City of Parchment
On July 26, 2018, the City of Parchment discovered unacceptable levels of PFAS in its drinking water well supply. At that time, the city provided drinking water from groundwater wells to portions of both Parchment and Cooper Township. The current total service population is approximately 3,100 residential units and several businesses. When the PFAS issue was discovered, both Cooper Township and Parchment, along with the City of Kalamazoo immediately began coordinating efforts to shut down the Parchment wells and provide drinking water through emergency interconnections with the Kalamazoo water system.
Temporary water connections were immediately implemented, and Kalamazoo began flushing the Parchment water system on July 27, 2018. Prein&Newhof assisted the city with modeling the newly joined systems to ensure adequate flows and pressures could be maintained. Three permanent connections were designed, permitted, constructed, and put into permanent service within 21 days.
In the fall of 2018, Kalamazoo asked Prein&Newhof to prepare a DWSRF loan application for water system extensions of 50,000 feet of water main and up to 500 home connections in areas impacted by the PFAS. Prein&Newhof quickly responded with an expedited DWSRF application and project design, which was submitted to EGLE for proposed 2021 construction. The application was successful, and the project bids were opened in June of 2020. Work began shortly thereafter and was completed in the summer of 2021 with a total of 400 residential homes being provided with clean, municipal water.
Richland Township
In 2016, the State of Michigan was monitoring an open environmental site in Richland Township and discovered that it was also contaminated with PFAS. Water well sampling performed downgradient of the site to define an area of impacted drinking water wells. In late 2018, the City of Kalamazoo, who provides municipal water to the Richland area, asked Prein&Newhof to prepare a DWSRF loan application and expedite a water system extension design for 6,500 feet of water main and 36 home connections.
In early 2019, the state created a grant program to assist communities with responding to environmental contamination issues. Because Prein&Newhof was working closely with State of Michigan EGLE staff on the DWSRF application, we were able to quickly pivot the funding request for the Richland water mains and Kalamazoo was awarded one of the first C2R2 grants in the state.
With the new funding source and an expedited design, the project went out to bid in fall 2019 and was constructed in spring 2020. This was the first of two water main extension projects in Richland Township to supply water to homes affected by PFAS. In the spring of 2019, while the design on the first project was underway, Kalamazoo asked Prein&Newhof to prepare another DWSRF loan application for the second water system extension into other areas impacted by PFAS. Prein&Newhof quickly responded with another expedited application and project design, which was submitted to EGLE for proposed 2021 construction. The application was successful, and the project bids were opened in June of 2020. Work began shortly thereafter and was completed in the spring of 2021 with another 30 residential homes being provided with clean, municipal water.