Water goes over a berm at the southwest corner of Thurston Pond after heavy rains in June 2010. The Thurston Nature Center Committee expressed concern in the October 2010 Orchard Hills - Maplewood Homeowners Association newsletter that "we could lose virtually the entire pond unless adequate (not “band-aid”) rebuilding of the berm is done to heighten it and correct its structural deficiencies".

Courtesy Orchard Hills - Maplewood Homeowners Association; Photo Tom Edsall

When there was a hard rain in June, water went over a berm that holds back part of Thurston Pond. I just found out about it the other day.

It's been months now since June, so I can't go out and get a photograph of what the damage was. The challenge, then, is to tell the story in other ways than from firsthand experience — either from people who were there, from public records that were generated at the time or since, and from plans that people have underway that have not yet been approved but which have left a paper trail.

Here's a collection of information which reflects my incomplete understanding of the situation. I have yet to get a clear understanding of at which point I might need to approach this through the Freedom of Information Act process.

Where is Thurston Pond?

Thurston Pond (upper left) is a man-made pond that holds water in the headwaters of Miller's Creek in Ann Arbor.

Google Maps

Thurston Pond is located near Thurston Elementary School, on Ann Arbor's northeast side. It is adjacent to the Orchard Hills-Maplewood neighborhood. It is part of the Miller's Creek watershed, a drainage area formerly known as the North Campus Drain. The Thurston Nature Center is adjacent to the pond; that organization is part of the non-profit Thurston PTO.

Links

Orchard Hills-Maplewood Homeowners Association (OHMHA)

Millers Creek Watershed Association

Thurston Nature Center (old site)

Thurston Nature Center (current site)

Who owns the berm which protects Thurston Pond?

Thurston Pond had been at historically low water levels, and there was not enough water in it to sustain the aquatic life that had flourished there after the pond was originally built. In order to address the low water problem, the Ann Arbor Public Schools with the help of external grant money changed the drainage in some of the neighborhood areas so that they would drain into the pond and not directly downstream into the creek.

The Michigan DNRE's Coastal and Inland Waters Permit Information System shows the initial pond restoration permit 08-81-0052-P, which was for modifications to a "discharge structure". Final approval was given September 2008, and the project shows up in the Ann Arbor Public Schools minutes of January 2009:

"THURSTON POND: (Randy)Trent explains that the restoration of Thurston Pond, like the stormwater work at PHS, is for the good of the entire community. The county, the city, the state, the neighborhood and the AAPS are involved. The money needed here is paid for partly with bonds and partly with grants. The Clean Michigan Initiative has given the District a $300,000 grant. The project involves the diversion of a stormwater pipe into Thurston Pond."

Work was done in the summer of 2009, and this caused the water levels in the pond to go up and some of the habitat to be restored.

What is the current state of maintenance and repair of the pond?

The additional drainage to the pond resulted in more water going into it. The project did not, however, change the structures handling the water leaving the pond. Water from storms and the spring melt caused the pond to rise in May, causing a berm to be overtopped with minor damage.

An exceptionally large rainstorm hit Ann Arbor on the night of June 5 and 6. Rain totals in the area varied, and the two inches of rain across the area were relatively mild compared to the tornado that came south of town and hit Dundee.

The September 2010 newsletter of the Orchard Hills - Maplewood Homeowners Association has an account of what happened to the pond, written by Neal Foster:

On June 5th we had 2.75 inches of rain. Early on the 6th Tom Edsall went down to see what had happened to the pond and the berm: the woods on the west side of the
berm were flooded to a much greater degree than he had seen in over 4 decades and
the berm was breached in three places. The original breach that the TNCC had patched
with sandbags was not leaking, and the second breach that an AAPSD contractor had
covered with a waterproof blanket and sand bags was also dry because new breaches
had eroded the berm much more deeply. The new berm damage completely changed
the path of Thurston Pond's overflow water; its historic exit drain to Millers Creek now no longer functions.

What happens next?

The Ann Arbor Public Schools has applied for a permit for draw-down and dredging of Thurston Pond (permit 10-81-0062-P) to take on the next phase of this action. The DNRE online site only includes a fraction of the key information about that project.

I spoke with Randy Trent, Executive Director of Physical Properties at the Ann Arbor Public Schools, to understand what happens next. He said to me that JF New, the contractor for the original project, was working with the school system to do the additional work on the berm to make it stronger and to correct the drainage so that the exit for excess water would not be over the top of the berm. The original bond funding for the project has enough money reserved as a contingency to start this work; Trent did not anticipate that additional work would be expensive enough to require an additional set of approval at the school board level.

If there is a FOIA process to follow, it will be to track the activities of all appropriate organizations related to their activities surrounding this permit to do work.

How FOIA works, and why this step is important

The Michigan Freedom of Information Act protects a citizen's right to access records. It does not, however, provide any guarantees regarding access to information. If something has not been written down, and if all of the discussions regarding a problem to date have been internal unpublished correspondence within an organization, then no FOIA request can be guaranteed to unearth what you want.

The FOIA problem changes once you have identified a file number within an organization. Rather than asking the organization to go through a wild goose chase, you get the opportunity to specify precisely what it is you are looking for by number, not by contents. Bureaucracies are notoriously slow at search inside their own file cabinets, so an index number speeds things up tremendously.

I got far enough with public records to know that a lot hinges on the details of this permit - what work needs to be done, how much it will cost, who will do the work, and how long it will take to get things done. The story is incomplete without looking at it, but I could not get this far without digging through a lot of openly available public records and published news to find the permit number that the whole next step of the process of pond restoration hinges on.

Edward Vielmetti writes the FOIA Friday column for AnnArbor.com.