Residents Clean Up Oakland Township's Mill Race, a 'Precious Commodity'
Over the course of the last month, residents have worked hard to improve the Paint Creek Mill Race.
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Sharon McKay’s eyes welled with tears as she described the community effort that went into cleaning out the Paint Creek Mill Race over the course of the last month.
“It’s just beautiful down there now,” Oakland Township Trustee McKay said.
Back in April, McKay organized the first cleanup, which was held on April 21. It took two more cleanups, one May 5 and another May 19, to get the mill race cleared of branches, trash, leaves and more.
“This was the perfect opportunity to do it because there is no water,” she explained. “People will see this now and not think it’s a ditch.”
“We’re getting it ready to take back to its original use,” Janine Saputo, Oakland Township planning commissioner said.
The mill race has been without water for months since the removal of the Paint Creek Dam, a project that was approved by the Oakland Township Board of Trustees in October. Residents are hopeful that water will soon be on its way. Wade Trim, a civil engineering firm, was approved for a six- to eight-week study of the mill race beginning in late March, to analyze the mill race flow situation and come up with possible solutions to get water flowing properly again.
Wade Trim will present its findings at an upcoming board meeting and board members will decide whether or not they would like to move forward with one of the potential solutions. If so, the project will go out for bid.
“There’s no hidden agenda; all we want is water,” said Greg Olson, an Oakland Township resident who lives along the mill race.
“I think we’ve turned the corner,” he said hopefully, describing the mill race as a "precious commodity."
McKay is delighted with the cleanup, which resulted in a quarter-mile stretch of smooth terrain along Mill Race Trail. Prior to the cleaning she said it was "treacherous."
The Oakland Township Parks and Recreation Department aided the effort by hiring a professional tree service to cut up the fallen trees in the mill race to make it easier for residents to move the parts of the trees into piles and burn them. Along with moving logs, McKay said it was a lot of raking dead leaves and she was happy to find there weren’t too many paper products littering the mill race.
“This is very important from the standpoint that it shows that the community cares,” Oakland Township resident Tom Asmus said.
At all three of the cleanup dates about 15 residents helped in the efforts, including board members, planning commissioners, Oakland Township Historical Society members and more.
McKay was thrilled with the number of people who turned up to help clean out the mill race and equally happy that new faces were in the mix at every cleanup. On each da,y the bulk of the participants pitched in a few solid hours, while McKay noted some residents dedicated their whole day to staying on site until all of the fires were out.
JustACitizen1
4:14 pm on Thursday, May 24, 2012
It’s a very nice story of how the citizens can work together to accomplish good work. I only have three questions:
1. Why hasn't the Parks & Recreation Department maintained there approximately 1600 feet of race that runs through Mill Race Park.
2. Why are we looking at bidding out the designs that Wade Trim may come up with?
3. Shouldn't the Clinton River Watershed Council be responsible for make the water run in the race, since they did the original engineering?
Perhaps the board can answer these questions since as Mr. Edwards has stated in the past "we all understood the engineering".
Me I'm:
Just A Citizen
Bob
11:25 am on Friday, May 25, 2012
Mill Race used to flow through my backyard in Orion Township. Now it is totally dry. Just a ditch. Although I am very proud and pleased to see the community’s involvement in the Mill Race clean-up, let’s not forget how and why we got here. It is because Oakland Board of Trustees approved the plans to remove the Paint Creek dam and totally ignored the concerns/warnings of the residents, thus resulting in destroying the beautiful water flow in Mill race. Now,the residents of Oakland County & Rochester Hills need to join together and apply pressure and demand/insist that the water flows once again in Mill Race. If not,then the cleaning will be for nothing and debris & mud will consume Mill Race in the future. I am extremely concerned with the statement in this article “… board members will decide whether or not they would like to move forward with one of the potential solutions. If so, the project will go out for bid. WHAAAAT? Will decide whether or not ? If so, maybe !!! The board must be held accountable and correct this mess and force the original contractor to comply with the contract that stated “water will flow in Mill Race”. This was also discussed at one of last year’s meetings & the residents were assured by some PhD “expert” from Oakland University and the contract firm that water would flow. So,where is this expert now ? Where is the firm that provided this assurance ? Someone needs to be held accountable!! The Board MUST hold them accountable!
Marty Rosalik
12:34 pm on Friday, May 25, 2012
I would like to thank everyone for their clean up efforts. Both times I went by and saw activity I had prior projects already ongoing. I wanted to help too.
So to the comment in the article, 'We’re getting it ready to take back to its original use' means powering the wheel or simply water flow?
There was at one time a 7 killowatt water turbine in that mill. As an electrical engineer and long time fan of water power, I go on record to volunteer to get it or some sort of water powered generator going again. How cool would it be to power some of that building with free water?
That said folks it will now be difficult to get sufficient ( if any ) water back in that mill race to do that. We need t ohold the township, watershed, contractor, and so-called experts accountable. They botched this job.
Terry R. Gonser
10:17 am on Saturday, May 26, 2012
The clean-up effort was not only fun, but the results were outstanding. Thank you to Sharon McKay and Barb and Greg Olson and all the folks who helped. The only good that came from the 'dry' mill race was in aiding the clean-up. Now we are ready to have water flowing through it again just as it has for the past 175 years (except for the past eight months after the Clinton River Watershed Council and the Oakland Township Board of Trustees {except for Judy Workings and Mike Bailey) conspired to remove the source of water - the dam). Rest assured, with the citizen's help to elect a new Board of Trustees, not only will water flow again in the Historic Mill Race, but the Paint Creek Mill water wheel will again turn and hopefully generate electricity. Goodison and the Paint Creek Cider Mill will be 'Jewel' in our beautiful township.
Terry Gonser
Judy Keyes
9:25 am on Tuesday, May 29, 2012
I think it is important for all Oakland Twp. Residents to understand how hard their neighbors fought against the current Board of Trustees to stop this dam removal from happening. The Board, with the exception of Mike Bailey and Judy Workings, voted FOR this removal despite all the facts and objections claiming that this would detroy the historic mill race leaving it bone dry. That is exactly what happened. This Board did not listen to the people who elected them and that is wrong. Now they are approving $10,000, so far, to have another firm come in to try to figure out how to fix their mistake. What a shame. My heart goes out to those with private property along the Mill Race. It truly is a loss for us all here in Oakland Twp.