EAGLE LAKE PUMP REDESIGN
Supplemental for Township Board Consideration
Link to Presentation: Eagle Lake Pump Redesign
PURPOSE: A practical framework for the redesign, related infrastructure review, and long-term water management
Purpose and Context
Township decisions about water and public infrastructure should protect residents while also caring for the lakes, groundwater, wetlands, and other water resources that make this community unique. Public infrastructure should be planned for more than today’s conditions. It should remain reliable when water levels and groundwater conditions change.
That long-term view already appears in Township policy. Ordinance No. 297 identifies protection of groundwater used for public drinking water as part of safeguarding health, safety, and welfare. The pump redesign is an opportunity to bring that same long-term thinking to lake management, groundwater, drainage, and infrastructure.
What Redesign Can Accomplish
The immediate issue is pumping capacity, but the larger opportunity is to create a system that can be measured, understood, and managed. The redesign materials call for actual discharge measurement, stormwater analysis, groundwater monitoring, planning for high groundwater, evaluation of the connected lakes, and use of current flood information when planning for growth.
The practical approach is to move the redesign forward while using the project to build better information for the decisions that follow.
1. Immediate Action | Design, Measure, and Prepare
The Board can address the known infrastructure need while building measurement and operating safeguards into the project from the start.
Design appropriate capacity
· Provide normal pumping capability and infrastructure for higher contingency capacity during high-water conditions.
· Normal operation remains within the permitted rate; temporary higher pumping would require applicable approval.
Measure actual performance
· Install a flow meter and keep a record of actual discharge through the Eagle Lake outlet.
· Measured discharge shows how the system performs, not just how it was designed to perform.
Prepare for high water
· Set water-level triggers, decision authority, responsibilities, approval steps, operating procedures, and recordkeeping before the next high-water event.
Establish a groundwater baseline
· Begin monitoring representative locations so current conditions become the start of a useful long-term record.
· Compare lake levels, groundwater, pump operation, actual discharge, and supporting system data over time.
2. Parallel Work | Answer Questions Without Delaying the Redesign
Moving the redesign forward does not require settling every responsibility, funding, and infrastructure question first. Those questions can be reviewed while design work proceeds.
Independent design and responsibility review
· Determine why the permanent system cannot provide the desired contingency capability.
· Review whether the original design, design criteria, or contract performance contributed to the need for modification.
· If responsibility is identified, consider whether appropriate redesign or engineering costs should be recovered or reduced.
Development-related impacts and benefits
· Use stormwater and system analysis to understand added demands and benefits associated with development-related interests.
· Any decision about contribution should follow the analysis, not come before it.
Coordinate with the PQ Avenue sanitary sewer project
The Township Engineer’s July 1, 2019, memorandum documented historically high groundwater along PQ Avenue west of Finnegan. The memorandum describes a 2017 sewer study to 3rd Street, updated in 2019 to South 4th Street. It also identifies dewatering as a construction issue and says discharge would likely be pumped toward Pine Island Lake or Eagle Lake.
· Use groundwater information developed through the pump redesign to inform future sewer and other below-grade infrastructure work.
· Plan for groundwater and dewatering conditions before construction begins.
· This does not assume a future sewer problem. It makes documented engineering consideration part of current planning.
3. System Review | Follow the Full Drainage Pathway
The presentation calls for including the Vineyards, North Eagle, and Sanctuary drainage systems in the analysis and asks for their individual and combined effects during 2-, 5-, 10-, 25-, 50-, and 100-year storms.
Evaluate the combined system
· Look at connected stormwater facilities together rather than treating each basin as an isolated feature.
· Follow the drainage pathway through stormwater facilities, wetlands, and the receiving water system.
· Test whether the redesigned system can manage those inflows while maintaining the legal lake level.
The purpose is not to presume an adverse impact. It is to understand how the parts of the system perform together before long-lived infrastructure and development decisions become difficult or costly to change.
4. Long-Term Stewardship | Monitor, Adapt, and Plan for Growth
The long-term value of this work is the record it can create. The presentation recommends ongoing groundwater monitoring and publication of lake-level, pump-operation, and actual-discharge records so performance can be reviewed over time.
Manage the connected lakes and groundwater
· Evaluate Eagle, Crooked, Pine Island, and Pretty Lakes as a connected system with groundwater, drainage, and pumping needs.
· Use monitoring and hydraulic analysis to determine actual groundwater elevation, direction, timing, and geographic extent.
· The presentation treats the groundwater response as a question to be tested, not as a proven effect.
Look beyond the shoreline
· Monitor representative locations near storm basins, wetlands and low areas, sensitive properties, and below-grade infrastructure.
· Use the record to see whether lake levels, groundwater conditions, and drainage response change together across these locations.
Use current information when planning growth
· Consider current floodplain, groundwater, and EGLE-recommended elevations when reviewing new development.
· Account for added demands on the water system when planning future development and infrastructure.
The goal is balance, not pumping capacity alone. Success means managing surface water, groundwater, stormwater, sensitive locations, existing infrastructure, and future growth together so one decision does not unintentionally create a problem somewhere else.
Funding and Responsibility
Funding should follow the facts. The redesign can proceed while an independent review examines why the modifications are needed, who creates added demands on the system, who receives a direct benefit from related public improvements, and how those findings should affect cost allocation. The purpose is not to assume responsibility in advance. It is to make sure existing residents and taxpayers are not assigned costs before the Township understands whether responsibility or benefit is shared.
Development-related participation
If engineering and financial review identifies development-related demands or a direct benefit from the improvements, the Township should evaluate whether a reasonable and lawful share of related costs can be assigned to or negotiated with the benefiting development interests. For The Sanctuary, that review should include the development’s stormwater system and the planned sanitary-sewer extension where the extension is needed to serve the plat.
· Stormwater and drainage improvements are needed to manage development-related flows within the larger water system.
· Monitoring, modeling, or analysis needed to understand the effect of those flows on drainage, groundwater, wetlands, and lake management.
· Appropriate measures needed to address documented groundwater or dewatering conditions affecting the sanitary-sewer project.
· An appropriate share of sanitary-sewer capital costs where new development benefits from or requires the extension.
Determine any contribution, amount, or funding mechanism through engineering, financial, contractual, and legal review rather than assuming it in advance.
Recommended Board Direction
· Move the Eagle Lake redesign forward with appropriate normal and contingency capability.
· Build actual-discharge measurement and high-water operating procedures into the project.
· Complete system-wide stormwater, groundwater, connected lake, and flood-information analysis.
· Conduct design, responsibility, and funding review in parallel.
· Use the resulting information for long-term oversight, related infrastructure, and future-growth decisions.
· Evaluate development-related cost participation where new development creates identifiable system demands or directly benefits from drainage, lake-management, monitoring, or sanitary-sewer improvements.
The Township does not need to solve every water-management question before advancing the redesign. It does need to make sure the redesign begins producing the information needed to answer those questions responsibly.
Design for capacity | Measure performance | Monitor the system | Plan for high water
Build the information needed for tomorrow’s decisions.