City officials credit recent upgrades, including fish pass and sewer work, with limiting downtown damage during April flood

Art Kger, the city’s director of municipal utilities, told the Traverse City commission at a study session that a cluster of infrastructure projects helped the city weather an unprecedented April flood without the catastrophic downtown damage that was possible.

Kger said the event produced record flows in the Boardman River watershed and that an upstream gauge reading on April 14 reached "1,120," which he described as "about a 92% increase" over the previous 77‑year record. He said the combination of frozen ground, rapid snowmelt and heavy rain produced runoff with "nowhere for that water to go," and that investments in the wastewater plant, riverwall stabilization and the fish pass were critical to the city's response.

The presentation named several projects and their funding sources. Kger said a 2021 interim upgrade raised UV electrical equipment out of the channel after regulators required an administrative consent order; the electrical work cost roughly $240,000 from the sewer fund. He also summarized a 2023 sewer relocation and riverwall stabilization project in the downtown 100–200 blocks funded with approximately $2.7 million of CWSRF loan proceeds. The Westside sewer lining deployed in 2025 rehabilitated about 9,000 feet of sewer at an estimated $1.2 million, Kger said.

Kger credited the new fish pass with preventing a worse outcome at the old dam. "Engineering analysis indicated that if the old dam was in place, it would have been likely over top," he said, adding that a failure "probably would have just been a wall of water going through town." He estimated federal support for the fish pass at "25 million plus" and said it could be closer to $30–32 million when state and other funding are included.

Mark Huggard, a Jacobs consultant who reviewed the wastewater plant's operational performance, reported that the plant's max day flow during the event was just over 7.8 million gallons per day (MGD), up from about 4.7 MGD pre‑event, with a peak‑hour flow of 9.1 MGD. Because the facility's hydraulic design capacity is 17 MGD, Huggard said the plant operated at roughly half of its hydraulic design during peak conditions and was able to treat the increased flows.

Huggard told the commission that temporary measures taken under the ACO—raising electrical controls for the UV channel—prevented a full UV outage. He said monitoring showed that approximately 2.3 million gallons of flow between April 12–16 may not have received full UV disinfection, but that the membrane treatment at the plant removed over 99% of fecal coliform in effluent samples and that all permit parameters remained in compliance.

Commissioners asked whether the city could have communicated sooner that a raw‑sewage spill had not occurred. Kger acknowledged communications could have been faster, noting the confusion stemmed in part from construction dewatering and the presence of an abandoned line that produced odor during excavation. He stressed the city's commitment to continued public notification and said staff will provide more timely updates during future incidents.

Looking ahead, staff told the commission the next major investments will include a full UV system replacement to address hydraulic capacity and to confine UV modules to avoid electrical exposure, ongoing annual sewer rehabilitation funded in the CIP, and a stormwater master plan to align future projects with climate resiliency objectives.

The session closed with commissioners praising staff for avoiding major public‑health incidents and noting the need for continued regional cooperation on roads and watershed assets that cross municipal boundaries.