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 presentation as SMSD/SCMSD) is the project owner; Macomb County, St. Clair Shores, Eastpointe and Roseville were listed as stakeholders. AEW/Fishbeck and NTH are on the design team and Rick Mann and Gino (identified in the presentation) represent the contractor team. Public funding cited in the presentation included $20,000,000 from Macomb County, $5,000,000 from the state and $2,000,000 in federal funding; presenters said the remainder will not be borne solely by ratepayers.

Construction method, staging and traffic impacts Engineers described a microtunneling approach: the new 60‑inch pipe (shown as a yellow line in presentation slides) will be tunneled beneath utilities and roadways to avoid open trenching. Shahab said crews will have to raise or lower side‑street sanitary connections at each crossing; that work will place crews in intersections for about a week per crossing while temporary traffic arrangements are in place.

Project staging is divided into nine traffic‑control phases that the contractor said will expand and contract as they move along Jefferson. Presenters said north of 10 Mile the road will operate under one‑way traffic for portions of work where only four lanes exist and three are required for construction; some dead‑end streets will have temporary access provided from adjacent streets. Presenters emphasized the majority of Jefferson will remain open while crews work in confined shaft areas. Gino (contractor representative) said much of the equipment and materials will remain confined to tunnel shaft work zones.

Timeline, public outreach and contingencies Project staff said mobilization will begin Feb. 17 and that construction could take about 18 months to two years to reach the opposite end. Teams described a roughly two‑week overlap between phases as equipment is moved. Presenters said shafts will be launched and received in sequence and that the boring machine will be pulled and relunched at recovery shafts rather than leaving multiple large open pits at once.

To answer resident concerns, the city will host a public meeting in the council chamber at 7 p.m. (the presenters said they would post the meeting on the city Facebook page and provide printed plans at the session). The project team pledged weekly progress updates to the city and an online status page, and provided a project contact list distributed at the prior meeting.

Speakers and issues raised Council members and staff pressed presenters on business access, boat access for marinas and emergency access during short, intersection‑level closures. Presenters said signs and coordinated marketing (with potential TIF assistance) will encourage customers to patronize Nautical Mile businesses during construction and that they had met with business and marina owners multiple times. The contractor said they could reposition equipment within 24 hours when needed to accommodate large boats.

City members also raised coordination with other projects on Jefferson (a separate pump‑station project in Chesterfield was noted as unrelated to the city’s work). Council members asked about soil reuse for beach replenishment and about tunnel dewatering contingency plans; presenters said shafts and tunnels will be pumped as needed and they described standard dewatering pumps in tunnel/shaft operations.

Why it matters Officials framed the project as an infrastructure fix to an historical system layout in which two large interceptors feed into a single pipe between retention basins, creating a discharge point during isolated storms. Completing the parallel 60‑inch pipe is intended to give operators greater flexibility to route storm flow into expanded capacity at Chapetin and reduce combined‑sewer overflows to Lake St. Clair.

Community next steps The project team will hold a resident meeting at 7 p.m. in the council chamber (presenters said they would post the date/time publicly), post weekly updates to a project page and maintain a project contact list for questions. Presenters asked businesses to provide logos for wayfinding signs and said they are coordinating with the county and local event planners to limit summertime impacts.