Posted on December 13, 2021
KALAMAZOO, MI — Environmental regulators are threatening to sue the owner of a hydroelectric dam responsible for polluting the Kalamazoo River with an estimated 369,000 tons of sediment after cleanup negotiations stalled.
The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE) indicated it’s moving toward litigation against the owner of Morrow Dam, which released decades-worth of accumulated sediment into the river two years ago after draining its impoundment without warning.
Eagle Creek Renewable Energy, a subsidiary of the Canadian provincial government utility Ontario Power Generation (OPG), said in June it would dredge parts of the river and map large deposits of sediment. The thick mud is smothering wildlife habitat in the river, impeding public access and creating a safety hazard from which people have required rescue.
Eagle Creek, which operates the dam under the entity STS Hydropower, was meeting biweekly with the state this year to develop river restoration plans. Those meetings have “paused,” EGLE said Friday, Dec. 10, without elaborating on why. No dredging has occurred. EGLE says the company is responsible for cleaning up the mess.
“Failure to move forward in a cooperative manner will result in escalated enforcement, which may include litigation,” said EGLE spokesperson Scott Dean.
In a statement Friday, Dean said Eagle Creek has “not stepped away from the negotiation table” and that “EGLE is currently exploring its enforcement options to ensure that STS Hydropower and Eagle Creek follow through on their commitment to address the releases of sediment downstream of the Morrow Dam for which they are responsible.”
It’s unclear exactly when and why negotiations broke down. District staff in EGLE’s water resources division said Friday that Eagle Creek indicated in early-mid October it did not intend to follow-though on its dredging pledge. On Oct. 19, EGLE staff called settlement discussions “ongoing” in an email, and, in a Nov. 5 follow-up, stated that status hadn’t changed.
Eagle Creek announced plans June 4 that involved dredging next to Morrow Dam in Comstock Township and near the Kings Highway bridge in Kalamazoo. Deposits would be mapped in a 30-mile stretch between Parchment and Allegan.
“STS is working with Michigan EGLE to finalize plans for these projects and expects that sediment removal activities will commence later this summer,” said David Fox, licensing and compliance director for Eagle Creek. “Breaking ground on these projects will represent a significant milestone in STS’s sediment response effort.”
That was six months ago.
Today, “we have no indication from Eagle Creek that they are planning to proceed with any dredging projects,” said Kyle Alexander, water resources division supervisor in Kalamazoo, who declined to say why negotiations broke down and referred the question to Eagle Creek.
Eagle Creek and OPG have both ignored multiple MLive inquiries this fall about the lack of progress toward removing the sediment and mitigating the ongoing ecological crisis.
The company did dredge about 2,000 cubic yards of sediment in April from an oxbow side channel alongside Wenke Park. The limited removal represents less than one percent of the impoundment sludge choking the river.
The sediment, which began inundating the river when Eagle Creek lowered Morrow Lake for a gate repair in Nov. 2019 without sediment controls in place, has migrated over time. In Comstock Township near the dam, river current has washed much of it downstream and re-exposed the gravel bottom in many areas, although some large deposits remain.
Eagle Creek says the 2019 drawdown was an “emergency” move prompted by an inspection report that has not been made public or shared with the state. The company began the gate replacement project exactly a year later. It began refilling the Morrow Lake reservoir in December 2020.
River experts such as Stephen Hamilton, an aquatic ecology professor at Michigan State University, believe the 1,000-acre impoundment may have been collecting sediment since the dam was built in 1941, about 80 years before the drawdown.
Some deposits have been faintly visible on Google Earth. Many hardened and grew vegetation during dry spells over the past two years, giving a deceptive appearance of stability. In September, Kalamazoo public safety officers rescued a man who claimed to be stuck for four hours before he was noticed by golfers at the city’s Red Arrow course.
Wildlife officials say the impacts are still being studied, but the sediment has smothered spawning beds and the river’s smallmouth bass population has certainly been affected.
“In some of these areas, the shoreline wood is partly or completely buried,” said Matt Diana, a biologist with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. “That’s a loss of habitat.”
“We anticipate that resulting in more longer-term impacts to the fishery.”
Local anglers formed a group, the Kalamazoo River Alliance, in 2020 to advocate for cleanup. The group’s president, Ryan Baker, is frustrated by the lack of urgency around the issue.
“Everything is happening behind-the-scenes,” Baker said. “We don’t have a clue what’s going on.”
