Contract to rehab stormwater project awarded
By Dana Casadei
The Bloomfield Township Board of Trustees awarded a stormwater rehabilitation project contract to DVM Utilities at their meeting on Monday, October 28.
Out of the four bidders, DVM Utilities – which is located in of Sterling Heights – came in with the lowest bid at $793,661. The other three bids ranged from $830,892 to nearly $1.5 million.
This cost will cover a pretty massive project for the township, and will include almost 5,000 linear feet of sewer cleaning and televising, roughly 2,700 linear feet of full sewer lining and an additional 15 sectional liners, and one section of sewer pipe removal and replacement.
The work doesn’t end there either, with the project also including the cleaning out of 131 structures, removal and replacement of 14 structure covers and frames, 38 chimney tuck points, six chimney reconstructs, and one curb inlet replacement.
This particular project is multi-phased, with phase one already having been completed in September 2023, when the Storm Water Asset Management Plan (SWAMP) was released, but the entire project started back in 2021.
In the summer of 2021, there were multiple large rain events which caused flooding impacts throughout Bloomfield Township. After this occurred the Bloomfield Township Engineering and Environmental Services Department worked with the Department of Public Works to look into each resident complaint they received to determine the ownership of the storm system in question. This then allowed them to further assist in notifying everyone from individuals to associations to jurisdictional agencies that their system should be evaluated for deficiencies that may have aided in flooding an adjacent property.
During these investigations in 2021, it was discovered that the township had taken over ownership of specific storm sewer pipes, structures and detention basins not located within Bloomfield Township property through recorded conveyance documents, such as easements and quit claim deeds. This all happened between 1960-1980 when there was considerable population and development growth, and is now an uncommon practice: the township does not own the roads, therefore, storm sewer systems under the ownership of the township are typically limited to those systems located on township-owned properties.
Because of this discovery of the township-owned storm water assets, Hubbell, Roth and Clark, Inc. was tasked with developing the SWAMP plan in 2022, and included the creation of an asset inventory of all known township-owned storm systems, field work and inspections on the assets, compiling a report of all findings, and developing a capital improvement program for repairs and maintenance on the system.
This work was completed in 2022 and 2023. The report came out that September and the results of the conditions assessment outlined in the SWAMP are the work that will be worked on during this second phase.
