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• At a special public meeting Wednesday evening, the Paw Paw Village Council began considering the Villages options for repairing/stabilizing the section of the Briggs Mill dam that washed out with the heavy rains last weekend, taking a wooden walking bridge with it. Paw Paw Village Manager Sarah Moyer-Cale and council members, met with Sue Deneau of Wightman & Associates, and Mike Lounsbury of Lounsbury Excavating to look over breach mitigation options suggested by Wightman engineers. Both Wight-man and Lounsbury were consulted immediately when the event occurred, and have been working with village as the repair process begins. Moyer-Cale notified the public of the situation early Sunday in the form of a press release, describing what had happened. At approximately 5 a.m. on Sunday morning, it was discovered that a portion of the dam at Briggs Mill had been breached, she stated. Crews were called in to open the additional spillway and secure the scene. The pedestrian bridge traversing the dam was immediately closed. The press release also noted that the dam is routinely observed twice a day and the water level recorded once daily. Because of the heavy rainfall over the weekend, the dam was observed periodically throughout the day on Saturday in addition to the regular inspection rounds. The dam was last checked at approximately 11:30 p.m. on Saturday evening with no signs of any risk to the dam, Moyer-Cale stated However, it just kept raining; and in the wee hours Sunday, Moyer-Cale and Public Services Director John Small were on the scene, and had been there or working on related issues right up to Wednesday nights meeting Moyer-Cale said that morning she could not say enough good things about her village employees, and the representatives from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ), the Department of Natural Re-sources, the countys Emergency Preparedness unit and drain commissioner, and others who have been called upon to address this event. Everyone has been working together very well. This village is really fortunate to have these people and resources to call upon in an emergency. She said that public safety was of course, our first concern. The village has a long history of trying to combat the flow of sediment and other contaminants from the Paw Paw River, above the dam, into Maple Lake. The Briggs Mill dam was never purposed to stop this; but with the washout, the flow is heavier than usual. Representatives from the MDEQ have begun a schedule of testing to keep the Village on top of any public health or safety concerns.