East Lansing Devastated by Flooding Again

For the second time in less than a month, a major storm has hit East Lansing and caused flooding throughout the city. 

Tuesday night’s City Council meeting was canceled due to street flooding making travel unsafe and residents have again reported their homes were damaged. According to a city press release, East Lansing received over five inches of rain in less than two hours. 

“The flooding was widespread within East Lansing,” Communications Manager Carrie Sampson wrote to ELi in an email. “We are still quantifying the extent per area, but two major impact areas were Glencairn and new Whitehills, which are somewhat dissimilar and on different extents of the City. MSU was pretty dry at their rain gauge, but the mid-northern tier of the City seemed to be impacted widely.”

Flooding has been a problem in East Lansing for years, particularly because of the damage that is done to basements or ground level floors. The city’s sewer system is being overwhelmed during severe rain events and water is coming up through floor drains in many homes. Some homes also have water seep through the foundation. 

Similarly, street flooding occurred because pipes connected to storm drains were filled to capacity during Tuesday’s storm. During the storm, the county’s emergency alert system announced that major roadways like the intersection of Hagadorn Road and Burcham Drive were closed due to flooding.

Street flooding can be worse if debris such as leaves block storm drains, but the city’s press release noted that Department of Public Works (DPW) employees spent the day leading up to the storm clearing debris from these drains in preparation for heavy rainfall. 

In 2022, then DPW Director Nicole McPherson and engineering firm Tetra Tech Senior Water Resource Engineer Dan Christian spoke to City Council about why flooding is becoming more common and why the city has struggled to address the problem. 

Essentially, Christian said the city sewer system is meant to withstand up to a “10-year storm,” which means that there should be a 10% chance that the system is overwhelmed by a storm in any given year. However, with climate change making severe rain events more common, the scale has become outdated. Now, two storms have overwhelmed the system in less than a month. 

To give a couple examples of the magnitude of storms that have hit East Lansing, a 2021 storm that caused flooding was called a 140-year storm and the city called the storm last month a “200- to 1,000-year storm.”

At the 2022 meeting, McPherson said the city was looking to increase resistance to storms. However, some will simply be too large for the sewer system to handle. 

“Our sewers, even designed at a 10-year or above design standard, are never going to, I hate to say ‘never,’ [but] are not designed to take on those 100-year storm events,” she said.

This uncertainty had adverse impacts on residents who experienced flooding. One resident ELi spoke with in 2022 said their home had not shown a history of flooding prior to the 2021 and 2022 storms. They had experienced major property damage from both storms and were uncertain if they could use an entire floor in their house. Homeowners who experienced flooding have also expressed concerns about losing property value.

After the latest storm, Sampson said the city is offering no-fee trash collection to East Lansing residents, as it did after the June storm. Those with water damaged items can visit the Department of Public Works at 1800 E. State Road between today and Wednesday, July 17 to schedule a trash pickup and receive a pickup voucher. Collections will take place on Friday, July 12, Monday, July 15, Wednesday, July 17 and Friday, July 19, according to a press release from the city. Proof of residency is required to schedule a pickup. 

Additionally, the Wet Weather Resiliency plan survey has been reopened so data can be collected on the latest storm. The city is hopeful feedback in the survey helps it create a plan to reduce surface and basement flooding in future years. 

Glencairn neighborhood resident Paul Troutman experienced severe flooding in his basement in 2022. To prevent future flooding, he installed a backflow preventer. During Tuesday’s storm, he experienced only minor seepage in his home. He hopes the city reinstates a program that reimburses homeowners who purchase backflow preventers. 

“We heard from neighbors who do not have a backflow preventer that their basement floor drains brought in inches of combined sewer water,” he wrote to ELi in an email. “The city needs to bring back the reimbursement program for residents who want backflow preventers, this is unacceptable.”

Ted Benca is the president of the Whitehills Neighborhood Association, one of the areas hit hardest by the recent flooding. He hopes the city does more to educate residents about how they can protect their homes from future floods. 

“[The city] might give people some advice in terms of prevention,” Benca said. “How to prepare for these events because I’m assuming they will continue given the situation with our climate.”

Benca said it was helpful when former council member and current 54B District Court Judge Lisa Babcock had a plumber come to a meeting to give advice after a past storm. 

City Manager Robert Belleman did not respond to a request to comment from ELi but did recognize the damage of the floods, according to the city’s press release. 

“Our first priority is to provide assistance and reassurance to our residents,” Belleman said according to the press release. “We are actively working to identify how widespread the damage was from this storm. Whether residents have losses from basements or other areas of their home where they have standing water, or from vehicles caught in flooded streets that are no longer operable, we realize there is a lot of pain today and we want to help.”

Whitehills neighborhood resident Charlie Pike acknowledged the harm of the flooding, but said he was able to find some encouragement by the way residents helped each other through the storm. 

“I saw neighbors helping neighbors,” he said. “I saw an old lady helped out of a car who was trapped at one of the intersections and practically carried to one of my neighbor’s houses where she was given a blanket and a cup of coffee.

“I saw neighbors helping neighbors fix downspouts and clean out drains on the road,” Pike continued. “It was really cool to see that in a time of need, everybody was looking out for each other.”