$15M fine for Edenville Dam owner proposed by federal regulators
Updated Jan 27, 2021;
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BAY CITY, MI Federal regulators want to levy a $15 million civil fine against the operator of a failed hydroelectric dam that unleashed flooding in mid-Michigan last spring, but creditors and a bankruptcy case trustee are pushing back, arguing such a large penalty would upend proceedings and jeopardize a settlement fund for flood victims.
Mark H. Shapiro, a Southfield attorney who is trustee in the Boyce Hydro bankruptcy case, warned the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) earlier this month that imposing such a penalty against the beleaguered dam operator would “wreak havoc” on its plan to exit bankruptcy and pay off creditors and victims of the May 2020 flood.
It s official: Four Lakes Task Force acquires mid-Michigan dams
Transfer includes more than 6,000 acres of land
Jan. 21, 2021
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Dam properties previously owned by Boyce Hydro have been officially transferred to Four Lakes Task Force.
FLTF is the delegated authority working on behalf of Midland and Gladwin counties to oversee the dams and lakes along the Tittabawassee River system.
According to a FLTF newsletter released on Jan. 14, the Boyce properties are now under the ownership of FLTF, with the transfer including about 300 parcels/lots of land, with a total of more than 6,000 acres. Everything that was historically operated and maintained as part of the lake system was included in the transfer, including the lake bottoms, the newsletter stated.
Nine months after devastating flooding, Central Michigan residents are left abandoned
It has now been nearly nine months since the breaching of the Sanford, Smallwood, and Edenville dams and subsequent dike failures along the Tittabawassee River in Central Michigan. Boyce Hydro LLC was the private owner of these dams and was responsible for the state of disrepair that led to their breaching in May.
State authorities were intimately aware of the decaying and dangerous state of the dam, as shown through decades of safety violations and the revocation of Boyce’s electric production license by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in 2018. Even so, they chose to do nothing to prevent a disaster. The WSWS has published extensive reports detailing the events of the flooding, its effects, and its aftermath.
Aging hazard dams forced a reckoning in Michigan this year
Updated Dec 30, 2020;
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LANSING, MI They say you shouldn’t let a crisis go to waste.
Well, there’s been a few of those in 2020. In Michigan, it was also the year aging hazard dams forced a long-overdue reckoning among state regulators.
This fall, a group of experts in river ecology, civil engineering, dam safety and other aspects of environmental and energy policy have taken the crisis maxim to heart as they flyspeck the regulatory structure around an overlooked and under-funded area of the state’s water infrastructure.
The goal is to overhaul the state’s dam safety and regulatory protocols, and hopefully avoid another catastrophe like the one on May 18 in Edenville, when a decrepit hydroelectric dam collapsed and unleashed a 500-year flood that displaced 10,000 people during a pandemic and caused about $200 million worth of damage in three counties.
FLTF announces operations transition team
Group to handle transfer of lakes, dams from Boyce Hydro
Dec. 20, 2020
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Workers with Fisher Contracting continue removing pieces of debris from the Sanford Dam Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2020 in downtown Sanford. (Katy Kildee/kkildee@mdn.net)
The Four Lakes Task Force has recently announced the formation of an Operations Transition Team, which is meant to manage the safe transfer of assets of the Secord, Smallwood, Edenville and Sanford dams from Boyce Hydro to FLTF.
As part of this process, the group appointed Brad Fedorchak as operations manager, responsible for the overall management of operations and maintenance at the dam sites.