Published: July 15, 2008 08:00 pm      

Septage tank collapses at Frankfort plant

Incident occurred during testing phase

FRANKFORT -- Expansion of the Frankfort and Elberta sewage treatment plant will be delayed by at least six weeks after a tank collapsed during testing.

A wall failed in a sewage sludge holding tank on July 8 and spewed about 400,000 gallons of well water.

"Obviously, we were just glad it happened during the testing phase and it wasn't filled and operational," said Frankfort City Superintendent Joshua Mills.

The approximately $1 million expansion and upgrade project for the Betsie Lake Utility Authority was considered finished except for the water test on the tank, said general contractor Robert Spence of Spence Brothers.

Spence said it will take a couple weeks to generate a report on why the tank failed and maybe a month to fix the flaws.

The tank was a concrete prefabricated unit installed by the company that built it, Spence said.

"I've never heard of a precast tank collapsing," he said.

Spence declined to identify the subcontractor until engineers determine the cause of the tank failure.

"I've worked with them for a long time and I don't want to start pointing fingers," Spence said.

The subcontractor was HTI Inc. of Traverse City. HTI president Roger Haag could not be reached for comment.

It was the only tank constructed during this phase of the project and Spence said to his knowledge HTI has not built any other tanks at the Frankfort facility.

He said engineers will review the entire tank structure to determine if the problem was specific to one location or the entire tank.

Because the tank had not been placed into service, its collapse had no impact on normal plant operations, he said.

Spence said there will be no additional cost to the authority or taxpayers to fix the tank.

Mills, who serves as Frankfort's liaison to the authority, said he's confident the contractor will determine the cause and come up with a remedy to ensure the tank won't fail while operational.

"We're at a point we have to trust the contractor and subcontractors," he said.

Betsie Lake Utility Authority officials appointed Spence their spokesman regarding the collapse and did not return calls seeking comment.