Feds warned years ago Edenville Dam couldn’t handle a historic flood

Update: Dam owner, state fought about Wixom Lake levels before flood

MIDLAND COUNTY, MI — Parts of mid-Michigan are inundated with floodwaters following a breach at a Tittabawassee River hydroelectric dam long considered a safety hazard by regulators who foresaw a potential calamity.

In 2018, federal energy regulators yanked the Edenville Dam operator’s license out of concern the spillway couldn’t pass enough water to avert a failure during a historic flood.

After days of heavy rain across the region, the Edenville Dam’s earthen dike collapsed on Tuesday, May 19 at the south end of Wixom Lake north of Midland and sent the combined force of an impoundment and the Tobacco River hurtling south toward Midland and beyond.

“This is unlike anything we’ve ever seen before,” said Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who announced an emergency declaration during a 10 p.m. press conference on Tuesday.

"This truly is a historic event that is playing out in the midst of another historic event and so we need to make sure that we keep our wits about us and work on this together,” Whitmer said.

Update: Whitmer on flooding: ‘We’re gonna get through this'

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) records indicate capacity issues at the Edenville Dam spillway were cited as problematic dating back to the late 1990s.

In a 2018 filing, regulators characterized dam owner Boyce Hydro as chronically non-compliant with regulatory requests to upgrade the dam. FERC wanted Boyce Hydro owner Lee Mueller of Las Vegas, Nev. to build additional spillways to reduce the risk of failure. The dam had six spillways at two sites.

Boyce Hydro “has repeatedly failed to comply” with regulators who wanted Mueller to “develop and implement plans and schedules to address the fact that the project spillways are not adequate to pass the probable maximum flood, thereby creating a grave danger to the public,” FERC deputy secretary Nathaniel Davis wrote.

On Wednesday, FERC chairman Neil Chatterjee said the agency was sending a staff engineer to the site to assist state and local authorities with an investigation into the failure. The agency also directed Boyce Hydro to assemble its own investigation team of independent experts.

When the dam broke Tuesday night, floodwaters soon overtopped the Sanford Dam, compounding the situation. Water in downtown Midland could possibly reach 9 feet above flood stage today. The National Guard has been deployed and shelters are available for displaced residents.

Roughly 10,000 people are being evacuated.

Dow Chemical has shut down its Midland riverbank complex. The company has switched to local emergency footing and says it will “closely monitor” river levels.

Boyce Hydro had agreed to sell Edenville dam and three others to a local task force that hoped to oversee repairs and bring stability to impoundment lake levels after years of discord between dam owner Mueller and lakefront homeowners.

The 4.8 megawatt, 6,600-foot Edenville dam held back the Tittabawassee and Tobacco rivers at Edenville, Mich. It was built in 1925 and mostly used for flood control. Mueller acquired the dam in 2004 and sold power generated by its operations to Consumers Energy.

The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) assumed regulatory authority for the 96-year-old dam in late 2018 after its license to generate hydropower was revoked.

The Four Lakes Task Force signed a $9.4 million purchase agreement in December to buy Wixom, Sanford, Secord and Smallwood lake bottomlands and the dams that regulate river impoundments from Boyce Trusts, according task force chairman Dave Kepler.

Kepler said Boyce Hydro still owns the dam. The deal was expected to close later this year.

Kepler, a former Dow Chemical executive who owns a home on Sanford Lake, said Boyce Hydro got to a point where it couldn’t generate enough revenue from power generation to cover the cost of dam maintenance and upkeep. With state and county backing, the task force planned to acquire and upgrade the dams to bring them in line with federal requirements.

According to the task force, upgrades were already underway. About $300,000 in repairs were completed in March to the dam’s pier noses, wing walls and the gate system. Another $2 million in upgrades, including the installation of new gate hoists and de-icing improvements, were planned next winter.

“This has been a longstanding problem,” Kepler said.

Emails and messages left with Boyce Hydro were not immediately returned on Wednesday.

EGLE regulators conducted a “cursory" inspection of the Edenville Dam on October 4, 2018 and found the structure in “fair condition.” They wrote there were “no observed deficiencies that would be expected to cause immediate failure of the dam.” The Wixom Lake water level was about 4-feet below normal pool elevation at the time.

“However, we did have strong concerns that the dam did not have enough spillway capacity," said EGLE spokesperson Nick Assendelft.

“We had taken enforcement action against the dam’s owner for drawing down water levels without permission and for damage to natural resources as a result of those drawdowns,” Assendelft said. EGLE was pursuing additional enforcement against Boyce Hydro at the time of the breach.

In early May, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office filed a complaint against Boyce Hydro in an effort to seek compensation for natural resource damages caused by unauthorized drawdowns.

“Lack of investment in dam infrastructure is not uncommon in Michigan dams, which have suffered from deferred maintenance over the course of decades,” Assendelft said. “That, combined with the historic rainfall and flooding, were factors in the Edenville failure.”

More: Follow MLive coverage of Michigan flooding

Floodwaters overtopped the Sanford Dam on Tuesday, but the dam itself did not fail.

Kepler said the Sanford Dam was designed with a spillway structure called a “fuse plug” that is meant to wash away in high flooding conditions and keep the dam from collapsing.

With an upstream collapse at Edenville, the Sanford Dam was “expected to fail,” Kepler said.

“The way it was designed was to not completely fail all at once.”

Following the Edenville Dam collapse Tuesday, the Tittabawassee River matched its record 1986 crest of 33.9 feet in downtown Midland early Wednesday morning, according to the National Weather Service. It is expected to crest today 4 feet above that, at 38 feet. The 1986 flood was considered a 500-year event.

Tuesday’s dam breaches follow record levels of rainfall north of Midland that caused widespread flash flooding along Northeast Michigan rivers.

“To go through this in the midst of a global pandemic is almost unthinkable,” Whitmer said during her Tuesday night press conference.

Rebecca and Steve Malkin left their Sanford home just before 7 p.m. Tuesday and spent the night at the Midland High School, which was opened as a shelter.

Four emergency shelters were set up around Midland. The Michigan State Police, National Guard and American Red Cross are providing support.

“We don’t know what we’re gonna come home to,” Steve Malkin said. “If we got a home.”

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