450 Million Asset Management Grant Program in Michigan: What Have We Learned?

The State of Michigan passed legislation in 2012 to fund asset management planning. The legislation allowed the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) to create a 450 million grant program. The Stormwater, Asset Management, and Wastewater (SAW) Grant program allows for system-wide inventory enhancements, structural condition assessments, and capacity evaluations of wastewater and stormwater assets.Asset management plans in Michigan have exposed the worsening condition of our infrastructure; this exposition is critical in building public support for increased investment, as the magnitude of the problem has been made more apparent through the aggregation of data, photographs, videos, and other evidence of physical condition of wastewater and stormwater assets.In general, stormwater assets are showing more deterioration, as most Michigan communities have no dedicated funding source for these assets. As such, a lack of maintenance and rehabilitation has resulted in a higher percentage of stormwater assets identified as achieving a high probability of failure.The results from these plans are being used in Michigan to shift priorities towards infrastructure investment. This grant program has been very successful and could be duplicated in other states to further expose the severity of the deterioration of our collection systems and to encourage more investment to protect against system failure.