Council Talks Flooding, Gets Update on Wet Weather Resiliency Plan

New models to improve understanding of our infrastructure, helping homeowners prep their property to stand up to flooding and a possible pause on development were among the many strategies to reduce flooding discussed at the Sept. 10 City Council meeting. 

At the meeting, council received an update on its Wet Weather Resiliency Plan from HDR Michigan Inc, the consultant contracted to develop the plan. The city is hopeful that the plan identifies vulnerabilities that lead to flooding and approaches to address the problem. 

Development of the plan started in February of this year and was initially slated to be completed in mid-2026, though an HDR representative said at the meeting that they are ahead of schedule and the plan is about one-third finished. 

The plan includes improving modeling to see what is happening in the city sewers during large rain events, projecting the size of future storms as climate change makes extreme rain events more common, identifying flood mitigation strategies and more. 

“Historic” storms keep happening. 

The flooding in recent years has largely been attributed to climate change, as large storms that overwhelm city infrastructure are happening more and more often. Climate change continued to be a theme, as Ernie West of HDR acknowledged large storms are becoming more common. 

Based on 60 years of rainfall data, West said that the June and July storms that brought widespread flooding were “historic.” He said the June storm was a 200-year storm, meaning it should have a one in 200 chance of happening in any given year, and the July storm was a 1,000-year storm. 

In fact, using data gathered from the rain gauge at the Capital City Airport, HDR said that the three-hour rainfall total at the peak of the July storm likely exceeds the three-hour total of any storm over the last 60 years. The peak of the June storm likely saw the most rainfall over six hours of any storm in the last 60 years.

The city is looking to adapt as climate change makes large storms more common and the metrics become more outdated. As part of the plan, HDR is projecting the size of future storms, so the city can carve out a plan to combat their harm. 

Additionally, HDR is working to create a model that shows what is actually happening in the city’s sewer system and above ground when large rainstorms happen. This would help staff better understand what sections of the city’s infrastructure need work, West said. 

“That model that we’re building is a hydraulic model, that we can then apply different levels of rain events to and then see what the impacts are,” West said. “See where the water backs up, estimate how far it’ll back up, how far it’ll spread out.”

City officials believe the Wet Weather Resiliency Plan will be an important tool to combat flooding, but there are limitations. 

The presentation from HDR said that, among other challenges, the city can’t build a system to stand up to every storm, some areas of the system will be easier to improve than others and climate predictions won’t be totally accurate. 

“These problems, they’re not created overnight,” West said. “There’s years and years of development and redevelopment, and years and years of emissions and climate change. So, there’s a lot of reasons things are different now than they were 40, 50, 60 years ago. But it’s not an overnight solution either.”

Different parts of the city are experiencing different causes of flooding. 

Tom Batroney, a senior water resources engineer for HDR said flooding caused by backups in basement drains accounted for 13% of flooding incidents reported in a survey in response to the June storm and 19% in the July storm. These incidents were mostly confined to the parts of the Glencairn neighborhood that have a combined sewer system that has both stormwater and wastewater flow through the same pipes. 

Batroney said the city’s program that reimburses residents who have backflow preventers installed can be especially important to homeowners who have water coming up through their drains. 

Private property flooding was more spread out throughout the city, Batroney said. However, it was most prevalent in the Whitehills, Bailey and Glencairn neighborhoods. This type of flooding included seepage into basements and overland flooding and made up the majority of cases. Batroney said this indicates that education around private property drainage is needed. 

Street flooding was concentrated in Whitehills, Glencairn and Walnut Heights neighborhoods, Batroney said. 

There is no universal public infrastructure fix, and homeowners may need to do more to prevent flooding, officials say. 

While a primary goal of the Wet Weather Resiliency Plan is to identify steps the city can take to reduce flooding, there likely isn’t a silver bullet infrastructure fix the city could do to address every issue. 

“A lot of the flooding seen this summer may not have a public infrastructure cause or a cure,” West said. 

Interim Department of Public Works Director Ron Lacasse added that the city has already made significant improvements to its stormwater management system, investing around $160 million since 2013, and there are more projects in the queue. 

Councilmember Erik Altmann asked if flooding in homes is frequently due to issues with private property and not the city infrastructure. Lacasse said there are often steps homeowners can take to reduce the chances of home flooding. 

“I’ve probably been at… hundreds of these over my career at the city,” Lacasse said. “You peak behind people’s bushes and their downspout extensions aren’t even connected to the downspout, or its been run over by the mower 17 times so it’s flat, there’s plants growing out of the gutters, that type of thing.

“That’s an accurate statement, that a lot of this is related to private property maintenance,” Lacasse added. 

East Lansing Environmental Sustainability and Resiliency Manager Cliff Walls said that with all the potential causes of flooding, homeowners may think they’re taking the steps needed to prevent flooding, but are missing something. He said problems are often unknowingly inherited by people who purchase a home, like landscaping being sloped towards the foundation of home. 

Altmann asked if it would be helpful to hire a consultant to audit properties that are having problems to identify fixes. Walls said that could be helpful, and that he also thinks the city could be taking a more robust approach to communications to address common problems. 

A pause on developments? New infrastructure guidelines? Officials discuss possible next steps. 

While city officials are hopeful the Wet Weather Resiliency Plan reveals some fixes for flooding, it was made clear at the meeting the best outcome will require community-wide changes.

Altmann previously brought the idea of putting a moratorium on developments until the city better understands how they are impacting its ability to stand up to stormwater. He again asked about the possibility at the Sept. 10 meeting, asking if a six-month moratorium could be beneficial. 

“Is there support, or reason to think about, something like a six-month moratorium on development projects until we can do an audit on our site development standards?” Altmann asked. “Otherwise, we’re making decisions now that are going to have negative effects for a long time to come.”

Lacasse said that a six-month moratorium could be looked at to address the “low hanging fruit” changes that need to be made. He said that a lot of the areas that are seeing development are entirely paved already, meaning the areas have significant challenges regardless of new development. He went on to say that along with new developments, there are things the city could look at in its own infrastructure.

“But I do think it’s a worthwhile discussion,” Lacasse said. “I’ve been here a long time, and eight-foot sidewalks along every major street, do we really need that everywhere… or do we just need a network of those?”

Walls said a simplified explanation of the city’s building standards is that the post-development rain runoff cannot be more than the pre-development runoff. He said some communities have “pre-settlement” standards, which means that the site needs to be returned to its native condition. This can be “prohibitively expensive” for developers, Walls said. 

He continued to say that the city currently has standards in place for developments that are one-acre or larger, which is standard. However, some municipalities shrink that threshold. 

Batroney said some cities like Pittsburgh have paused development to improve stormwater management. He said Pittsburgh put a two-year pause, but the process could be faster in East Lansing because it’s a smaller city. 

He stressed the importance of getting feedback from the development community and residents if the city wants to do a development pause and overhaul on its code and ordinances to address stormwater. 

Councilmember Dana Watson stopped short of calling for a moratorium, but said that educating developers could be beneficial. 

“I would be open to offering ideas for people that maybe want to build in this six-month time frame about how they can support our sewer systems,” she said. “I would also be in support of talking to people that have already built about ways that they can help our community.”

Walls added that the Commission on the Environment has discussed a “Green Infrastructure Audit” that would review the city code to identify obstacles to environmentally-friendly infrastructure. He said the audit would look at things like parking and landscaping requirements currently in the code. 

Walls expressed some optimism near the end of the discussion, saying the city isn’t far away from “creative solutions” that will be uncovered through discussions with stakeholders and through the development of the Wet Weather Resiliency Plan.

“[Stormwater management] needs to be integrated into all components of city life,” Walls said. “This is the climate change challenge of our time for the midwest.”