Ann Arbor’s ‘Footing Drain Disconnection Program’ Under Fire in Class Action Lawsuit

New to ClassAction.org? Read our Newswire Disclaimer

Four plaintiffs have filed a proposed class action in Michigan against Ann Arbor alleging the city, through its “Footing Drain Disconnection Program,” has unlawfully impeded citizens’ rights to the exclusive use and occupation of their homes and led to property being taken through mandatory, city-ordered inspections.

“The [footing drain disconnections] destroyed the foundation drainage system at houses that had been constructed decades ago and appeared to be functioning as designed and replaced it with a system of unwanted operating, equipment, inside and outside their homes, that is burdensome, costly, unsafe, noisy and incompatible with the peace of mind and comfort the plaintiffs enjoyed,” the complaint asserts.

The 51-page complaint begins by explaining the Ann Arbor City Council, as it explained in a 2001 ordinance, put the Footing Drain Disconnection Program in place as a way to reduce storm water and groundwater drainage from residences into the city’s sewer system, the goal of which being to “reduce backups from the city sewers and overflows from the sewer system at the city’s wastewater treatment plant into the Huron River.” To accomplish this, the complaint continues, the program called for mandatory inspections in and around consumer’s homes by Ann Arbor employees, officials and outside demolition, excavation and construction contractors. The work done in and around consumers’ homes included permanent installations of hydraulic equipment, piping, pumps, external drainage collectors and other components. Storm water drainage systems built into proposed class members’ homes constructed between 1946 and 1973 in the Southwest and Northeast quadrants were disabled and replaced with city-sanctioned one-size-fits-all drainage systems, the construction for which the lawsuit describes as permanently occupying “significant areas of the houses, inside and out.”

An administrative enforcement case was commenced against Ann Arbor by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) (under authority of the federal EPA) sometime between 1998 and 2000, the lawsuit says, pertaining to abatement and control of “combined sewer overflows” from parts of the city’s sewer system. These overflows, the lawsuit continues, saw storm water combined with sewage at Ann Arbor’s Wastewater Treatment Plant that reportedly flowed into the Huron River. MDEQ charged that “the city’s sewer system, due to growth, development and the resulting sewer inflows, was no longer adequate for its then-immediate or future needs for prevention of overflows of untreated combined sewage water surcharging of the city’s combined sewers and overwhelming the capacity for treatment at the Ann Arbor Waste Water Treatment Plant,” according to the complaint.

Ann Arbor reportedly had until 2003 to comply with the deficiencies outlined in MDEQ’s enforcement case detailed above or else implement “traditional engineering solutions” to the wastewater problem the city had allegedly balked at years prior when the initial footing drain disconnection builds took place.

The lawsuit claims that, in truth, the city of Ann Arbor installed footing drain disconnections in and around proposed class members’ homes all those years ago despite knowing that they “represented a new and unproven technology for which inadequate data existed as to its effectiveness.” The footing drain disconnections themselves were ultimately destructive, the case argues, noting that, per the Michigan Bureau of Construction Codes, their installation was not subject to state construction or building codes of any kind, and therefore impermissibly deprived proposed class members of basic protections applied by such codes.

Alleging that the footing drain disconnections were installed against the will of proposed class members, the lawsuit scalds that the city of Ann Arbor forcibly commenced project by threatening residents with “financial penalties, disconnection from all city and water services, potential sewer liens and, possibly, the eventual loss of their homes.”