Severe flooding hit the Sanford and Edenville Dams five years ago, in May 2020. Quickly, over 10,000 residents were ordered to evacuate, Governor Gretchen Whitmer declared a state of emergency, and by the end of the day, thousands of homes were demolished to ruins.
Soon after, it became clear that more than a malfunction caused this state of emergency. Whitmer ordered an investigation into how two privately owned dams could deteriorate despite much oversight from government regulators.
The investigation found the dams owners failed to make important upgrades, despite warnings from federal regulators years prior to the flooding. In a 2018 filing, regulators characterized dam owner Boyce Hydro as “chronically noncompliant.”
A federal judge ruled the owners of the dams were liable and ordered them to pay $120 million dollars.
But as Boyce Hydro was in the process of filing for bankruptcy, those who faced damages never received money. Today, lawyers say, some are still without homes, and others are upset that they’ll need to pay into a sum of around $200 million to repair the dams and refill the lakes.
Lisa and Michael Callen live near the Edenville Dam. They’re two among thousands of Midland and Gladwin County residents who watched the failed dams take their homes.
“Just one bad bad news after another, just waiting and waiting and nothing's happening,” Lisa Calloway said.
Last week, a Michigan Court of Claims judge denied the state's request to resolve the case without trial. The Calloways joined roughly 2,000 plaintiffs in Gladwin, Midland, and Saginaw counties in a lawsuit against the state of Michigan.
Attorney Ven Johnson is representing over 300 of these plaintiffs. He noted that this isn’t a personal injury case. It’s an example of inverse condemnation, which describes when the government seizes private property for public use without reasonable compensation.
“I can't call this an anniversary, but five years later. commemorating not only this loss, but the continued delay to deny and defend tactics from the state of Michigan on an infrastructure calamity that they knew was going to happen not only allowed it to happen, but in essence, encouraged it to happen when they allowed more water to be added shortly before this flood,” Johnson told Stateside.
Some property owners are choosing to rebuild with their own money. Those who don’t have the money are giving up their property, Johnson said, when it is being sold at county auctions.
Johnson called this result “predictable” when the state stopped taking jurisdiction over the dam in February 2018.
“They did nothing, allowed the water to increase, so they made it even worse, and now they want to step back and say, ‘Oh, not our fault,’” Johnson said.
That’s what Johnson said the case is really about — the state of Michigan’s response to the flooding.
“Simply because somebody has the good fortune of having enough money to rebuild and make it nicer than it was before,” Johnson said. “Not a very good idea to have the state come in and wreck your property and then give nothing. To me, each circumstance would be different, but what it boils down to is a man and woman's castle or a home is their castle.”
The civil trial is set for January 2026, and Johnson expects the trials to continue for another year and a half to two years at the least, he said. Like in the Flint water crisis, Johnson said, residents who suffered damages from the dams' failures should be entitled to settlement compensation from the state. Payouts from the Flint crisis are ongoing, and a $53 million settlement is expected to be distributed among approximately 26,000 individual plaintiffs who were directly impacted by the crisis, according to a press release from Attorney General Dana Nessel.
“Our government should be doing better and standing by our people and not litigating and kicking the can down the road like it did in Flint for eight years,” Johnson said.
But Nessel's office said the dam failure, while tragic, "is nothing like the Flint water litigation."
"The evidence confirms that the state agencies are not responsible for the dam’s failure," said Nessel's Press Secretary, Danny Wimmer.
As to what settlement numbers might be, Johnson doesn’t have an exact number in mind. “We believe that when all is said and done, the damages will be in excess of a million dollars,” he said.
Restoration efforts for the four lakes and rebuilding for the dams is expected to continue over the next several years.
Heard on this episode:
- Mid-Michigan dam restorations are picking back up, with residents to pay nearly $218M from WCMU Public Media reporter Teresa Homsi.
Background reading:
- Mid-Michigan residents demand the state take "accountability" on fifth anniversary of the 2020 flood
- Report says Michigan 2020 dam failures were ‘preventable’
- Michigan Supreme Court says some Midland and Gladwin homeowners will partially pay for dam restoration efforts
- Michigan Supreme Court is the next stop for dam legal fight
