Five years ago, after heavy rains, the Edenville Dam in Gladwin County failed. It sent a rush of flood-water south, overwhelming the Sanford Dam in Midland County.
More than 10,000 people in the region were evacuated. Thousands of homes and businesses were destroyed. And today, four lakes are still drained of water, and lakefront properties have been left without a lake.
On a sunny spring morning, bright yellow bulldozers and excavators are milling around the Sanford Dam, exactly where it was breached nearly five years ago.
They’re filling in the channel that was created by the flood and prepping the site for a new auxiliary spillway. In the event of an emergency, it will divert excess water and move it further downstream if the main spillway, where water typically passes, is overwhelmed.
It’s a safety feature that none of the four dams — Sanford, Edenville, Secord, or Smallwood — previously had.
Brad Fedorchak said the idea behind the updated designs on all the dams is so the 2020 flood won’t ever happen again.
“So you can handle twice as big a storm as we could have previously," he said. "(During a) 200-year event, if you’re on the lake, you won’t even know it. It’ll be the same level, it won’t rise.”
Fedorchak is a project manager with the Four Lakes Task Force, which is a delegated authority that works on behalf of Midland and Gladwin Counties to manage the lakes. The group was established before the flood and had planned to purchase the dams in June of 2020.
Instead, the dams failed a month earlier. The company that owned them, Boyce Hydro, already had several violations and a lawsuit against them from the state. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission had also revoked a hydro-power generating license for the Edenville Dam in 2019, citing safety issues.
The counties ended up getting ownership of the dams from Boyce Hydro in December of 2020 through eminent domain, paying creditors nearly $2 million for the dams and more than 6,000 acres of lake bottomland.
Up on the dam, a ruler shows that Sanford Lake is around 15 feet below its “normal” legal level. Fedorchak, who lives on the lake, laments its loss.
“Sanford Lake and Wixom Lake used to both be extremely good fishing lakes for pike and bass. It's such a shame," he said, looking out over the dam. "They're ain’t a dang fish in this one now.”
But in early April, Fedorchak was buzzing with excitement. The Michigan Supreme Court had recently chosen not to hear an appeal that challenged the project’s financing.
In doing so, the state supreme court upheld previous lower court decisions that a special assessment district to fund the restoration is lawful.
“I said thank god, it’s ready to go," Fedorchak said. "I told my wife, 'you get your lake back now.' Cause it’s actually been so depressing not having the lake, so she is even more excited than me.”
The special assessment district includes around 8,000 parcels across Midland and Gladwin counties that will have to pay to fund the dams. Just over half of the project, around $217.7 million will be paid by property owners over a 40-year period.
Kayla Stryker, the FLTF treasurer, said roughly $200 million in state and federal funding has been put toward the project.
She said some assessment payments have already been collected to cover maintenance and operations in the last two years, but with the court’s decision, property owners in the district will see two new line items on their tax bill this December.
“Likely what's going to happen is the Four Lakes Task Force is going to issue bonds in the coming months," Stryker said. "Then people that live within the special assessment district would make their first payment (in the spring).”
For property owners, the exact annual costs from the assessments depend on their parcel of land and factors like its location, use, lake frontage and view of the water — not the property value.
FLTF says this is because property value can always be increased, if an owner expands, upgrades or builds a bigger home.
Near the Edenville Dam, Wixom Lake has receded into a narrow river.
Jan Colton, who still lives on the “lake,” remembers the flood clearly. She describes how her neighbors wept after the dam failed, while watching the water disappear. Fish were flopping around in puddles and birds swooped in to feast.
"It was just very surreal and everybody was very silent (after the failure)," Colton said. "You wanted to hug people, and yet it was COVID, and nobody wanted to be hugged.
Colton said she first mourned and then grew angry that the dam failure happened in the first place, and that she and her neighbors would have to pay to restore the lakes.
She estimates the assessments will cost her around $200 a month. For Colton — who said she's sunk thousands of dollars into moving, drilling a new well and repairing damage to her home — the cost is too much. She said she ended her retirement early and went back to work after the flood.
“We can't afford the dam, but they're billing us for it," Colton said. "You've got all those tiny little houses over there that retirees are living in that are getting the same assessment as that great big house over there.”
Colton started the Heron Cove Association, which was made up of more than 600 homeowners in the district. The group filed an appeal against the special assessments and sued the counties.
The suits were all eventually dismissed, and the state supreme court put the final nail in the coffin on their appeal.
“You know, this is the system that the state legislature created. We didn't get to choose the venue,” Colton said.
Colton, who no longer is a board member with the association, accepts the legal decision, but she said the law needs to be reformed, and the group plans to take their issue to Lansing.
“We need better criteria for how special assessments are applied, because they're the only tax in the state that circumvents a ballot," she said. "Nobody ever gets a vote on it.”
A tax deferral for seniors and people with permanent disabilities, who make less than $34,900 a year, is in the works in the state legislature.
Most people in the area agree: they want the lakes back. A 2022 survey commissioned by FLTF found that 90% of respondents support rebuilding the dams, though around 25% said they would not be willing to pay anything for the restoration.
And while she disagrees with the financing, Colton also says the lakes are important to the region. She agrees that they boost property values and support the local economy.
FLTF estimates that three dams will be finished by the end of next year and the Edenville dam will be completed in 2027.
Lee Mueller was the owner of Boyce Hydro, at the time of dam failures. He was sued successfully by the state and by some homeowners for damages, but he has not paid a cent toward dam restoration.
