WORTH TOWNSHIP SEWER DEBACLE
This is a long and sorry saga about governmental ineptitude at the state, county and local levels: a county health department that refuses to do their job, the Michigan DEQ overstepping its authority, and circuit and appellate courts that refused to issue a stay and bullied Worth Township into bankruptcy. Read the litigation timeline of the sewer project as released at a recent board meeting. Legal expenses have already exceeded one year of township property tax income!
The basic fact of the matter is that Worth Township is not polluting Lake Huron, individual property owners in the northern subdivisions with small lots and inadequate drainage are. The Sanilac County Health Department bears prime culpability for this fiasco, as over the years they have failed to act. If serious about their obligation to protect the health of both citizens and the lake, the county should be out now red tagging every offending septic field, declaring those homes unfit for habitation till the problem is rectified by the property owners. Blame also goes to township boards, past and present, which failed to hold the feet of the County Board of Commissioners to the fire and demand that the health department do its job!
Since the township and county were complacent, the state attempted to force a sewer system down taxpayer’s throats, a solution that township attorney Mr. Woodworth reported the Department of Environmental Quality had no authority to mandate. The appellate court proved Woodworth correct. When state law caps a township’s ability to tax at one mil, how can rural local government be accountable for building such a costly project? As the Court of Appeals ruling indicates: “the state bears as much responsibility for the unauthorized discharges at issue in this case as does defendant.” If the DEQ would rather build a sewer system than have the county come in and do their job, let the state fund it!
But rather than listen to Mr. Woodworth, the township board panicked and apparently spent at least a million dollars on a sewer plan for a system they may never have to build. When former supervisor Jon Rundels filed a Freedom of Information Act request to find how this debt was incurred, the township produced no bid papers or contracts, and records that show little of the million plus dollars of expenses were ever authorized. This appears to violate state law that requires expenditures to be board approved and budgeted for. Now Worth Township is bankrupt and under fiscal watch by the state.
The township has not yet provided a detailed breakdown of the debt allegedly owed to the Fleis & Vandenbrink firm. Nor have they been able to produce a copy of any signed contract authorizing the work Fleis did.
In my opinion, the Fleis sewer report is an example of junk science. It shows the Birch Beach creek at Galbraith Line already has higher surface conductivity levels than the reported acceptable threshold at M-25, indicating the problem is run off from the farm fields across the road. The conductivity levels drops as the creek flows past residences to the lake. Homes in that area don’t cause the problem, and a sewer system won't fix things! To pay for their boondoggle, government is trying to foist costs on taxpayers who aren’t contributing to the problem by extending the sewer district outside the known problem area. And the bigger the sewer project, the more the engineering firm stands to rake in.
One can only hope that a major newspaper will take interest in this sad story and send in an investigative reporter to get to the bottom of things. They can start by asking the county health department and commissioners why they won't do their job. Then delve into the township’s financial records, and the relationship of former Worth officials and Sanilac County officials with the Fleis firm. When the engineer's compensation is a significant percentage of a 30 million dollar project, can one really expect their reports and the direction they provided to our board officials to be unbiased? Read the disturbing comments on the sewer contract on page 3 of the Yeo & Yeo forensic audit report. Doesn't that story of how Sanilac County tried to pass the bill for their contract with Fleis on to Worth township taxpayers smell? Ex-supervisor Doug Soule signed a contract in advance of public discussion and a board vote? I think there could be a Pulitzer prize waiting for the reporter who wants to dig deep and tell the whole story!
While the township board's course of action throughout this sordid saga leaves much to be desired, their recent decision to take the case to the Michigan Supreme Court and challenge the intrusiveness of the state clearly deserves the taxpayer's commendation, not the criticism leveled against the board by the Port Huron Times Herald in their recent editorial. Now when is Sanilac County going to step up to the plate and do the right thing for both the health of the citizens and the water quality of Lake Huron by sending in the county health department to do their job and red tag the offending properties?