Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Spillway Capacity And Regulatory Response topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
EGLE witness testifies FERC warned of spillway deficit; independent team found drawdown would have offered only limited benefit
Summary
On the third day of the bench trial over the Edenville Dam failure, EGLE dam‑safety witness Luke Trumbull testified that FERC and consultants had long identified a spillway capacity deficit and that the independent forensic team and FERC staff later concluded a pre‑emptive drawdown would have produced only marginal flood‑reduction benefits.
An EGLE dam‑safety official told the Michigan Court of Claims on the trial's third day that federal and state records dating back decades warned Edenville's operators the dam's spillway could not safely pass the design flood.
Luke Trumbull, who described himself as a dam safety regulator for the state, testified that a 1999 FERC letter to the prior licensee documented the need to increase spillway capacity and that when the license later transferred the issue remained unresolved. Reading from the department's correspondence, he said EGLE staff concluded in 2020 that "It is likely that the dam does not, in its current condition, meet state requirements to be able to pass 1 half PMF" and that consultants were preparing plans to address capacity shortfalls.
Trumbull also discussed the independent forensic team (IFT) that investigated the May 2020 failure. He summarized IFT conclusions that while staff considered lowering Wixom Lake as a mitigation option, the engineering analysis showed the reduction in peak elevation during a full probable‑maximum flood would be negligible. "This option by itself would have had a limited benefit with respect to reducing the chance of overtopping the dam," he read from the IFT report.
Under questioning, Trumbull explained Michigan's Part 315 dam‑safety enforcement framework: owners must submit technical inspection reports (a full Part 315 inspection for high‑hazard dams every three years), and EGLE generally requires an engineering basis before issuing enforcement orders to change operations or require structural work. He said he had not identified an engineering basis before the failure to require a state‑ordered drawdown.
Counsel reviewed competing technical records in court: the 2015 consultant report that found no imminent embankment instability at that time, Spicer Group's 2019–2020 analyses that concluded the dam lacked half‑PMF capacity and recommended a phased fix (gate upgrades followed by auxiliary spillways), and the IFT report that examined operational logs and operator interviews to estimate gate positions during the 2020 event.
Trumbull said EGLE provided data and limited fact checks to the IFT but did not direct the team's independent conclusions. He repeated that the available engineering work and the IFT's post‑failure analysis did not show that preemptive lowering would have materially prevented overtopping during the half‑PMF/full‑PMF event that contributed to the embankment instability.
The court paused its testimony schedule for logistical matters and to continue other witness testimony and deposition readings that filled gaps in the live transcript.
