New evidence indicates that Boyce Hydro predicted the Edenville Dam would fail on the east end a decade before the catastrophe, according to the Michigan Attorney General's Office.
MIDLAND COUNTY, Mich. (WJRT) - The former Edenville Dam owner could face a financial judgment after a federal judge ruled in the state's favor Friday.
The Michigan Attorney General's Office plans to file a motion in court that would seek monetary damages from Boyce Hydro and its operators for their role in the May 2020 dam failures along the Tittabawassee River.
Days of heavy rain allowed record amounts of water to pile up in Wixom Lake behind the Edenville Dam in southern Gladwin County. The east wall of the dam failed on May 19, 2020, sending a torrent of floodwater downstream.
Flash flooding quickly overwhelmed the Sanford Dam in Midland County and sent water rushing over the top.
More than 10,000 residents were evacuated in Gladwin, Midland and Saginaw counties that night. Damage estimates from the ensuing floods topped $250 million.
The attorney general's office sued Boyce Hydro, which relinquished ownership of four Mid-Michigan dams, soon after the disaster. State lawyers argued that Boyce Hydro's negligence in maintaining the dams was a major cause of the collapse and flooding.
The Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy claimed that Boyce Hydro knew about problems with the Edenville Dam's east embankment in 2010 -- a decade before the catastrophe -- but did not resolve the concerns.
The attorney general's office says Boyce Hydro had a legal duty to report any significant concerns about the dam to regulators, but the company failed to raise any alarms.
"Plaintiffs brought sufficient evidence to show that Defendants knew of its dam's vulnerability and that Defendants did not make EGLE aware of that vulnerability. Defendants do not dispute either assertion," U.S. District Judge Paul Maloney wrote in Friday's ruling.
He noted that Boyce Hydro failed to install a planned cutoff wall on the weakened east embankment that "would have been more likely than not to have prevented the failure."
"The State demonstrated dam ownership disregarded threats to the safety and integrity of the dam, and absolutely was responsible for its failure, so much so they had no defense whatsoever," Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said.
She did not announce when the state will begin the process of obtaining a financial judgment against Boyce Hydro. It's not clear how much the court could recover in damages from the company and its operators after they filed for bankruptcy.
Several unrelated civil lawsuits have been filed in state and federal courts since the disaster claiming that state and federal dam regulators failed to adequately oversee or prevent the structure from failing.
