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Mar 29, 2007

15 Million Gallons of Sewage Goes Missing from Michigan Sewage Treatment Plant

15 million gallons of partially treated sewage water disappeared from a 250,000 square-foot storage lagoon into an underground sinkhole, but officials don't know where it went after that.

Kent County utility operator Nathan Dannenberg, who runs the sewage treatment system for Sand Lake, discovered the leak in the 8-foot-deep lagoon on Friday while taking samples. It wasn't clear when or why the leak occurred.

This is of some concern to locals, as their water supply is taken from wells that are downstream of the now mysteriously vanished sewage.

'We don't smell anything, and we don't see anything,' said Nathan Danenberg, the man in charge of sewage treatment for the village, told The Grand Rapids Press. "I don't know if maybe there are old mines in the area ... It's an odd case. A sinkhole gobbled up all the water and we don't know where it went... It seems to have just gone down into the earth."