Complete Copy of Drain Office
Performance Survey

Survey Shows Poor Performance By Ingham Drain Commissioner

The Greater Lansing Home Builders Association (GLHBA) has worked with the Ingham County Drain Office since 2004 in an effort to help the Drain Office improve their permitting and review process.  Complaints about the office abounded.  Since that time some things have improved while others have not.  The complaints revolve mainly around timeliness of response from the office.  Some go so far to say that the office doesn’t even do simple things like return phone calls.

Last fall GLHBA members commissioned a performance survey of the customers of the Ingham County Drain Office.  GLHBA hired the professional firm of Public Sector Consultants for the project.  237 were polled and 43 responded.  Although the respondent pool was small at 18%, there was overwhelming agreement of opinion about the timeliness of communication and the permitting process.  Here are a few of the highlights of the survey:

87% were not satisfied with the soil erosion permit process;
81% were not satisfied with the plan review process;
78 % were not satisfied with timeliness of response by the Drain office; and
86% rated the quality of service as poor.

It’s clear from the survey that there are significant problems with the performance of the Ingham County Drain Office.  The results illustrate what GLHBA members have complained about for years.  It is significant to note that nearly a third of the respondents to the survey were municipalities.  This indicates that the complaints come from a broad group of Drain Office customers including local city & townships governments.

At a time when Michigan’s economic future is in peril and creating jobs is a hot topic, the Drain Office seems to be hindering our forward movement.  The survey indicates that this is not happening.

While the survey results indicate a lack of effective performance it seems that the Drain Office now has a newer larger problem.  In April of 2008 two lawsuits were filed against the Drain Office.  One by Aquatic Sports, and the other by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ.)  Both suits claim that the Drain Office—which is supposed to protect the county’s water—is in fact polluting a local body of water.
 
In 2003 Ingham County Drain Commissioner Patrick Lindemann applied for a DEQ permit to redirect a drain into Cedar Lake.  Now, five years later, Aquatic Sports, a scuba shop on the lake, says that the visibility in the water has dropped significantly and it is harming their business.  The DEQ says that Lindemann violated his permit by degrading the quality of the water.  Lindemann says he only did what the DEQ told him to do.  Regardless of what everyone says the fact remains that after several water quality studies, it is a fact that there is a significant problem in Cedar Lake and Lindemann is being held responsible.  The details will have to be sorted out in court.

The Ingham Drain Office may have other problems looming on another front with the recent rain garden project in Towar Gardens.  The Towar Gardens project involved installing miles of roadside ditches as a collector system in front of everyone’s home in this neighborhood of some 400 small lots.  Residents were extremely unhappy with the results.  They were mainly put off when unsightly weeds grew in the newly installed ditches in their front yards and they were prohibited from mowing them down.  Signs to remind them of this were posted in their yards.  Some say their sump pumps still run constantly and the water problems have not been resolved in the neighborhood.  The real test will be when the next heavy rainfall comes.

Another unhappy party is Meridian Township government.  They were quite surprised when the Drain Office assessed them with cost overruns from Towar Gardens.  In the beginning the Drain Commissioner promised a project of around $2 - $3 million.  In the end the cost was $10 million.  Meridian was stunned at the $8 million cost overrun, and was further surprised when Lindemann assessed Meridian residents with 46% of the cost.  Towar Garden residents were only assessed 16%.  As a result, Meridian’s watershed budget jumped from around $89,000/year in 2005 to over $500,000 in 2006.  Meridian must find nearly $400,000 per year for the next twenty years to cover the cost.  The Drain Commissioner has offered no assurance that a project in the Groesbeck area won’t end up with cost overruns like Towar Gardens.  In fact he’s reluctant to provide a budget.

Drain Commissioner Lindemann says that things are improving in his office.  However, despite what he says three townships (Delhi, Lansing & Meridian,) are moving to implement their own soil erosion ordinances.  This normally occurs when a township doesn’t want to deal with the Drain Office directly if they can avoid it.

Complete Copy of Drain Office Performance Survey