Flooding in the northern lower peninsula has caused severe road damage in a couple Michigan counties.
Emmet and Charlevoix counties experienced heavy rain over the weekend. What started as a few drops quickly became thousands of dollars in repairs.
Brian Gutowski is the engineer manager at Emmet County Road Commission. He said heavy snow earlier this spring made the ground saturated which caused excessive surface water.
“We had certain roads that our shoulders were washed away and it cut underneath the road. Some primary roads we had water over the top that we had never seen before, we had a couple roads that the culverts kind of washed right away, we had about a ten foot casm in the middle of the road we had to close that for a couple days.”
Gutowski said it could cost anywhere from 15 to 50 thousand dollars to repair all of the damage.
He said Charlevoix may have fared even worse with several primary roads being washed out.
The roads are expected to be fixed sometime within the next two weeks.