St. Clair Shores officials outline Jefferson Relief sewer tunnel, say work will mobilize Feb. 17

St. Clair Shores officials and engineers on the Jefferson Relief sewer project said the multi‑phase microtunneling effort to complete a parallel 60‑inch sewer from 9 Mile Road to Rio Vista will mobilize Feb. 17 and is expected to run roughly 18–24 months.

The project is intended to eliminate a single‑pipe bottleneck between the Martin and Chappetin (Chapetin) retention basins and reduce combined‑sewer discharges to Lake St. Clair by allowing the Martin basin to send more flow to Chapetin. Jen Shahab, an AEW engineer, described the work as “a sanitary sewer that we're building, along Jefferson from 9 Mile to Rio Vista,” and said microtunneling was chosen “to minimize the disturbance and kind of minimize the time that it takes to install this pipe.”

City officials and the design team said completing the parallel 60‑inch pipe will let the system route isolated storm flows more effectively and reduce the frequency and volume of discharges. Council members cited recent discharges as context: officials noted the last large discharge occurred Dec. 29 and reported about 46,000,000 gallons on that event. The project team estimated the new pipe could remove “maybe 50% of these discharges,” a reduction they said would translate to millions of gallons kept out of the lake annually.

Scope, funding and partners The St. Clair‑area sanitary authority (referred to in the…