by Scott McClallen
When heavy rain caused the Edenville Dam collapse on May 19, 2020, more than 10,000 people were forced to evacuate from 3,500 homes in mid-Michigan.
Three years later, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office is still litigating the flood.
Nessel’s office filed a motion for summary judgment on behalf of the Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy and the Department of Natural Resources in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan against the former owners of the Edenville Dam.
Through discovery, the state found that in 2010, Boyce Hydro determined the dam’s east embankment might fail if Wixom Lake rose too high. Nessel asserts Boyce Hydro made preliminary plans to fix the dam but neglected to ever follow through.
In May 2020, that embankment failed.
Nessel said it doesn’t appear that Boyce Hydro divulged the defect to the federal government, which regulated the dam at the time, and it never told the state after the federal government passed regulation to the state in September 2018.
Boyce Hydro’s former dam safety engineer and chief operator resigned in protest in May 2017 because Lee Mueller – the person managing Boyce Hydro from Las Vegas – allegedly neglected dam safety priorities.
Nessel says Mueller prioritized expensive side projects, such as plans to hold a music festival at the dam, attempting to transform the dam into a marina or RV park, purchasing a sawmill, and trying to develop a residential neighborhood over safety concerns.
The chief operator left when Boyce Hydro tried to dig a pond off-site rather than repair a major safety defect inside the Sanford Dam. The chief operator testified that he tried to persuade Mueller that he was “in the hydro business now, you got to pay attention,” but Mueller responded that “I’m not in the hydro business … I’m in the money-making business.”
“The Edenville Dam failure was a devastating tragedy for thousands in that community, and these new revelations clearly show that failure began at the very top of Boyce Hydro,” Nessel said in a statement. “We discovered an unconscionable disregard for safety and dam integrity that cost the community that relied on the security of that dam immeasurably, and it’s important we share this with the court today.”
EGLE acting director Aaron Keatley said Boyce Hydro knew of the safety issues.
“This filing makes clear that Boyce Hydro knew of critical safety issues at the Edenville Dam but failed to take even the most cursory actions to fix the deficiencies or alert regulators to the problem,” Keatley said in a statement. “This fits with the company’s decades-long history of violations and antagonism toward federal and state regulators and illustrates the owners’ culpability in this catastrophic dam failure.”
Jason Hayes, director of energy and environmental policy at the free-market Mackinac Center for Public Policy, told The Center Square that EGLE also played a role in the disaster.
“A 2020 report from the Mackinac Center found that both Boyce Hydro and EGLE shared responsibility for the dam failures and subsequent destruction,” Hayes wrote in an email. “While Attorney General Nessel’s investigation confirms that Boyce Hydro neglected basic dam maintenance and repairs, it’s not surprising that as the state’s attorney, Nessel does not fault her client, the Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, for its role in the disaster.”
If the court grants the state’s motion, Boyce Hydro will be dismissed from the case but any funds left in the company’s estate will flow to the flood survivors whose homes and businesses were destroyed.
The state will then pursue a default judgment against Lee Mueller personally, whom the court has already determined is at fault for the dam’s failure.
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Scott McClallen is a staff writer covering Michigan and Minnesota for The Center Square. A graduate of Hillsdale College, his work has appeared on Forbes.com and FEE.org.
Photo “Dana Nessel” by Michigan Department of Attorney General. Background Photo “Courtroom” by Carol M. Highsmith.
