Traverse City staff are reviewing options -- including a lawsuit -- after a mechanical failure at the William G. Milliken Waterscape in Clinch Park this summer caused raw sewage to rain out of the park's splash pad.

In a report to city commissioners this week, Traverse City Manager Jered Ottenwess says Detroit-based design consultants Hamilton Anderson Associates “did not satisfactorily fulfill all of their responsibilities...in terms of properly identifying regulatory permit requirements and design review.” The city has hired Vortex Midwest, a water feature designer and provider, to conduct an audit of the waterscape in the coming weeks to identify any potential flaws that may have been overlooked in its initial design and construction.

Since the failure of a sewer pump station on June 30 that resulted in a half-dozen children being exposed to contaminated water, the city has stopped making payments to Hamilton Anderson Associates. Unpaid invoices now total $12,809; the city already paid $268,826 for project services. Pending the outcome of the audit, the city might pursue legal action against the firm. (A representative from Hamilton Anderson Associates said the firm was unable to comment for this story.)

“There was clearly a design error (with the cross connection), and they are responsible for that,” says Ottenwess. “They did not review the final designs with city staff like they were required to. They also didn't know what permits were needed. The city staff had to do that research.”

The city has faced intense criticism for opening the waterscape before it had all of its required permits in hand, concerns that were exacerbated when it was revealed State Rep. Wayne Schmidt (R-Traverse City) contacted the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) in June to see if approvals for the park could be expedited. The DEQ gave the city permission to open the park on June 27, with a permit intended to follow.

But City Engineer Tim Lodge insists that neither city staff nor commissioners applied political pressure on the DEQ and did not attempt to circumnavigate the permiting system, and that Schmidt's call – made of his own volition – represented a straightforward inquiry into approval processes. Ottenwess affirms Lodge's claim, adding that none of the city staff “felt there was any potential risk to public health or safety (at the waterscape), or they would never have moved forward with opening.”

Instead, according to Lodge, the pump station failure represented an “inherent design flaw” – one that could have been triggered at any time, and one that permitting processes were unlikely to catch. The timing of the pump's failure during a period of provisional operating status – combined with a staff member's failure to read a memo issued on June 28 to shut down the waterscape until the rest of the permits came in – resulted in a “perfect storm of things going wrong,” says Ottenwess.

The city's focus now is on making things right. The waterscape reopened for Labor Day weekend after the pump station was overhauled and the water feature was disconnected from the overflow gravity sewer connection, thereby preventing both pump failures and sanitary sewage from backing up into the reservoir again in the future.

The city will also take steps to implement any recommendations identified in Vortex Midwest's upcoming audit. The waterscape, closed for the season, could reopen as soon as spring 2014, though potential litigation and/or design improvements could delay that.

Ottenwess acknowledges the possibility that negative impressions of the park may linger in the public, but expresses optimism that those concerns will abate over time.

“It's really unfortunate we had the serious design flaws we had,” he says. “But I hope people will put it in perspective and understand we had one unfortunate incident, (which) we've fixed. There have been so many fantastic improvements in the park...hopefully we'll be able to move on."