The behind-the-scenes political machinations over Livingston County’s septage receiving station (SRS) in Hartland Township has touched off an epic slinging of the sludge between two elected Republican officials: Livingston County Commissioner Wes Nakagiri, first elected in 2018, and Drain Commissioner Brian Jonckheere, first elected in 1996.
It’s an important, complicated story, told by a remarkable document obtained by The Livingston Post. In that document, Jonckheere responded in writing, point-by-point, to a report titled “Septage Receiving Station History,” written by Nakagiri and shared with his fellow members of the county board.
The report-and-response document draws clear battle lines. Nakagiri says the SRS is poorly run, costs the county “egregious” amounts of taxpayer money, and blames the members of the Board of Public Works (BPW), who he says are “hand-picked” by Jonckheere. In his response, Jonckheere paints Nakagiri as an exhausting, meddling micromanager who doesn’t understand how the SRS works, has a “personal crusade” against the facility, and who shows “continuing antagonism” toward him.
Jonckheere described Nakagiri’s report to the county board as “shocking on many levels.”
How shocking?
In his response, Jonckheere includes a story of Nakagiri suggesting that instead of installing an expensive abatement system, the SRS could have workers wear charcoal masks, evidence he said that shows Nakagiri’s ignorance of the situation.
“Such a practice would prove instantly fatal to our staff were they to be exposed to the high concentrations of hydrogen sulfide in certain areas of the facility,” Jonckheere wrote.
Hydrogen sulfide is produced from the breakdown of organic matter in the absence of oxygen, such as in swamps, sewers, and septic tanks. A colorless, poisonous, corrosive and flammable gas that smells like rotten eggs, it’s the second leading cause of deaths in the workplace, right after carbon monoxide.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said short-term, high-level exposure can “induce immediate collapse, with loss of breathing and a high probability of death.” The Occupational Safety and Health Administration details how the health effects depend on how much hydrogen sulfide a worker breathes and for how long. Effects are seen even at low concentrations, and range from mild headaches or eye irritation, to unconsciousness and death.
Nakagiri’s report came in the wake of an October 2024 consent agreement between Hartland Township and Livingston County and its Department of Public Works and Solid Waste Management. The agreement included selling additional capacity in the Hartland system to the county (which Jonckheere said it had previously been refusing to sell), construction of an equalization basin at the SRS, and the promise that county commissioners will consider among candidates for the BPW any put forth by Hartland Township.
The $6.3 million in bonds, for which the Livingston County Board of Commissioners on Nov. 25 authorized the sale, is in no way a punitive “settlement”; rather, the bonds pay for the additional capacity the county purchased from Hartland Township, as well as the construction of the equalization basin.
Nakagiri’s report to his fellow commissioners came two months after the consent agreement was signed, and it’s created its own vortex of sludge.
But before we get into all that, you need a little background.
The backstory
While not the sexiest of issues, how the county treats its septic waste is an important one, affecting nearly two-thirds of the county’s households. Roughly 65% of the 75,000 households in Livingston County are on septic systems. That works out to be about 48,000 households, and those 48,000 households generate a lot of septic tank waste.
How much is a lot, you ask? Well, prior to 2007, haulers emptied septic tanks and spread the contents — untreated — on one of 13 permitted fields in Livingston County. It was estimated then that approximately 12 million gallons of untreated human waste was being spread in Livingston County each and every year. (If the number of Livingston County households on septic systems grew at the same clip as the general population since 2007, those 12 million gallons of human waste would be 13 million today.)
In 2007, the Livingston County Board of Commissioners voted to end spreading untreated septage on fields. There was both an environmental and a financial reason for the board’s decision. Applying untreated human waste on fields can spread bacteria, viruses and parasites, and the practice risks groundwater contamination. Anecdotally, hunters have told of traipsing through soggy, sludgy fields decades later and finding things like used tampon applicators on the ground. The septage-spreading ban also saved money for homeowners: Changes in state regulations on spreading septage would have increased the costs of having tanks pumped; without the SRS, they would have been on the hook for what was then estimated to be an additional $1.1 million a year.
Livingston County’s septage receiving station was built on Runyan Lake Road, south of Clyde Road in Hartland Township, on a site that ticked all the boxes: it is where the township was building a pump station; it could handle significant septage volumes; it has access to major roads; and it’s in a non-residential area. In return for hosting the SRS, Hartland Township got a portion of its revenues each year — totaling nearly $4 million since the SRS went online in 2007; however, those annual payments ceased after the consent agreement, replaced instead with a more traditional per gallon charge.
The facility looks a lot like a typical fire station, with two drive-in bays outfitted with electric overhead doors through which trucks enter, unload in a totally enclosed area, and then exit. After the septage is processed, it is sent north through the Livingston Regional Sanitary System to a treatment facility in Genesee County.
The SRS has gone through some growing pains. In the nearly 18 years since it opened, the county had to purchase additional capacity REUs — which Jonckheere said was expected — and Genesee County demanded that the strength of the septage pumped to its treatment facility be reduced.
One method of reducing the strength of raw septage is to use a press process that separates liquids from solids. In Livingston County, the liquid is what gets sent along to Genesee County, and the solids are landfilled. In the future, it’s hoped that additional treatment will make the solids suitable for use as fertilizer.
To finance construction of the press facility at the SRS, the Livingston County Board of Commissioners in 2019 approved selling $6.2 million in bonds. The press facility went into service in 2020.
In his report, Nakagiri claimed these bonds were used to expand the capacity of the SRS, a claim Jonckheere said was “not only misleading, but accurately illustrates (Nakagiri’s) lack of even a basic knowledge” of the SRS.
“The new facility was not constructed to expand the capacity due to increasing volumes,” Jonckheere wrote, “but to build a press facility in order to reduce waste strength, as noted in the resolution to the county board.”
It was a resolution that received Nakagiri’s affirmative vote.
Nakagiri’s report also claimed that two-thirds of the septage treated at the SRS was from “out-of-county” homeowners, and that the county could have avoided the debt payments of the expansion if it restricted its service to Livingston County homeowners. It’s a claim Jonckheere said is not only false, but “reflects a complete lack of understanding of the expansion project.”
If Livingston County’s SRS treated only septage from Livingston County, “a suggested solution made by (Nakagiri) on multiple occasions,” it would have “resulted in insufficient revenues for covering operation costs, as well as existing debt payments,” Jonckheere wrote.
According to the operating agreement between the Livingston County Board of Commissioners and the State of Michigan in 2007, the SRS can receive septage waste from outside Livingston County, but “septage waste generated within Livingston County shall have first priority for capacity should peak demand exceed system capacity.”
Origin story: Appointments
How members are appointed to the Livingston County Board of Public Works — which is located in the office of the drain commissioner, and which oversees the SRS — is the root of Nakagiri’s concerns, which he is airing at a time when county commissioners have been flexing their muscles and sussing out the political leanings of potential candidates to various county boards.
As in the past with the Huron Clinton Metroparks Board, Nakagiri worked the system to get his personal pick onto the BPW. With the Metroparks board, Nakagiri went so far as to change the rules of appointments to replace a former county commissioner, who had by all measures served well, with a local pastor whose claim to fame came from conducting church services in defiance of Covid closures. The issue here was that the Metroparks provided diversity, equity and inclusion training for employees. (Click here for that story.)
Nakagiri has also used the voting records of applicants to weed out those he finds undesirable.
And it’s not just Nakagiri.
Recently, Michigan Public reported on Commissioner Nick Fiani emailing candidates for the Human Services Collaborative Board — which works to eliminate overlap and duplication among county social service programs — to ask three questions: “Would you support the organizational framework of diversity, equity, and inclusion (typically referred to as DEI)? Would you support a person under 18 years of age to receive gender altering services without the consent of his or her parent or legal guardian? Would you support a woman under 18 years of age to receive elective abortion services without the consent of her parent or legal guardian?”
In his report to the commissioners, Nakagiri accused Jonckheere of hand-picking the members of the Board of Public Works, which oversees the SRS. He claimed that up until January 2021 — when he became chair of the Livingston County Board of Commissioners — the county board put a “rubber stamp” to whichever candidates Jonckheere put forward.
“In essence, the DPW director (Jonckheere) got to choose his bosses,” Nakagiri wrote in his report.
Nakagiri complained that he was met with outward hostility from Jonckheere after he replaced a member of the board of public works; what Nakagiri didn’t say was how he made the move, which was unilaterally without informing Jonckheere.
“Without even a courtesy notification,” Jonckheere wrote, adding that he learned of the appointment “from other sources.”
“There was no vetting of candidates, other than they were handpicked by (Nakagiri) and inserted onto the board without prior discussion,” Jonckheere said.
Information overload
Nakagiri also complained in his report that he has received “substantial push back” from Jonckheere as he conducted his investigation of the SRS. “Frequently it was difficult acquiring requested information,” Nakagiri wrote, adding that “at one point, (Jonckheere) directed his staff not to speak with me.”
Jonckheere said his office provided “hundreds of pages of requested documents” to Nakagiri, “comprising many hundred hours of work.” He maintains that Nakagiri “purposely” bypassed him in the process despite an agreement that all requests for information go through him. Instead, Nakagiri “frustratingly persisted to contact staff directly.”
“Ultimately, after numerous warnings to (Nakagiri) and complaints by staff about the disruption to their duties,” Jonckheere said he was “left with little choice but to direct staff to decline (Nakagiri’s) many requests” unless they went through him first.
“The disruption to the drain office has impacted operations negatively,” Jonckheere wrote, “not only in the DPW division of the office, but also to operations dealing with drains, lakes and other duties. Staff have expressed frustration with the duplicative requests for information submitted by (Nakagiri) in past inquiries.”
Nakagiri completed a similar “investigation” of the Livingston County court system, which he claimed proved that employees of the courts were underworked and overstaffed. The Livingston County courts filed a victorious lawsuit against the county, and in October got everything for which they sued after the case went to mediation.
The most-challenging threat
In his report to the county board, Nakagiri asserts that taxpayers are having to “bail out” the SRS, and blames “questionable management decisions made by the BPW.”
Jonckheere shot back: “(The) SRS has become one of the most successful septage intake facilities in the U.S., according to some of our consultants in the industry,” he said, adding that the facility is accepting three times more waste than what was originally projected because of “redundancies built into the original design,” which have allowed for volume increases.
Nakagiri blamed the decisions of the BPW in creating what he described as financial trouble that he discovered.
“…It is the (board of commissioners) which is ultimately responsible for financial oversight of the county. Current policies and management systems were not robust enough to prevent these SRS problems,” Nakagiri wrote. “Furthermore, for many years our BPW appointees fell short of delivering cost-effective governance and protecting the interests of taxpayers.”
Nakagiri said decisions made by members of the BPW put the SRS in a position “where its expenses far exceed the revenue available to cover the costs of septage disposal.”
Does Nakagiri have a point? Jonckheere said he absolutely does not.
“Revenue to date has exceeded expenses and has done so since 2009.” Jonckheere wrote. He questioned where Nakagiri got his information, “especially since the auditing company suggested by (Nakagiri) to review the SRS financials did not express this opinion.”
Jonckheere defended the BPW, which “oversaw a system that expanded at unprecedented rates, ultimately producing reserves in excess of those held by the Livingston Regional Sewer System.”
“Past boards have remarked about the incredible success of the facility and were proud of the fact that it provided the ability to accept waste from county households at a cost far less than what would be charged if it were hauled to a different county,” Jonckheere said.
In closing, Nakagiri wrote that the board of commissioners “must act to protect taxpayers from further financial harm and enact politics/procedures to place the SRS on a solid financial foundation,” which he said should include a “change of personnel at the BPW.”
“We cannot reappoint those who have been an integral part of creating these problems,” Nakagiri wrote.
Jonckheere replied that Nakagiri’s “personal crusade against the SRS … presents us with the single most-challenging threat to our existing operations.”
