Toil & Bubble

Aug. 22, 2007

Imagine buying a piece of property only to learn that you’re in a high water table that doesn’t support a septic system, and the local law won’t let you get a holding tank.
The original version of a law passed in 1997 (under the Engler administration) stated that a property split could only occur if the parties involved verified that it met the sewage disposal requirements of the local government. Then it was amended: to say that a building permit must not be issued unless septic disposal requirements are met.
It’s particularly bad policy in Leelanau County, which has stringent holding tank requirements on property splits. The county imposed the moratorium because septic haulers were running out of farmland to apply the septage.
The Leelanau law is this: If a piece of property is split since March of 1997, and it’s under an acre in size, the county will not issue a holding tank permit. The same goes for any size split since 2002.
“We felt it was bad policy. In fact, it was the single worst change in public law in the 34 years I’ve been in environmental health. You just hope that somebody calls the health department before they buy a piece of property,” said Bill Crawford, director of the Benzie and Leelanau County Health Department.

By Anne Stanton
The lunch break during a court hearing is usually non-eventful. But a hearing last week involved the intensely controversial Northport sewer, and tempers were short. Dr. Christopher Grobbel, an environmental expert for the anti-sewer folks, spent the morning in Leland testifying why he believed the sewer would not solve Northport’s surface water contamination problem, but would harm the groundwater of an elderly couple who live next door to the treatment plant soon to break ground.
Thirteenth Circuit Judge Tom Power adjourned the hearing for lunch, and Greg King, the village administrator, came across the aisle, homing in on Grobbel. King, a man in his late 50s, graying hair, and stout build, was angry, his face and neck a beet red.
“Where do you live?” he shouted at Grobbel.
Now King likely knew where Grobbel lived, and although nearby, it wasn’t Northport. Grobbel told him he didn’t want to have the conversation, but King pinned Grobbel against the railing of the jury box and jabbed his finger inches away from his face.
“You better not come to Northport! You better not come to Northport!”
Arnie Zeits, standing near Grobbel, feared that King would throw a punch, so he started laughing loudly to draw attention. And then King turned to him.
“If you want to laugh at me in public, then let’s go outdoors, right now, and we’ll settle it.”
“Okay, let’s go!” Zeits shot back. “Come on, make another threat.
People are listening now.”
There was no fight, but a sergeant was tapped to chaperone the afternoon hearing, said Zeits and Grobbel, who later described the incident to the county sheriff and the Express.
So what’s making people so hot under the collar?
The answer: poop and politics.
The Northport sewer has flowed under the radar of public notice, but read on … it may help should the same issue deposit itself on your doorstep.

Bubbling brew
Nestled alongside West Grand Traverse Bay, Northport is blessed with small-town charm and natural beauty. But some homes and businesses struggle with failing drainfields. Yards in the business district are sometimes too small to build another drain field, forcing a home to use a holding tank, which typically is emptied monthly at a cost of about $250. To reduce the frequency, some villagers have stopped using their dishwashers and washing machines. They judiciously flush their toilets: “If it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down.”

INFUSING LIFE?
In recent years, people began to fear for the town’s vitality. A large gift shop closed because its rent on a drain field it shared with Tom’s Food Store went too high. The hospital closed a few years ago and the tiny Northport school has long struggled with low student numbers. The new kindergarten class only has four students. The school offered a Northport Promise – a guarantee to help with college tuition – but it’s attracted few students.
Finally, there were concerns that leaky and outdated septic tanks were polluting the bay.
For that reason, the Village and Leelanau Township approved a $15 million sewer system for 650 residents – one of the most expensive sewers per household the state has ever funded.
“Make no mistake. That’s a huge chunk of change. That would be as close to as high a figure as we have seen,” said Chip Heckathorn, who oversees revolving sewer loans for the state Department of Environmental Quality.
Each homeowner must pay $15,950, plus around $1,000 to $7,000 for a hook-up, plus $48 in monthly fees – and that’s the minimum.
Most homeowners intend to pay over the long haul -- $142 per month for 15 years, and $126 monthly for the last five years. But even those numbers might go up if the predicted growth doesn’t happen.
“One guy who lives half a year in a trailer on cinder blocks has an SEV lower than what he’ll pay in the next 20 years in sewer costs,” said Chuck Carman, an outspoken opponent of the treatment plant. A retired magazine publisher from Chicago, Carman is known for his blunt, colorful language.

HARD ON THE POOR
The Leeleanau Township Foundation has offered to help out low-income people, but its help only goes so far, Carman said.
“It’s like giving them free heroin for a couple of weeks,” he said. “The Foundation is only helping with the one-time cost to hook up their homes to the pipe in the street. So this allows the poor to hook up, but then they’re forced to pay the $142 per month charge that goes on for years and years.”
Carman pointed out that 44% of the village households earn less than $35,000 per year, according to U.S. Census data.
“Do the math,” said Barbara Weber, another opponent. “It is an outrage, and there are better, smaller systems out there for a town this size. The poor will move out, and the rich will move in.”
Teresa Sleder, a store clerk at Tom’s Food Store, fears that the sewer means an end to the 1950s feel of the village.
“The underlying issue isn’t the exorbitant price. It’s that folks want to make this like every other place, but the draw for me is that it wasn’t like any other place,” she said. Teresa moved up here with her family from Livonia.
Said retired school counselor Robert Hunt: “I came up here because it’s small and quiet. These people move up here, and some of them want what they had back in Flint.”

MUSIC MAN
Carman and others complain the sewer system was no-bid. The engineering firm of Fleis &VandenBrink Engineering was paid to do a needs study, and was then hired for the design and construction oversight.
“It’s like the music man. You need a big band and I have the instruments to sell you. It’s clearly a conflict of interest,” said John Kutilek, a retired engineer.
Heckathorn said this is the way all sewer projects work. Local officials typically put intense effort into selecting the engineering firm, but that ends the competitive process. It’s the same as carefully choosing your doctor, and then believing her when she says you need your appendix out.
In other words, it all comes down to trust.
Jim Schiffer of Flies and VandenBrink said that his company spent 1,000 hours getting to know all the needs and intricacies of Northport’s project. “To turn around and hand it to someone else, it would take them more time to come up to speed, and someone would have to pay for it. Plus when it gets into construction, if there are questions, the designer who went through all the work has a much better and quicker answer to any questions that come up.”
The firm has also been criticized for taking
a 16% engineering fee of the $15 million system, which is significantly higher than the industry standard of 10% for basic engineering services, according to a review report by Gozling and Czubak.
Schiffer countered that the firm’s 16% fee covered more than just basic engineering services. “We were not pleased by that statement because our project was much larger and more complex than the 10% projects they referred to.”

WHO NEEDS ONE?
Carman has charged that Flies and VandenBrink relied on health department records instead of doing a house-by-house inspection to verify which homes needed to hook up.
“If you gave sodium pentothal to both sides of this issue, including me, and you said, okay, how many of the 650 homes really need some form of improved drain field, I’d bet anything they’d say about one hundred.”
Although septic problems are clustered in the downtown area, the treatment
plant encompasses the village and reaches into Leelanau Township at the north and south ends.
“There’s not much motivation for the engineering firm to go in and test because a town needs everybody in the sewer district to contribute to the cost of the system,” said Dr. Ted Loudon, an international sewer consultant and Michigan State University emeritus professor.
“When you’re dealing with a centralized sewer system, such as the one they chose, you can’t afford to leave anyone out.”
If they had gone with a decentralized system, they’d have more flexibility to pick and choose, Loudon said. (See side bar.)
Along the shoreline, it’s not an issue of whether a drain field is working or not. Even homes with well-working septics discharge phosphorous, a major pollutant in Grand Traverse Bay, and should be hooked up, said John Nelson, the baykeeper of the Grand Traverse Bay Watershed Center.

SUBSIDIZING THE RICH?
Carman believes that the thirst for growth has driven the sewer’s cost and scope. In this case, there are plans to build what amounts to a whole new village — nearly 700 luxury condos and homes at the former hospital site and the new Timber Shores development. Twelve new homes are planned in the village, five with new marina slips. Timber Shores plans on building its own multi-million dollar sewer, but Carman has his doubts since it would be way cheaper to hook up to the village sewer.
The Northport sewer will catapult property values of the shoreline owners and allow the sewer to expand. Many folks will finally be able to split and sell their acreage (which some can’t do now because of the high-water table and a holding tank moratorium for splits). A village council member with a drainfield that’s illegal under today’s standards also stands to benefit.
“We have developers and rich boaters and shoreline owners who will all profit from the sewer. They should pay for it themselves,” Carman said.

ONE ACRE, ONE VOTE
The Northport controversy illuminates the pitfalls of how multi-million dollar sewer projects can get a community’s go-ahead. Under state law, a municipality can create a special assessment district with a petition drive. If you own one acre, you get one vote. Sixty acres, 60 votes. It doesn’t matter if there’s a house on your land.
“There are two registered voters in my house, and we got half a vote,” said Northport villager Darryl Eichstadt. “There’s one registered voter at another house, and he got 62 votes. I don’t really consider that fair.”
Eichstadt is a janitor with six years to go until retiring. His wife works as a clerk at Ace Hardware. In 2001, they built a new home and invested $20,000 into a new drain field, which he intended to last his lifetime. In 2009, the sewer will increase his taxes from $500 to $2,204, and he doesn’t know how he’ll pay the bill. His wife, a lifelong village resident, doesn’t want to move. But it may come to that, said Eichstadt, who is one of 58 people who have filed an appeal with the Michigan Tax Tribunal.
Carman said some people were told the petition did not have a binding or legal effect.
“People were tricked into the whole thing with the petition process. Most people thought it was advisory,” said Carman.
A group of 50 landowners along the southern shoreline of the township wouldn’t sign the petition, saying they all had working drain fields and didn’t need to hook up. After the petition drive, officials decided to redraw the sewer district boundaries to exclude them. Overall, 53% of the sewer district’s property owners signed the petition (they needed 51%).
Carman charged that the council and township gerrymandered the boundaries to swing the result they wanted. Village Councilwoman Barb VonVoigtlander dismissed the accusation, saying the exclusion made
sense because the residents were all in one place with working drainfields. The other opponents were sprinkled throughout the area and hard to exclude, she said.
Carman countered: “But all the experts say, shoreline owners shouldn’t put phosphorous or any other shit in the bay. So those 50 people are putting in more than anybody.”

SHUNNING
At the heart of the debate is the feeling among some that sewer opponents are acting out of pure self-interest.
“I understand they don’t want to pay for it. I don’t want to pay for it either, but I don’t think there’s any way around the sewer,” said Barb Holcomb, owner of Barb’s Bakery, which uses a holding tank. “Yet it’s part of the privilege and the commitment of being in the community and working together. We wouldn’t be much of a community if everyone was independent and did only what was good for them.”
VonVoigterland, who has worked long hours on the village visioning plan and sewer project, said the community is losing patience: “Even people who were not originally thrilled with the idea of a sewer are upset they’re continuing the lawsuits that up the costs for the rest of us. The cost of defending the village and township in the tax tribunal, the circuit court case, the recall that failed, and now this.
“There comes a point that it’s no longer a question of trying to decide right or wrong. It’s just harassment. It’s been decided. We’ve had all these cases, and they haven’t won a single one of them. Why are they continuing this? I feel it’s to punish the community for going ahead with this project.”
The rift has become painful as opponents and supporters cross paths in the village and avoid eye contact. “I’m shunned by a lot of people who are involved in the present sewer—they don’t talk to me much anymore,” said sewer opponent John Kutilek.
Carman said he supports a sewer, but he feels the project was planned with little sensitivity to cost and actual need.
“I’m not against a sewer. I’m against this sewer system. I just saw the money involved, and I knew it was insane.”
As construction proceeds, the opponents will play one more card in 13th Circuit Court. Last week Judge Power rejected the opponents’ request to temporarily stop the project, but he also refused to dismiss the case. A circuit court trial will decide whether the sewer’s wastewater will damage the Hunts’ groundwater, Northport Creek, and the Old Mill Pond.
The suit also alleges that the treatment plant amounts to a taking of the Hunts’ property by effectively making their 10 acres part of the public sewer system. It asks for a permanent halt to the sewer, which is already under way and scheduled for completion in August of 2008.
Meanwhile, the Hunts, who live next door to the future treatment plant, worry that they’ll have to suffer the sewer odors. They also fear the sewer will destroy the value of their home.
“Who would pay full price for it?” said Robert Hunt, standing with his wife on a deck that overlooks their pond. “I’ll have tens of thousands of gallons of human waste sitting on my back porch. I’d rather have it back to the way it was.”


The Step System Is there a better way?
There is a way to target specific watery areas for those who need a sewer, and it’s called a step system. Cedar, another small village with a high water table and a history of tainted groundwater, is going to build one for just 51 homes.
A step system is a hybrid between a septic tank and your traditional, centralized sewer treatment plant.
In the step system, you move only wastewater through the pipes, and the poop stays in the septic tank. That’s a plus because it’s a lot easier to move wastewater alone, sewer consultant Ted Loudon said.
There’s no hook-up fee with a step system, but there is the cost of providing new septic tanks to each homeowner. Small diameter pipes lead to a treatment center, about the size of a kitchen, which can go underground. As needs grow, you add another module.
“It really simplifies collection,” Loudon said. “The actual collection system in most communities is typically 60 to 85 percent of the cost, and if you can simplify the collection system, you can save a lot of money.”
Council members said a step system wouldn’t be cheaper based on initial estimates they saw from the engineering firm of Gourdie-Fraser Inc. But Brett Gourdie disagreed, and said that the Council just wasn’t receptive. By the time he made a last-ditch presentation, the village had already decided upon a centralized system — “The meeting was brutal and I knew it was hopeless, but I felt we had to make a stand.”
Northport Councilwoman Barbara VonVoigtlander acknowledges the meeting was rough. “But I felt people really did listen to him. The issue I had with it was we had already picked our engineer,” VonVoigtlander said. “Gourdie-Fraser was one of the top three finalists, but didn’t get the job. They should have just said, ‘Thank you, I hope we can do business some other time.’”
Gourdie said that the neighboring village of Cedar, which went with a step system, proves his point.
The total sewer cost per Cedar household — after grants and assuming no growth — is $12,110. For Northport, it’s $21,380 per home plus a hook-up fee of $1,000 to $7,000. (Gourdie-Fraser is engineering Cedar’s system.)
Schiffer countered that it’s “really tough to compare any two systems.”

EXTRA COSTS
Many factors boosted Northport’s price tag, including a spike in materials costs after Katrina. The DEQ took 15 months to approve the discharge permit and asked for a lot of additional work and design. Finally, the DEQ unexpectedly imposed a very strict phosphorous standard because the sewer is designed to discharge in both groundwater and a creek.
“If they were uniform, one size fits all, that would be one thing. But that is definitely not the case. Each system is unique, depending on the economy of scale, the bidding climate, the time of year—all of those have an impact.”
Northport and Leelanau Township officials also feared that the step system couldn’t be large enough or treat effluent as well as the centralized system.
Not true, Loudon said.
“A step system can do any kind of treatment. People need to realize that treatment and delivery are two components that can be dealt with separately,” he said.
A step system can also go as big as you need it. A step system in Alabama, for example, serves 4,000 homes.
Jim Schiffer of Flies and VandenBrink said he didn’t go with the step system because it would involve the expense of emptying the septic tank every three to 10 years, and it’s tough to find land for septage application. He also said that concrete septic tanks used for step systems can potentially leak.
Yet non-leaking, plastic septic tanks are now available for about $1,000. And the Grand Traverse County facility is in desperate need of septage. The customer cost is about $350.
“If you could give people a choice between a much cheaper system—by thousands and thousands of dollars—and having to pay $350 every year three years, it’s clearly economically a better way to go,” sewer opponent Chuck Carman said.
Opponent David Brigham feels that local officials just didn’t take enough time to research the alternatives and put too much faith in Flies and VandenBrink. “I think Flies and VandenBrink misled the community in order to line their pockets.”
VonVoigtlander has a different take on it: “We had attorneys all the way. We had engineers, scientists, contractors—a good diversity of people, highly qualified to interview the companies. Having worked closely with Flies and VandenBrink, I don’t think we could have done better.”

The Step System
Is there a better way?

There is a way to target specific watery areas for those who need a sewer, and it’s called a step system. Cedar, another small village with a high water table and a history of tainted groundwater, is going to build one for just 51 homes.
A step system is a hybrid between a septic tank and your traditional, centralized sewer treatment plant.
In the step system, you move only wastewater through the pipes, and the poop stays in the septic tank. That’s a plus because it’s a lot easier to move wastewater alone, sewer consultant Ted Loudon said.
There’s no hook-up fee with a step system, but there is the cost of providing new septic tanks to each homeowner. Small diameter pipes lead to a treatment center, about the size of a kitchen, which can go underground. As needs grow, you add another module.
“It really simplifies collection,” Loudon said. “The actual collection system in most communities is typically 60 to 85 percent of the cost, and if you can simplify the collection system, you can save a lot of money.”
Council members said a step system wouldn’t be cheaper based on initial estimates they saw from the engineering firm of Gourdie-Fraser Inc. But Brett Gourdie disagreed, and said that the Council just wasn’t receptive. By the time he made a last-ditch presentation, the village had already decided upon a centralized system — “The meeting was brutal and I knew it was hopeless, but I felt we had to make a stand.”
Northport Councilwoman Barbara VonVoigtlander acknowledges the meeting was rough. “But I felt people really did listen to him. The issue I had with it was we had already picked our engineer,” VonVoigtlander said. “Gourdie-Fraser was one of the top three finalists, but didn’t get the job. They should have just said, ‘Thank you, I hope we can do business some other time.’”
Gourdie said that the neighboring village of Cedar, which went with a step system, proves his point.
The total sewer cost per Cedar household — after grants and assuming no growth — is $12,110. For Northport, it’s $21,380 per home plus a hook-up fee of $1,000 to $7,000. (Gourdie-Fraser is engineering Cedar’s system.)
Schiffer countered that it’s “really tough to compare any two systems.”

EXTRA COSTS
Many factors boosted Northport’s price tag, including a spike in materials costs after Katrina. The DEQ took 15 months to approve the discharge permit and asked for a lot of additional work and design. Finally, the DEQ unexpectedly imposed a very strict phosphorous standard because the sewer is designed to discharge in both groundwater and a creek.
“If they were uniform, one size fits all, that would be one thing. But that is definitely not the case. Each system is unique, depending on the economy of scale, the bidding climate, the time of year—all of those have an impact.”
Northport and Leelanau Township officials also feared that the step system couldn’t be large enough or treat effluent as well as the centralized system.
Not true, Loudon said.
“A step system can do any kind of treatment. People need to realize that treatment and delivery are two components that can be dealt with separately,” he said.
A step system can also go as big as you need it. A step system in Alabama, for example, serves 4,000 homes.
Jim Schiffer of Flies and VandenBrink said he didn’t go with the step system because it would involve the expense of emptying the septic tank every three to 10 years, and it’s tough to find land for septage application. He also said that concrete septic tanks used for step systems can potentially leak.
Yet non-leaking, plastic septic tanks are now available for about $1,000. And the Grand Traverse County facility is in desperate need of septage. The customer cost is about $350.
“If you could give people a choice between a much cheaper system—by thousands and thousands of dollars—and having to pay $350 every year three years, it’s clearly economically a better way to go,” sewer opponent Chuck Carman said.
Opponent David Brigham feels that local officials just didn’t take enough time to research the alternatives and put too much faith in Flies and VandenBrink. “I think Flies and VandenBrink misled the community in order to line their pockets.”
VonVoigtlander has a different take on it: “We had attorneys all the way. We had engineers, scientists, contractors—a good diversity of people, highly qualified to interview the companies. Having worked closely with Flies and VandenBrink, I don’t think we could have done better.”

The Step System
Is there a better way?

There is a way to target specific watery areas for those who need a sewer, and it’s called a step system. Cedar, another small village with a high water table and a history of tainted groundwater, is going to build one for just 51 homes.
A step system is a hybrid between a septic tank and your traditional, centralized sewer treatment plant.
In the step system, you move only wastewater through the pipes, and the poop stays in the septic tank. That’s a plus because it’s a lot easier to move wastewater alone, sewer consultant Ted Loudon said.
There’s no hook-up fee with a step system, but there is the cost of providing new septic tanks to each homeowner. Small diameter pipes lead to a treatment center, about the size of a kitchen, which can go underground. As needs grow, you add another module.
“It really simplifies collection,” Loudon said. “The actual collection system in most communities is typically 60 to 85 percent of the cost, and if you can simplify the collection system, you can save a lot of money.”
Council members said a step system wouldn’t be cheaper based on initial estimates they saw from the engineering firm of Gourdie-Fraser Inc. But Brett Gourdie disagreed, and said that the Council just wasn’t receptive. By the time he made a last-ditch presentation, the village had already decided upon a centralized system — “The meeting was brutal and I knew it was hopeless, but I felt we had to make a stand.”
Northport Councilwoman Barbara VonVoigtlander acknowledges the meeting was rough. “But I felt people really did listen to him. The issue I had with it was we had already picked our engineer,” VonVoigtlander said. “Gourdie-Fraser was one of the top three finalists, but didn’t get the job. They should have just said, ‘Thank you, I hope we can do business some other time.’”
Gourdie said that the neighboring village of Cedar, which went with a step system, proves his point.
The total sewer cost per Cedar household — after grants and assuming no growth — is $12,110. For Northport, it’s $21,380 per home plus a hook-up fee of $1,000 to $7,000. (Gourdie-Fraser is engineering Cedar’s system.)
Schiffer countered that it’s “really tough to compare any two systems.”

EXTRA COSTS
Many factors boosted Northport’s price tag, including a spike in materials costs after Katrina. The DEQ took 15 months to approve the discharge permit and asked for a lot of additional work and design. Finally, the DEQ unexpectedly imposed a very strict phosphorous standard because the sewer is designed to discharge in both groundwater and a creek.
“If they were uniform, one size fits all, that would be one thing. But that is definitely not the case. Each system is unique, depending on the economy of scale, the bidding climate, the time of year—all of those have an impact.”
Northport and Leelanau Township officials also feared that the step system couldn’t be large enough or treat effluent as well as the centralized system.
Not true, Loudon said.
“A step system can do any kind of treatment. People need to realize that treatment and delivery are two components that can be dealt with separately,” he said.
A step system can also go as big as you need it. A step system in Alabama, for example, serves 4,000 homes.
Jim Schiffer of Flies and VandenBrink said he didn’t go with the step system because it would involve the expense of emptying the septic tank every three to 10 years, and it’s tough to find land for septage application. He also said that concrete septic tanks used for step systems can potentially leak.
Yet non-leaking, plastic septic tanks are now available for about $1,000. And the Grand Traverse County facility is in desperate need of septage. The customer cost is about $350.
“If you could give people a choice between a much cheaper system—by thousands and thousands of dollars—and having to pay $350 every year three years, it’s clearly economically a better way to go,” sewer opponent Chuck Carman said.
Opponent David Brigham feels that local officials just didn’t take enough time to research the alternatives and put too much faith in Flies and VandenBrink. “I think Flies and VandenBrink misled the community in order to line their pockets.”
VonVoigtlander has a different take on it: “We had attorneys all the way. We had engineers, scientists, contractors—a good diversity of people, highly qualified to interview the companies. Having worked closely with Flies and VandenBrink, I don’t think we could have done better.”

Homeowners beware

Imagine buying a piece of property only to learn that you’re in a high water table that doesn’t support a septic system, and the local law won’t let you get a holding tank.
The original version of a law passed in 1997 (under the Engler administration) stated that a property split could only occur if the parties involved verified that it met the sewage disposal requirements of the local government. Then it was amended to say that a building permit must not be issued unless septic disposal requirements are met.
It’s particularly bad policy in Leelanau County, which has stringent holding tank requirements on property splits. The county imposed the moratorium because septic haulers were running out of farmland to apply the septage.
The Leelanau law is this: If a piece of property is split since March of 1997, and it’s under an acre in size, the county will not issue a holding tank permit. The same goes for any size split since 2002.
“We felt it (the state law) was bad policy. In fact, it was the single worst change in public law in the 34 years I’ve been in environmental health. You just hope that somebody calls the health department before they buy a piece of property,” said Bill Crawford, director of the Benzie and Leelanau County Health Department.