're showing up at an emergency safety fair. They've got the right mindset for you to be looking at. For employees, are they going to provide tension? Sorry, let Sergeant Millhouse answer that Yes, sir, myself and Sergeant Millhouse, who's online, Sergeant Millhouse, who do we see about getting a booth at the fair?

Sergeant just contact either one of us. We'll make sure

you got our email and phone number afterwards. But again, we did it last year for people to have a lot of assets from the city, Detroit out there, the police department, fire department, mask for SWAT team, final squad,

etc, so something else. Bring your kids out Sure. I told Sergey Millhouse. He said, You're gonna have to get out there. 5am start my way. We'll talk to parks and rec.

Is one day 21st attending County Recreation Center, K, E, M, E. NY rec center. It's on South port street, near to an outer drive in shape roughly, I'm sorry, August meeting. So July, June 21 that'll serve as our quarterly meetings, public safety fair. And then our next meeting is in August. Jeff, you just let us know what time you want us to be here. Why do we like to provide lunch? So if we can make it like an 1130 or 12, yeah, okay,

providing lunch.

By Darren, before we move on. I just want to, wanted to add that June 21 we'll be working in collaboration with marathon. Finally, jump to another, private partners

and such to

make sure,

please reach out to those organizations.

Last year, I would like to establish this because

I know anybody

willing to help organize this thing with Sergeant Bill house and myself, please let me know, either see me after the meeting, or send us a quick email. It's not a lot of work. We'll get these tents set up. And our private partners, I know Michigan State Police came out with a tent and their emergency management division, which was really nice, they handed out a lot of nice things for the kids the schedule. This is fire and fly question on June 24 is a community I'm sorry, community meeting on June 24 June 24 the community meeting for us, or for what entity? I think

Sergeant Millhouse on that. It says we have a review of the Quick Reference Guide is that this here, as you see, it's in everyone's email. This is a local emergency planning committee. It's our reference guide. It's got a lot of phone numbers. Shows our responsibility to duties, and it talks about meeting tempo who should attend and what this meeting should be about, talks about training exercises and grants, so it's in your packet, if someone didn't get it and see me, what we hope is this meeting here that we discussed some things about Azure materials. Thankfully, there's been kind of how we didn't have too much to talk about, but we want you to take this guy and go back and talk to your employees and your staff about this meeting. Again. Like I said, the culture is what we're trying to install. So every month or every quarter after this meeting, you go back and do the same in your house, and here's a guy that'll help you get through it. Am I correct on that? Claude, am I missing anything else? Okay, and everyone here is an emergency plan. You hear in this business, we're always talking about an emergency response plan. How to have one, how to prepare one. We'll help you get one together. Review the one you have. But I want you to take a next step. You have an emergency plan for your 302 site, right? Start thinking about having one for your family, for your household, for your places of worship that you go to emergency. You don't get to pick where they happen and they happen. And I teach a lot of classes, and I can tell you this, statistically, most fatalities in an emergency, no matter if it's an active shooter, a chemical spill, a cruise ship sinking, every hotel on fire. Most people perish for lack of action. All the time. People that perish had an opportunity to get out. There's a lack of planning that kills you, not the issue at hand. Teach this to your kids. We need you in society. We need your kids. We need your loved ones and your co workers. This culture doesn't cost you anything to be ready, because if you're ready, you don't have to get ready, right? If you stay so thank you for that. Claude, you. It. So now we get to something a little bit it's bittersweet. Our secretary position in this fine committee is currently held by a Miss Donna northern at the end of the table, who is a bona fide hero. And I mean, I've worked with her for many, many years, and she's an unsung hero on this city. The thing she's done is that people don't get to talk about she's taking a well deserved retirement at the end of this month, so if everyone first give her a round of applause,

I mentored me for many years. I got to go in front of the TV and work all these big emergencies and events, but I always had done it in my ear. Very, very dynamic, extraordinary person. So please spot for the secretary for this organization, this is an important committee. It's going to be, if someone would like to be interested in please let Sergeant Hill House or myself know you got big shoes to fill, but she will help you along. Think about it, please. You know civic duty is what it is. This is this committee mandated by Sarah Tuttle free. This is a civic duty. We have someone to step

up we think about our own tech.

Yeah, we should get the recognition she deserves in the public eye. She saved many lives, property that's, I think about the secretary position. I'm going to move on to a presentation by Mr. Paul Wakefield, Great Lakes Water Authority, by laptop. And check this. This doesn't Have any Russian spy box.

I it's There's oatmeal ones down here.

Couple of to show me somebody to start. Can

everybody online see that? Yes, we can. Well. Thank you very much for the opportunity to present. My name is Paul Wakefield. I'm with fk engineering consultant to Great Lakes Water Authority. We're the design engineer at record for the Northwest interceptor Oakwood CSO sewer project that's kicked off in District Six, bay side street, just north of Port Street on the southwest side of the luge river. And the other site is Pleasant Street the Oakland CSO facility. This is a relief sewer tunnel project

to fill in just a bit in the pauses here. Paul and I have given this presentation a couple different times. We do want it to be interactive, so please stop us as we go. You know, little background on myself here. I've been doing underground construction in Southeast Michigan for the last 25 years of my career. I was with glwa in the first two years, and then. Option on the water side, and now I'm back here for the last two years on the sewer side, executing water and sewer projects for wastewater engineering. FTE had does at least 50% of the engineering for most of the wastewater jobs, so they have an extensive experience within glwa over decades, pushing 30 years of work with DWSD and glwa. So yeah, with that, back to the phone, thanks. And before I start, I want to introduce Tim backers. He's with JD contractors. They're the contractors around Livonia. I was going to be building this new relief sewer tunnel. And the reason we're here is we met Claude at, I think, a District Six community outreach, and we thought it'd be a good idea for us to present to go over our projects and the benefits of it, some of the safety things we put in place to make sure that we have safe worksite. And that's why Mr. Bankers, JD is an international tunneling contractor. They work all over the world. Their main business is installing tunnels exactly like this one.

So yep, and to start, I just want to highlight the picture in the screen here. This is kind of close to what this new tunnel will look like. It'll be a 14 and a half foot internal diameter tunnel, and it's mined with a very specialized piece of equipment called an earth pressure balance tunnel boring machine, and it's made in Germany. So a very specialized piece of equipment, very specialized type of work. This tunnel will be about 30 feet deep, and it will be just over 3400 feet long. And

what makes that machine so special is that it has the ability to have a plenum at the front of it, almost like an air lock, if you can imagine that. And it can use air or liquids to balance the pressure of the earth that wants to force that earth into the machine and create a perfect balance between how it's mining so it accepts the material at a rate that doesn't overcu. So you once this machine is dialed in, like we went there last weekend, it is mining underneath Chicago O'Hare Airport, underneath active runways and taxiways with zero settlement because of the Earth Balance pressure, function of

the machine. The goal is to for the community to never know we were there, to be able to build this large infrastructure without causing any noticeable movement, any disturbance at the surface. We

I can't quote that, you know, I don't know that you should do, you know, I think I've read that in the article, that

they are using an EPB on that one. But So the purpose of this project is to alleviate an existing sewer, existing interceptor tunnel that sees more than it can handle. At this point, the existing NWI, or northwest interceptor, collects flow from the majority of the west side of the city, extending into the Rouge Valley, Southfield, extending into some of the northwestern suburbs. It handles a very significant amount of flow. And what happens right now is that during storm events, it cannot accept all of that flow. It's either its design capacity. What happens now is we get some overflow.

So JL wa processes 97% of all the sewage that it receives inside the interceptors, the 3% the vast bulk of it, occurs along the NWI. And this is the beginning for another step along that solution, to reducing that 3% that gets discharged with only partial treatment, to getting it to where we can fully treat it all.

So this will be a relief store that during those storm events, accepts that flow and takes it to a treatment facility before it's discharged,

prevent any overflow. Will you all talk about this

balance? Yes, so instead of engineers, no,

yes, please, please. Yeah, he was gonna stop us all.

We're pretty technical, yeah. So this relief sewer will prevent those overflows. It will, instead of overflowing, it will go into this new tunnel and take into an underutilized facility on Pleasant Street, the Oakwood CSO facility. So that had extra capacity, we identified it, and we said, to get the flow from the existing sewer to that underutilized facility help reduce all the flooding it can. Now, we didn't build this project as a flooding relief project, but between you and me, that is a side benefit that is being explored. It's difficult

to really evaluate that the nwis. Surcharges. So water built up above the height of the pipe. This takes some of it off. It doesn't it is not a panacea. It doesn't immediately bring everything into gravity flow again. So you know the impacts upstream. You can debate that you're running models and you're deciding, well, we think this might help, you know, so that's a real struggle. Darrell in the room down there was the head of DWSD when the Oakwood CSO itself was built. So you know, he knows a lot about this system in this area, and some of the effects that you know, some of the struggles that Southwest and especially Dearborn have had around flooding with, you know, centered right around the NWI and the Oakwood sewer will begin, sure

you're getting the same questions from everybody, right? So this project was initially built as a clean water project by reducing inputs into Ridge river by taking that flow off the overfilled sewer and treating it before it's discharged. So it's part of the Clean Water State Revolving Fund. Was part of the funding for this project. About

20% of it is from the SRF funding sewer revolving fund.

And just to highlight what's shown here, that this line here is the existing NWI, the purple line, you know, purple line. So as you can see, it comes all the way down through parts of Dearborn, follows the Rouge river before it eventually ends up one existing water treatment plant.

And hopefully, I'm assuming everyone knows where that water treatment plan is along Jefferson just before you get to the Rouge river bridge crossing.

All right, so to kind of go back here a little bit, this is the Rouge River watershed, and the NWI was originally intended to kind of mirror this input existing Northwest interceptor sewer carries sewer flow from to the Water Resources facility on Jefferson Ave, as we mentioned, and kind of redundant here, but we the NWI fills rapidly during these large storms, and I want to make it clear, because we had this question several Times, The NWI does not collect with local sewers. It's not directly tied to what street flooding it is an interceptor sewer. So flows that go through like a catch basin on a street, they go into a local trunk sewer before they eventually connect to an interceptor sewer. So this doesn't necessarily tie directly to if you have a street flooding incident. That's a DWC question, but eventually that flow will make it to an interceptor sewer, which will convey it to the treatment plan. But it's several steps up in

the line, if that makes sense, so it can feel overflow.

So it can Yes, the NWI can overflow, but the NWI and interceptors are more like the freeway, right? So they can get full, but they still move traffic where the side streets are, are the local sewers, if that's a good analogy.

And what she's asked, when you have old flows in the neighborhood, we're usually attributed to the local systems, because the local systems are large enough to have that flow to Yeah.

So that can actually happen, especially if it's a fast a fast rain,

yeah, and the outfalls along these, there are outfalls along these rivers that are designed to relieve the interceptor if there's too much flow in them. Unlike local systems, where, when they're full, it's in your yard, along this they're set up outfalls, literally, I think 60 of them along this interceptor, that will relieve the pressure before this causes basement flooding, neighborhood flooding, like the interceptor is designed to dump off excess sewage. That's the 3% Yep.

And the point of this tunnel, it will allow glwa to better control that that flow input, so it will relieve that sewer that's over filling, and it will allow it to better operate that and control that input, and allow for, hopefully more input to prevent that those local sewers from being overly innovated. And

I'm just imagining a board where you all can actually sit in the control room and see where something is coming to an overflow theory, or overflow level.

It's not quite a board, but there's a system. It's called the Ovation system. And you pull up that infernal device over there, I can access that system, and we can watch, you know, 1000s of different sensors. That can tell you about what's happening in the system, what gates are open, where what flow is moving, where there's level sensors within the network, there's pressure sensors, and you can see that you can't operate it remotely. You have to be at one of the control rooms to operate any of those valves. But there's other systems I can log on and watch

that as remote, remotely controlled from an operations room,

correct? Yeah, you know. And there are also people who look at those sensors and then physically go operate devices that do not have remote sensors on them. So, you know, I would, I would say the vast bulk of the system doesn't actually have remote but the key stuff is remote. So you know that's a balance between form and function of how is it easier to send someone when you need to open it occasionally? Or is this something that operates every single rain event? Now let's get it remote operated.

So the remote, visible automation, this little person looking at it, and the sensor goes

up. It's both. There are both. I can't speak for the operations side. As much I'm, as you know, a capital improvement engineer. I install these giant systems. But I do know from my experience with operations that some things are automated and a lot of things require a button to be pushed in order to be given

we're trying to figure out we had one situation and was allegedly blamed on someone who failed to Push a button open. I'm just wondering, what type of automation is there? So the human failure doesn't impact negatively on the system. Is

that there? Or I can't really speak a whole lot to that, you know, but like, you can have that in both ways, a human failure or an automation failure, because automation can fail if the inputs aren't good, you know. So

the last major flooding event was said that pumps failed, this fail, and that was just like the system was operating, probably at a level that never operated before. But

believe me, when those pumps go to running, no, you're scared in there, because there the pumps he's talking

about move water like a six foot diameter plug of water. I mean, these pumps are the bigger than this room. They're the size of a residential home, and like Oakwood, CSO has eight of them, you know? I mean, these things put out so much water, it is unbelievable. You know, we

know the system has been upgraded. Works really well that last

the difference is seven inches on the east side,

while we're in people's faces for days, weeks, if not longer. This event, this 2020, this event, because the water came so fast. People got it in their faces, but it dissipated just as quick because the system had been improved, so it didn't stay.

And it goes back to when he talks about those outer bars, what happens in those situations, when the system gets inundated, we open our bars, and basically you're releasing untreated sewer into waterways, and you don't want to do that. That's why you build CSO facilities. So we have nine CSO facilities, three of them do primary truth, and so we can do some screening and this disinfection before we release it. So you don't want to do that right now. Oakland County and Macomb County is fighting over.

It's just something that's a part of what happens, and we're trying to avoid, mainly all older cities, when you talk about Detroit, Chicago, Cincinnati, New York, we have combined systems. So when you have a combined system, it's too expensive to try to separate it. Even if you separate it, there has to be some treatment of rain, wet weather that his.

But we are working towards separation. We're

not when that that's, I've actually worked on that probably, probably 20 years ago, I we were doing a study of what would be the cost of separating. And. It was billions of billions. Oh, I know it's because not only are you changing the pipe, you have to restore all of the students that you tear up and you're talking about the water system is basically spaghetti. We have a redundant system so that when there's a place, you're not out of water, even

in very sensitive areas, we're not trying to separate. In

some areas, there is some small separation, but we're trying to do different things that keep water out of this system. Okay, that's that's our main goal, to try to keep water out of

the system, and that's the DWSD green infrastructure program. Is working with people that have impervious areas and finding ways to retain that water and potentially let it infiltrate or distribute it to the system at a later date, to keep the flashing from the system, yes, slow it down. Make it act like the lakes, rivers and streams used to be when they were forests, you know, and that that is this, you know, over seven days after an event, it plateaus and goes down and right now it just flashes, flashes as an impervious area. So the DWSD green infrastructure program wants to work really well with private public partners to start slowing that down, and they use the impervious area tax model to accomplish that. And it's a very painful process of anybody that's involved in a politics of implementing that knows Go ahead, sir. This system allow for isolation such as fire water or chemical spill,

your isolation points. So this is the so trying to that would be like a local collections to stand out question, right? So if there's a chemical spill or firewater issue on a site, that would be your local collections collection system that we mentioned, DWC, eventually it could get to the system, and eventually get to a treatment facility.

I know there are times that, like, somebody has called us and said, Hey, we just dumped a tanker truck and diesel, you know, and like, we absolutely monitor for it at the plant, because these all go into large wet wells. Those wet wells are being monitored. But, you know, until someone, you know, there, there are not a lot of controls on here that aren't going to back up people's basements. You know, yes, we can close things. There will be severe consequences when that happens, you know. So you know, they're, they're really serious. They would be large emergency plans if that had to happen. But we do have things that happen on local systems, like sinkholes on Omi the Oakland Macomb interceptor, the discharge to JL wa that happened in 20 Yeah, 2016 we're still working right. It's still being repaired to now that we've realized the problem, but you know, they're in glwa system making repairs as a result of that sinkhole. Now,

okay, Penny, back to the slide here. One of the kind of unintended benefits of this is it does provide an emergency backup to the wastewater recovery facility that's on Jefferson, if there were to be a power failure or something were to happen at RIF, this could be used as a temporary emergency backup so that all that flow wasn't just discharged untreated.

It won't last long. Yeah, it's, you know, short term. We're talking about the difference between a facility that's 11 million gallons and a facility that processes a billion gallons a day, you know, like but you could buy a minute if you had to.

So this red line shows the new tunnel route where it runs. It starts up here in the oak wood heights, neighborhood a side in the Ormond Street. It takes a nice curving approach below Fort Street down. This is stocker Street, before it passes below I 75 and then it wraps around the existing Oakland CSO facility and it ties in out front. The designers of an open facility left us a nice stub to tie into. So we've got a tie in point. And as I said, it'll be a 14 and a half foot internal diameter tunnel. So if you imagine the Detroit Windsor tunnels on the order of 24 feet, so you get two cars through it, this one, you could probably about one semi at a time. So very, very large

time. I heard everybody say there was a Kemeny Recreation Center meeting that is just down Fourth Street on the north side of the road here. So we traveled down a little bit just past marathon on the north side. Is where Kemeny is at.

And. As I mentioned, this project was funded through the Clean Water State Revolving Fund, federal grants and member community contributions. So one of the changes that we wanted to point out is the new discharge point would be right here in the middle of Bayside street, on top of the existing Northwest interceptor. So part of that will be a traffic change. Bayside Street, Marathon is right here for reference, just on the screen is marathon. So this road, Bayside Street, between Sanders and warmly, will be converted to two way traffic. It's currently one way traffic. Canela subs is in the upper right corner there, if people go there for lunch, and Bayside Street will no longer be a through street. Will have a fence stop geowa facility. There's no at grade structure, but it'll be a below grade structure. It'll have a fence up area where this new shaft will use a 50 foot diameter shaft that extends roughly 45 feet deep, and that's where that one will be located. That's the upstream end. So JD has occupied the site. This is our current site, lay down area, as I mentioned. This is Bayside Street. This is Sanders street. That's poor mid and that's Gale and as you can see we've got some gate access points. The reds are being primary, the yellow start being secondary. So if you go over there right now, it's starting to look like a destruction village. But right now we're just getting started with the excavation equipment's arriving every day, very soon, it will be a small town about activity, we're staying within all Detroit city ordinances in terms of construction times, noise ordinances, dust ordinances, smell ordinances, keeping everything within city Detroit

ordinances this ebtm requires, basically, a small City to be built on top and then, um, Philly feeds its inputs and outputs. So, you know, you're it needs a small city on top of the ground to operate effectively.

This is a kind of a sketch of our site layout. We've got some equipment storage over here. The tunnel boring machine will be set up right about here as it gets delivered. It just finished over at Chicago, right Tim, yes, just finished. The manufacturer here in connector, the Germany will come and re certified for use. They'll come through. They'll go through every bolt, every not to make sure that it's going to be successful at its job here too. This shows the two shafts I was talking about. Those are both 50 foot diameter shafts, one of them, the red one a little bit deeper than the other one, and that will be the launching shaft. So a large crane will lift the tunnel boarding machine down into the shaft where it will launch. It will start lining the problem you see the blue dash line, that's the existing 10 foot NWI. And then we had some site utilities that we had worked on. We had 24 inch high pressure gas main that we had relocated with DTE, that was about a year long process. A lot of utilities have been moved UWC, water main and DWC local storm sewer, and those that gas main and a two inch service gas may have all been moved to accommodate this. This new facility. As part of it that I did mention on the last slide is that Bayside Street, the right of way, was vacated. So we've been forcing the council a number of times we've got the right of way vacation approval process. So that was completed in the last

year. I mean, it's ongoing, because, you know, we have DLB properties that we get, you know, we have temporary easements, we have permanent easements, and we have private property purchase in order to build the facility. So then you have a right away vacation on top of it. So there's a lot of legal activity for the last two years to get this thing off the ground here shortly. So the part of

that is we wanted to kind of explain the scale of these types of projects and what it takes to really get into a large infrastructure project built. We started the feasibility study. Can we do this here right in 2021 so construction just kicked off in October, and we're really getting ramped up now, and we have a substantial completion date in the beginning of 2028

so did you say construction started october 24 notice

you received. JD, really started occupying the site

beginning of this year, February. You know, you have roughly three to six months of talking lot of paper, going back and forth, where everybody hammers out their plans to agree to, you know, you have a design, but the implementation from JD side requires them. To discuss their means and methods, and everyone come to agreement on how we're going to accomplish the design, ordering

materials, ordering equipment, getting everything

to this facility. You know, in 2028 when, when it's come, when the project is complete.

If you don't mind, can I'll get there in a second. So we also have another separate site. This is lidsdale Street. So as you can see, the size 75 right here. That's the open facility. We closed lidsdale Street in order to use that as a staging ground. So we're storing stockpiles of material, soil, some of the equipment will be staged there to be kind of out of the way and in a nice isolated spot, also close to where our tunnel will end. And that's at the Oakland the front of the Oakland CSO facility, where the connecting shaft will be built. It's 25 foot diameter shaft, where we'll make the final connection to the existing facility

and pull the tunnel machine out here, so the machine will bind to here, and then the crane will come over and lift out the pieces, one at a time as we pull it out.

Here's an example. This is actually part of the design of what our shaft will look like. These are called seeking piles. Doesn't look like a whole lot of stilts, you know, but that's what it looks like when it's built. That is actually a picture from 2010 of the oak wood CSO facility, the front junction chamber shaft that was built 2010 that we'll be talking to. So I thought it was cool to throw a throw back there for Daryl. Okay, so some of the risks, so let me jump to oh, maybe it didn't make it in here. So this is what it'll look like at the end. Okay, so all of this lay down area will be cleaned up, re seeded, turned back into green space. Most of that is temporary access agreement with marathon. Marathon owns the majority of those parcels, and glwa currently has a temporary access permission to occupy them. But as I mentioned, when we're done this will be seated, return to green space. This Bayside will be diverted to a two way street. Here. We'll have the fence, thin air of the shaft, the sidewalk around it. This part of Bayside here is currently a road, but we're going to actually remove the road and turn that into additional green space. So the majority of this is maintained by a marathon. They do have community gardens. They do have, they recently had those tree plantings. But they have some title one. They've got some trees that we're keeping, keeping away from so but that kind of gives you an idea of what it'll look like when it's all done. It's actually a big footprint that's going to shrink down to a very small footprint

that'll be a carded gate, you know, the RFID access, for anybody that had to come here and do work on the remote operated gates that will be high on under the ground there. Okay, so we want to briefly talk about some of the construction hazards. I know we're tight on time, so I'm going to kind of speed through some

of the construction hazards that we have on site. Primarily is large equipment. We have drill rigs that weigh 200,000 plus pounds. I remember the last time we had to get a drill rig in for the sinkhole. He was talking about the Ohio Department of Transportation stopped our drill where to get the state line, and they reviewed every single overpass to make sure that they can hold the weight. That's how heavy these pieces of equipment are. Tim, y'all heavy that cutter head is. We do have a piece that'll be 100,000 pounds, yeah, 100,000 pounds. Massive pieces of equipment. That's an example of a different tunnel boring machine. But what a cutter head looks cutter head looks like. That's an open face machine. Not as cool as our close face EPD, but that's just a cool picture of what one looks like. And then this is an example of the drill rig that will be used to install shaft. Some of the other site safety risks we have is when this tunnel is being built. We do have confined spaces. So anyone entering or exiting into the tunnel, what we can find space, certified and trained, we have, those are the major major risks, confined spaces and heavy equipment. Okay.

Question Is there any concern of air quality when these tunnels are connected.

So not, not usually in a combined system. So if you had a pure sanitary system where it only conveys sanitary flow, you do get h2 as the methane. You get those types of off gasses. But since Detroit has a combined system. Air is actually pretty clean. It's pretty diluted. You don't get usually high concentrations. My job is I go into those tunnels regularly. It was a long last week where I walk through those tunnels inspect and for the most part, you don't need any type of air purify. You get pretty good quality air. The air moves through the tunnels pretty nicely, and it's not, it doesn't it's not as gross as it sounds. But we do here, do city Detroit odor ordinances. And there are contractual things in place where, if there were odors, the contractor would have to take measures to rectify that, to clean that air.

The sites are monitored as a function of, you know, your four gas monitors for odor because of the confined space risk associated with it. So, you know, there's insights like this. There's continuous monitoring, 24/7, it's all logged. It's at multiple points, and everyone's talking about that on a regular basis because of just the gas risks, which would then flag an odor issue if it were to come to be within it, there are ways to remedy those if they come to be, but our experience within Detroit system is very rarely do we see odors coming out of the sewer. Around here, you move into a stagnant system that's not flowing, that's pure sewage, different story.

And then to kind of wrap up with some emergency planning consideration, some of these were put in the thought process when I mentioned that feasibility study with them, when we started conceptualizing how to build this and what the risks would be associated against the rewards. We thought about impacts to the community. Part of that is how we decided where to put the tunnel, minimal impact to existing homes, businesses, residents, traffic, utilities. So that was all part of that planning phase that lasted about two years, trying to figure out how we could build this massive tunnel without impacting the community. So this tunnel does not impact any GWA operations we do have. We do consider a local emergency response when designing it in terms of access to the site, multiple access points, we are adhering to all Detroit ordinances. I mean, the companies create any jobs

for you, for union employees, unions within the trades, you know there, there are a number of technical people hired that are on JDS team, but they also hire locally from the local unions to supplement their technical people that really understand the machine itself. Once it's done, it'll be another facility operated by glwa for which you know, glwa has over 1600 different properties, like we have a pretty big platform in Southeast Michigan in terms of, there is a significant O and M staff that is responsible for caring for these facilities after they're constructed. And I know that was brought up at one of our last meetings where glwa had their internship program going. I'm not sure if that's still going on. Yeah, I know we have interns coming into wastewater engineering in a week. You know,

he had suggested GL website, there's always a job board. People are hiring. So anybody wants to see that the water resources

can tell you water and sewer is insulated from a lot of the politics of the stuff, because you don't want water and you don't want the sewage to go away, just let us know we're happy to go home. You know, everybody keeps saying, No, you just keep doing what you're doing. Do it as cheap as you can. We'll do that,

but I'll wrap up just with the county construction schedule. As I mentioned, contractors started to work between December, January, the bayside shaft construction is getting started right now, the first part of the execution, and then that will be here next week.

Yeah, next week. And, matter of fact, some pieces are already here.

And then October, we'll be moving down to the other side, because you can't start your tunnel until the whole shaft service built. You don't want to have a place to hold land right? And then tunnel construction will be March 2026, through October, and then site restoration, February 28 through October. Big gap in there that'll be building up tunnel, the final structures. So any other questions?

Tim, is there anything you want to add that we didn't cover? Sorry?

Yes, I do have I'm sorry.

You. Yeah. The question he asked is, What did I I'm going to re say it a different way. What is the response plan if there's a confined space emergency at the site? And I think I know what Tim's going to say, jump in. Yeah. Well, we have our own team

that will be training to MSHA standards, and we do partner with the local fire departments all the time, not as a primary but as a secondary, backup to our emergency response plan. So we'll be reaching out to local fire department and the fire stations that are in the area just to make sure that we're coordinated should any type of

an emergency or medical emergency or otherwise happen.

JD has Response Teams trained within their stuff, and that's part of their middle process. I have seen their equipment, you know, they they have the equipment on site to self rescue.

Them. Yeah, a great quad, but we can easily make that quad and be happy to do so.

We appreciate that. One thing that I learned from Gerald and Jerry Brown people like that. You don't think about it, but get rid of stuff, sewer backup. It's very bad, leads to disease and everything else. I'm thinking it's getting rid of the stuff real health concerns. So I appreciate learning stuff like that, Gary and what you guys are doing.

Thank you. Well, we enjoy talking about it. You know, we like to share what we do. One of the reasons I got

into this business, and I thought it was cool that Detroit used to design other cities sewer systems up until I didn't like the 50s, but at one point, the water treatment plant on Jefferson was the largest single site water treatment plant,

and it's currently the third largest in the world. And it is currently the largest thing on this half of the world. So there's two other larger ones. They're not on this half of the world. There's 24,000 miles of pipe connected to the 195 miles of interceptor that, you know, I'm wastewater engineering manages 195 miles of interceptors, 24,000 miles of pipe connected to it. It's enough to go around the world one time.

And somebody told me a stat the other day, and it might be outdated, but correct me if I'm wrong during a normal rain event, or like above average rate of it that treatment plant can treat 1.6

billion gallon, 1.7 so, so it caps out at 930 million gallons a day of full treatment, you know. So we regulate the pumps, we queue up flow in the system, and we try to keep everything coming at 939 33 it can treat up to 1.7 billion in primary and discharge with chlorination and dechlor before it discharges after 1.7 billion in a day, it's going to be raw sewage. Now, some of that along the Northwest dentist chapter is raw sewage because we can't contain it. We can't get it down to the plant faster.

Everybody's still awake.

I will go there to split second, if you let me. So thank you. We appreciate it. Turn this

I turn this back to normal state. I

I'm just trying to figure out how I can trust him to build this tunnel if you can't

get my screen back,

I would like to Mr. From LC,

yes, he's here.

Yes, let me get back to you with details tomorrow, but I'm sure we can host one of the upcoming meetings. So Sergeant Millhouse, we have offers from Mr. Stair and Jeff from PBS to vote, so maybe we can have like a key match and. Yeah, thank you.

Stairs as possible. Please let us know. Okay, thank you, Captain Millhouse, go ahead, Karen.

We'll work that out offline. Alright, folks, we bought a very vibrant meeting that

started.

Thank you, everyone? Anyone have anything over the room real quick? Yes, sir.