City Councillor Lisa Babcock (Lisa Babcock) answered her questions at the City Council-only discussion meeting on February 18, 2020.
On Thursday, October 21st, East Lansing City Council Member Lisa Babcock hosted a town hall for her voters to discuss floods caused by heavy rains in June, August and September . Many voters asked questions about the city’s sewage infrastructure.
Babcock held this event at the East Lansing Public Library with George Lahanas, City Manager, and William Haggard of the Plumbing and Heating Department to answer questions from residents of East Lansing.
Babcock organized this event because she received many questions from residents about pipelines and how the city will deal with floods in the future. She invited Haggard to the event so that he could give more specific answers on what measures residents can take to protect their homes.
One key plumbing that residents can install in their houses is a check valve, which prevents water from flowing back and thus prevents flooding. Lahanas said the city council is discussing and approving the recently passed American Rescue Program Act (ARPA) funding to help all residents of East Lansing share the cost of installing the check valve.
"We are asking for a $500,000 grant to homeowners so that people can be separated. Our suggestion is to separate some homeowners’ money from some cities’ money so that check valves can be installed anywhere to prevent people. Say it's a problem," Rahanas said.
Lahanas said that for residents who have installed check valves in their homes since the heavy rains and floods last summer, Lahanas said the installation documents should be kept so that they can be handed over to the city government if they can approve the funding. .
Haggard said the typical cost of installing a check valve is about $2,500.
Many residents attending the city hall talked about the flooding in their homes.
Paul Mulvey said that after the August 12th storm, once the window burst due to water pressure, there were 80,000 gallons of water in his basement. He said that one of the reasons he thought there was water outside the window was that his street had only one rain drain.
"I don't know, this seems to be a disaster waiting to happen again," Mulvey said.
Mulvey said he and his partner have not been in their house since the floods broke out because it is considered unsafe due to electrical damage. Since then, they have been living in a hotel with two dogs.
Senta Goertler, associate professor of German and Second Language Studies, said she lives on the edge of East Lansing and Meridian Township, on the sewage of East Lansing. Her neighbor is a resident of Meridian Township, and a waist-high flood occurred in their basement.
Goertler said her neighbors had to try to get East Lansing or Meridian to help them solve the flood problem and drain the sewage from the basement. She said that she and her neighbors realized that East Lansing did not have their neighbors on the map of the sewage system.
"I just hope you can figure out what happened and prevent it from happening in the future," Goertler said. "We are not to blame, we just want to make sure that there are no more sewers in our basement."
At the end of the meeting, Babcock expressed condolences to the residents who suffered from the flood.
"I would say, I'm really sorry. I know the people in the entire city hall, the other members of the council, are really sorry," Babcock said. "As one of my favorite bosses once said, a crisis is a terrible thing that can be wasted. When we found out what happened, it was obvious what we would do next and melt the snow in April. And in the case of heavy rain, what will we do to prevent certain things from happening."
The City Council will meet on Tuesday, November 16 to discuss sewage infrastructure.
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