Just Months Before 2001 City Task Force Picked Mandatory FDDs as “Solution” to City Sewage Overflows, City Admitted Lack of “Certainty” About FDD Data, Effectiveness
Posted: August 29, 2019 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a commentCity Task Force Admitted to “Higher Level of Certainty [in] the Other Solutions”
The City Council passed the mandatory FDD Program in August 2001. In 2001 and since, City of Ann Arbor officials, staff, attorneys, employees, contractors and others involved with the Footing Drain Disconnection Program billed FDD’s to the City at large and to the homeowners in five FDDP “Target Areas” as a safe, effective and cheap solution to flooding problems and sewage overflows into the Huron and local tributaries.
As the previous post shows, however, the City apparently completed mandatory FDDs, without the knowledge of owners, free of requirements of State Building Codes on the basis of an administrative determination in Lansing, without notice to anyone.
Quite apart from expecting code enforcement by the City and State, however, the thousands of residents involved had separate expectations based on trust in the honesty and competence of the City government. They would have been justified in thinking that if the City were going to require construction in thousands of private homes, then the City would certainly have had the highest confidence in the functioning, safety and effectiveness of FDDs to do what they were advertised as doing.
Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, as alleged in Paragraph 73 of the FDD Federal Class Action Complaint, the City admitted in writing that FDDs were unproven and lacking in scientific support when the City began doing them.
The City’s Water Utility Department published a flyer in January 2001 that included a Q&A about the City’s confidence in FDDs. This was the question, on page 2:
[Question:] The Task Force says there is less ‘certainty’ about the ‘footing drain disconnect’ solution. Why?
The surprising, lengthy official answer, supplied by the same City “Task Force,” was as follows, with some of my comments on the text:
[Answer:] We have less than complete data on the amount of wet weather flow from the foundation footing drains that gets into the sewer system during storms.
In other words, the City had no scientific basis for recommending (let alone requiring) footing drain disconnections as the City’s complete solution to sewage overflows. The various statements contradict the entire premise of the FDDP narrative–that disabling residential footing drain systems would remove so much stormwater from the sewers that no physical construction or other alternative was preferable.
With “less than complete data,” more data collection was planned:
Instituting this alternative as a solution will include additional work to complete the data collection to bring the same higher level of certainty as the other solutions.
If you think this implied that the City would first collect more data, attain the “higher level certainty” it lacked in FDDs or fail; and only then start going into people’s houses, you’d be sorely mistaken.
Instead, the flyer states that as FDDs were built, “flow data collection from these locations will be used to increase the confidence in the flow projections.”
“These locations” refers to targeted houses under the FDDP. The City had empowered itself to order homeowners (without any due process) to act as the City’s canaries in the FDD coal mine. The City decided, without notice to them, that it needed these citizens to submit their houses to destructive mandatory FDD construction so that the City could mine that data to “increase [the City’s] confidence in the flow projections.”
What if FDDs didn’t work out? The City had an answer for that too:
If the newly collected data does not increase our level of certainty about this remedy, the Task Force would recommend different protection measures for the neighborhood.
It would appear from the City’s words that the FDDP was still an R&D project in the data collection phase when the program was launched. Homeowners were not told that failure of the experimental construction was contemplated as a real possibility, even though the construction was mandatory and permanent.
What was the City’s hurry?
State Building Code Agency: Mandatory Footing Drain Disconnections under Ann Arbor FDDP Were Not Required to Meet Any Michigan State Building Codes
Posted: August 22, 2019 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: BCC, Building Codes, Complaint Leave a commentIn August 2001, the City Council passed City Ordinance 32-01 launching the mandatory “Footing Drain Disconnection Program” (FDDP). The program targeted the owners and residents of approximately 2,000 one- and two-family residences in Ann Arbor, on the basis of their addresses. From 2001 to 2012, the City Water Utility Director exercised her authority and ordered all of them to submit to construction in their basements and crawl spaces called “footing drain disconnections” or “FDDs.”
According to the State agency that polices local government enforcement of State Building Codes, however, if you are or were one of the owners of a house targeted for an Ann Arbor FDD, none of the construction inside your homes was required to comply with any official State Building Codes.
This determination by the State Bureau of Construction Codes followed my formal complaint in October 2014 about improper code enforcement in the case of FDDs. The BCC responded in its letter to me on November 7, 2014:
We reviewed your correspondence in regard to the City of Ann Arbor, received in this office on October 30, 2014.
[Y]ou indicate concerns regarding the enforcement of the City’s requirement for mandatory disconnection of foundation drains from sanftary sewer lines in pre-1982 single family residences under [the Ann Arbor FDD Ordinance]. You request that our agency conduct an investigation into your concerns under the rules applicable to the Bureau of Construction Codes.
Based upon our review, it has been determined that our agency has no authority to investigate your concerns regarding the City of Ann Arbor’s local ordinance requirements or enforcement of same. The issues you raise within your complaint are not regulated by the Stille-DeRossett-Hale Single State Construction Code Act, 1972 PA 230, Michigan Residential Code, the Michigan Plumbing Code and the Michigan Building Code. The City’s local ordinance falls beyond the scope of authority of this agency to address. You may wish to consider other avenues of recourse to address and resolve your concerns.
[Emphasis added.] BCC has refused at least twice to send a single state inspector to look at any FDD construction in even a single home.
BCC’s determination (without explanation) was that construction of FDDs would be regulated like the paint or wood trim in a remodeled kitchen, which are well-known examples of “non-code” construction. City Building Inspectors inspect the new plumbing in the kitichen according to the building permit to see if it meets the State Building Codes and local requirements. They won’t inspect the paint job because the quality of paint jobs is not regulated by any State Building Code or local code.
FDDs, however, were nothing like paint jobs. Paint jobs don’t include installation of operating equipment for the owner to operate after the painter leaves. The construction for an FDD was a big project. In a typical house, it usually lasted two to three days. It included (i) demolition of concrete flooring; (ii) physical disabling of perfectly legal, functioning, as-designed building drainage systems; (iii) installation of new plumbing systems and electrical work (frequently including a new electrical panel); (iv) sump crock excavation and removal of soil under the house; (v) sump crock construction; (vi) piercing of the building envelope for drainage piping; and (vii) other tasks inside and outside of the house. It involved a general plumbing contractor, non-plumbing subcontractors, and a construction manager; it cost over $10,000 according to a City Council Resolution in 2011.
That is a lot of construction without codes for the City and its chosen contractors to follow in residential construction, especially construction the City ordered be done. In more recent email and phone communications with BCC management and their counsel, they confirmed my understanding that none of the construction in these 2,000+ homes was required to meet any State Building Codes.
There were, in fact, and remain no building codes at all for “footing drain disconnections” in Michigan or anywhere in the United States, to my knowledge. There are no codes for how to do a “footing drain disconnection” or that require FDDs. Why?
First, by definition, a “footing drain disconnection” is a modification to an “existing structure” under any of the State Building Codes from which BCC says it exempted FDDs. That’s true of building codes in the United States going back over 50 years.
Without the freely given and fully informed consent of the homeowners, the City could not have lawfully required any modification to “existing structures” that were functioning as designed and not dangerous. And if the City had tried, the State Building Codes would have protected the homeowner with significant due process, hearing and appeal rights. The local FDD Ordinance includes no right to appeal an Order of the “Water Utilities Director.”
Residents did not know that, if they were targeted for a “disconnect” under Ann Arbor’s local ordinance, they would be denied the protection of the same State Building Codes for the mandatory construction in their houses that would apply to, say, the construction of an outdoor deck.
Here is a link to the FDD Federal Class Action Complaint. The facts discussed in this post are included in the Complaint as part of claims already asserted by the Class Plaintiffs on behalf of all homeowners with FDD construction in their houses.
FDD Class Plaintiffs File Petition with US Supreme Court to Overturn Sixth Circuit’s Judgement for City of Ann Arbor
Posted: August 5, 2019 Filed under: class action, federal court, lawsuit, legal, litigation, Loretto Leave a commentLandmark SCOTUS Decision Eradicates Legal Barriers to Commencement of New Federal Litigation by Additional Class Action Plaintiffs
I am pleased to report that on July 29, 2019, the FDD Federal Class Action Plaintiffs in Lumbard et. al vs City of Ann Arbor filed their Petition with the United States Supreme Court review the United States Supreme Court to vacate the decision of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in their consolidated cases.
Here is a link to the full document. If you read the relatively short arguments beginning on Page 20 you will get a brief version of the autopsy report on the City of Ann Arbor’s case in the FDD litigation since 2014.
The Plaintiffs’ Petition follows the decision of the Supreme Court on June 21 in Knick v Township of Scott, No. 17-647, 588 U.S. ___ 2019). As we discussed in an earlier post, Knick overturned the two cases on which the City’s successes in both state and federal court depended, Williamson County Regional Planning Commission v. Hamilton Bank of Johnson City, 473 U.S. 172 (1985) and San Remo Hotel, L. P. v. City and County of San Francisco, 545 U.S. 323 (2005).
In brief, after Knick, Williamson, San Remo, and all of the jurisprudence under them for 34 years, ceased to exist. The use by municipal governments of Williamson and San Remo, as a tactic to preclude federal takings plaintiffs from their day in federal court, was on trial in the Supreme Court in Knick. The Court reacted with unusual force to the “unanticipated result” of preclusion of federal takings plaintiffs under San Remo, particularly where the plaintiffs have spent years in state court formerly required under Williamson.
The Court made such tactics legally impossible even to be attempted post-Knick. Justice Roberts carefully eliminated all the precedents and doctrines that underlay the use of “preclusion traps,” root and branch. The City of Ann Arbor will go down as one of the last municipalities–if not the last–to employ a San Remo trap successfully to preclude federal takings plaintiffs from an independent federal forum for their claims.
Because of Knick, the Sixth Circuit decision in Lumbard did not end litigation arising from the City’s Footing Drain Disconnection Program at all. The Lumbard case is very much alive. Independent of its effect on Lumbard, Knick also removed any barriers to a new class action by a further class action by another class representative, this time commenced in federal court, federal court, by a new class plaintiff. We will have some details on that in a separate post.
Only four Justices are required to grant a Petition; there were five in the majority in Knick. Additionally, the Court has already granted the Petition of another takings plaintiff from the Ninth Circuit while the case was was still “in process” in the federal courts when Knick was handed down by the Supreme Court. The whole Court (not just the majority justices in Knick) granted summary relief, vacated the judgment of the Ninth Circuit and ordered “further proceedings not inconsistent with the decision in Knick.” Lumbard is also “in process,” as discussed in the attached Petition. The Court’s handling of the earlier Ninth Circuit plaintiff is at least some indication of the direction the Court may take in the case of the Petition now before it.
Next Steps at the Supreme Court and Timing
Here is a good brief summary on Supreme Court process from A Reporters Guide to Applications Pending Before The Supreme Court of the United States:
Q:How long does it take the Court to act, once a petition has been filed?
A: On the average, about six weeks. Once a petition has been filed, the other party has 30 days within which to file a response brief, or, in some cases waive his/her right to respond. Once the 10 day period for receiving a reply brief has passed, the case is circulated to the Justices and placed on a conference list, for consideration at one of the Justices’ private Friday conferences. Copies of conference lists are available to news reporters for their convenience ONLY, and not for publication. Cases appearing on a conference list may reasonably be expected to appear on the following Monday’s Order List (the announcement of dispositions in pending cases) although this is not always the case. If a case does not appear, it will be relisted for consideration at a future conference. If the petition is granted, the petitioner has 45 days within which to file a brief on the merits, and the respondent has 35 days within which to file the brief in response, for a total of about 80 days. The petitioner may then file a reply brief up to one week prior to the date oral argument has been scheduled.
The City of Ann Arbor’s Response Brief, if any, looks like it will be due on September 3, 2019. We will have the official date from the Supreme Court shortly. The Plaintiffs’ Reply Brief will be filed no later than September 13, so its reasonable to expect the Petition will be circulated to the nine Justices the week of September 16, 2019.
Irvin Mermelstein
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