PORT SHELDON, Michigan (11 July 2005) -- Long before a diver's brush with death at the Consumers Energy coal-fired power plant earlier this month the waters offshore had a much deadlier record. Numerous swimmers drowned in the 1970s as they rode the plant's warm water discharge current out into Lake Michigan, then failed to reach shore. Consumers thought those risks were behind it when it put intake and discharge pipes along the lake bottom -- until scuba diver Joan Eddy was sucked into a broken section of pipe on July 2. She was swept on a 4,000-foot voyage through a pitch-dark pipe that lasted about 10 minutes, before she emerged into daylight in an open-air intake canal inside plant property, five miles south of Grand Haven. Veteran scuba diver Dennis Festerling said it is not hard to imagine Eddy's state of mind as she tumbled toward an unknown fate. "I think I would have assumed that I was going to die," said Festerling, 33, of Allegan. "I would have assumed that I was going to be chopped into little bits." Eddy, 40, of Grayling, survived the ordeal with just a bloody nose. She declined medical treatment after the incident, and she and her husband, Stephen, also have declined to talk about what happened. Consumers spokesman Dennis McKee said Eddy was "jubilant" to be alive when he came upon her shortly after she walked out of the intake canal. She had been diving in about 40 feet of water 3,500 feet offshore with her husband and another couple when she suddenly disappeared, triggering a sizable search. | | McKee confirmed this past week that a section of the utility's intake system at the bottom of the lake was damaged weeks earlier. Bolts holding a 42-inch section of pipe had sheared off, leaving a hole that large in an 8-foot diameter pipe about 3,500 feet from shore. Eddy was sucked through that hole, then drawn into an 18-foot diameter pipe, tumbling through the water at about 6 feet per second until she entered the canal. Consumers has attempted to fix the damaged section, but rough weather delayed the work. McKee expects it will be repaired "in days, not weeks." The pipes draw water from the lake to cool the steam used to generate electricity. McKee said it is conducting a review of its safety procedures to see if additional measures -- such as underwater warning signs -- are warranted. Water system officials in West Michigan all said they have protective screens on their underwater pipes. McKee said Consumers' current underwater system is much safer for the public than the old one, in which water was discharged and drawn at the lake's surface. In 1977, the Ottawa County Sheriff's Department stepped up patrols at Windsnest Park -- the site of last weekend's diving incident -- after a series of drownings at the warm water outlet. A township official stated at the time there had been 13 drownings and 125 rescues at the outlet since the park was established a few years earlier. Avid divers say that section of water still is popular, both for divers and anglers drawn by the fish attracted to the warm water "bubbler" under the lake's surface. |
