(C) Daily Yonder - Keep it Rural
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Disaster debris management planning project develops into model [1]
['Jeff Johnston', 'Egle Public Information Officer', 'Mi Environment Team']
Date: 2025-07-22
Mike CSAPO, the general manager of the Resource Recovery and Recycling Authority of Southwest Oakland County (RRRASOC), understands why disaster debris management plans aren’t the norm in Michigan. “After the 2020 Sandford Dam disaster, I started talking to my communities about this and realized that they haven’t done disaster-debris management planning because don’t have enough employees, they don’t have the expertise, and they don’t have enough money. Michigan communities are functioning with 30% less staff than they were before the 2008 real-estate crash. They have a lot on their plates that they must do now so what might happen in the future takes a back seat.”
Recognizing this, Csapo, and his counterpart at the Southeast Oakland County Resource Recovery Authority (SOCRRA), Jeff McKeen, got together and asked themselves how they could facilitate planning for their member communities. They read up on disaster-debris management, explored resources, attended webinars, and, Csapo said, “...learned enough to conclude that we didn’t have the expertise and time to do a good job ourselves.”
They turned to the NextCycle Michigan I2P3 (Intergovernmental and Public Private Partnerships) Accelerator Track for technical support in preparing to contract for the development of a regional plan, with individual -- but coordinated -- plans for each of their member townships, towns, and cities.
The results
Through the I2P3 Accelerator Track, Csapo and McKeen were paired with Matt Naud, a senior consultant with RRS who served as the City of Ann Arbor’s environmental coordinator and has over 30 years of public sector sustainability, emergency management, and transportation planning experience. Together, they developed a request for qualifications (RFQ) and a request for proposals (RFP) to prepare the debris management plans.
The NextCycle Michigan Network also introduced Csapo and McKeen to relevant contacts at EGLE (the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy) and EPA Region 5. Oakland County took notice of the I2P3 project and became a partner, taking the lead on administering the RFQ and RFP process. Tetra Tech was chosen to support the next steps in the planning. Compiling the plan is budgeted at roughly $100,000, less than half of what Csapo estimated.
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[1] Url:
https://www.michigan.gov/egle/newsroom/mi-environment/2025/07/22/disaster-debris
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