DETROIT – It was the first real test of the season Monday as big rain arrived overnight. Now, we’re getting answers from MDOT about how the pumps held up after a whole lot of rain.
After last year’s historic floods, Metro Detroiters are already on edge, and commuters woke up Tuesday (June 7) fearing the worst. But overall, it was good news except for those living in a few troubled spots.
A June 26 rainstorm came down almost one year to the day, which knocked the power out; two freeway pumps began to overflow, causing dozens of drivers to get stuck on the freeways.
MDOT spent the past year working on improving response time to get portable generators out to power those pumps so residents won’t get stuck in the future.
It’s a never-ending cycle in the summer.
“We know what’s going to happen,” said Diane Cross from MDOT. “We know we’re going to get more water, more rain, more runoff, and again our low-line freeways. We can’t do anything again about our low-line freeways. We can increase the maintenance and increase the chances of having power at the pump stations to pull that water off of the freeway.”
MDOT told Local 4 that overnight power was not lost, and its pumps performed well.
However, the primary issue was that 90% of high water on roads and freeways Tuesday morning was caused by tons of litter which clogged drain after drain across the city.
Drains on streets pull that trash down to drains on freeways, and the water starts to back up.
Crews were clearing the hundreds of drains before the rain hit, but crews simply couldn’t catch up with the staggering amount of litter on the streets.
MDOT says that if you don’t want to get your car stuck in high water on a freeway or if you would like to avoid being delayed because of a traffic backup due to high water on a highway, not to throw their trash onto the freeway because that stuff ultimately clogs the drains.
MDOT says some highway drains were covered on purpose due to construction and construction zones for environmental reasons. MDOT says they have to cover that to ensure that litter doesn’t make its way down there either.
