Victory Park in Albion features an old dam with a waterfall, cobblestone banks and play ponds.
It’s idyllic, but today it poses a significant flood risk to downtown Albion and neighborhoods downstream.
The state has agreed to put $1.75 million toward removing it, though it will take millions more to complete the project. Phase one to remove four of five dams, including the Victory Park Dam, and restore 41 miles of the Kalamazoo River will cost $7.8 million.
The funding comes from the state’s three year Dam Risk Reduction Grant Program to help repair, replace or remove crumbling dams. Lawmakers approved the appropriations after two dams near Midland failed five years ago.
The Edenville Dam and Sanford Dam failures caused catastrophic flooding, forced 11,000 people to evacuate and resulted in over $200 million in property damage.
Three other Southwest Michigan dam projects are also benefiting from a state grant program: Vicksburg's Sunset Lake Dam, Three Rivers' Portage Plant Dam, and Coldwater's Blackhawk Dam.
But the grant program will end this year unless the legislature extends it.
In Albion, the city hired the consulting firm of Wightman and Associates to handle the removal project.
Wightman engineer Suzannah Deneau is the project manager.
“We're hoping that that fund will be resupplied," she said.
"It was just a three-year bucket of money and I'm hoping that we're going to be able to see more of it so that more people can remove these dilapidated dams.”
Mason Manuszak is the grant program manager for the Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy’s (EGLE) Dam Safety Unit.
He said that EGLE got more than $100 million in grant applications for the $14.9 million available for dam projects in 2025, the third and possibly the final year of the program.
Manuszak said communities will have to raise more money for dam projects and the agency is working with Albion and other cities to help them find more sources of funding. He called EGLE’s program a start.
“By being able to fund these initial steps, we're able to help communities, dam owners and operators start the ball rolling towards their eventual projects. So, they can use our dollars to leverage it to other grant sources,” Manuszak said.
In the meantime, Deneau said she is working with the community to complete the designs by the end of 2025. Albion received a million-dollar Dam Risk Reduction Grant from the state in 2023 for that part of the project.
Deneau said the community understands the project's importance and the risk to property and safety if they aren't removed.
“For losing the waterfall, there is sadness for that, and even just changing the park itself," Deneau said.
"I've never seen a park like this before. I think it's incredibly charming. I wish there was a way that we could fix it and still do our project at the same time.
"It just, it doesn't work," she said.
