Macomb County Public Works Commissioner Candice Miller criticized Oakland County for the “sickening release” of nearly 1.2 million gallons of raw sewage into the Red Run Drain last week and repeated calls for greater state invention to stop them.

Miller sent a letter Wednesday to Phillip Roos, director of the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy, to ask for state action following the April 2-3 release from the Dequindre Interceptor sewage drain in the George W. Kuhn Drainage District as well as the release of 820 million gallons of treated water from the George W. Kuhn Basin into the Red Run.

“Not only did Oakland County spew raw untreated sewage with maxed-out E.coli readings into Macomb County waters, but the next morning my staff discovered that the GWK outfall was again covered in sanitary wipes, condoms, and tampons,” Miller wrote to Roos.

She noted the Red Run’s “banks, trees and bushes were full of this sanitary debris,” and that the water contained a brown plume.

“I am sure many more numerous waste products and floatables washed further downstream into the Clinton River and Lake St. Clair,” she said.

The request follows intensified efforts by Miller, other county officials and state lawmakers in recent months to lobby the state to invoke more stringent requirements on Oakland to reduce discharges.

Miller’s allegations brought a sharp response from Oakland Water Resources Commissioner Jim Nash, who accused her of bending the truth and noted there were releases in Macomb, too.

“When she blames the George W. Kuhn, it’s just not true,” Nash said. “The George W. Kuhn performed exactly the way it’s supposed to perform and it was well within its permit.”

He conceded the release from the Dequindre pipe, which only carries sewage, was necessary to prevent the flooding of “several hundred basements downstream” with sewage water.

But he said officials, including himself, Miller and the Great Lakes Water Authority representatives, been looking at ways to stop or reduce the releases. A study on the problem was recently completed, he said. The results are not yet available.

“She (Miller) wrote a letter with me to the Great Lakes Water Authority, and her engineers and my engineers have been working with the water authority for two years,” he said. “They just finished a study recently to look at how they can make it so this won’t happen as much. That’s the kind of thing we’re trying to stop.”

Nash pointed a finger back at Macomb County and the cities of Warren and Center Line that also released overflows into drains and Lake St. Clair during the April 2-3 heavy rainfall when nearly 2-½ inches fell, most of it within about an hour.

“We have to be careful when assigning blame,” Nash said. “When she’s complaining about 1.1 million gallons (in Oakland) — it’s a problem — but when she doesn’t complain about 43 million gallons from Warren going into the drain, I don’t understand that.”

Miller said that Oakland released 820 million gallons of “minimally treated sewage,” although Nash has said that water released from the basin as “crystal clear.”

In her letter, Miller described the discharge as a “dark putrid murky brown and far from being ‘crystal clear’”.

“Apparently, the only thing crystal clear is that Oakland County will not prioritize eliminating raw sewage SSO discharges or even reducing CSOs into Macomb without EGLE enforcement,” she said.

SSOs are sanitary sewer overflows from pipes that only contain sewage while CSOs are combined sewer overflows from pipes carrying both water and sewage.

State records show the Warren Water Water Treatment Plant did a SSO discharge off 42.4 million gallons of treated sewage water from April 3 to 5.

“All of our overflows are screened through the rakes, pumps, and grit channel and then treated with chemicals before discharge,” said

Joseph Jenkins, treatment facility engineer, in a written statement Thursday. “All tested levels were under our regulatory permit requirements.”

In an SSO release, the city of Center Line discharged just under 2 million gallons of raw sewage into the Lorraine Drain, which flows into the Red Run, on April 3, according to state records and City Manager Dennis Champine.

“There is no doubt we had to do something that was out of the normal but it was something we had to do,” Champine said Thursday.

It was Center Line’s first release since 2022, when the Great Lakes Water Authority ordered a release though the city could have handled it, he said. The last release instigated by the city was 2019, he said.

The city is about to enter the early construction phase of a $12 million investment of state funds to upgrade facilities in Center Line and Detroit to increase Center Line’s capacity and flow, he said.

At Macomb Public Works’ Chapaton Retention Basin in St. Clair Shores, 50 million gallons was released from the basin and another 16 million gallons was released from its rarely used bypass, both April 3. Both were combined sewer overflows and were not raw but treated sewage, a public works officials said.

The Kuhn Basin, located just across the county border in Madison Heights and one of the largest basins in the country, serves the combined stormwater and sanitary flow from 14 communities in southeast Oakland County. During heavy rainfalls, the basin can execute CSO releases via permit.

Along with Miller, a bi-partisan group of 10 state representatives from Macomb and Oakland counties and a state senator have urged EGLE to add stricter conditions than the changes initially drafted for the pending renewal of the Kuhn Basin’s expired permit.

Miller wants Oakland to separate storm sewers from the sanitary flow or build large open or enclosed retention basins; add detention ponds; and add “daylight” parts of the enclosed section of the drain system west of Dequindre by unearthing and removing sections of pipe to allow grassy areas, shrubs and trees to absorb stormwater and filter out millions of tons of nitrogen, phosphorus and sedimentation.

In recent years, Macomb County has invested more than $100 million in completed and ongoing underground infrastructure projects that will reduce combined sewer overflows into Lake St. Clair from the Chapaton Retention Treatment Basin by a total of 75%, and from the Martin Retention Treatment Basin by 50%, officials said.