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It’s been five years since a series of dam failures resulted in widespread flooding across parts of mid-Michigan. Sanford, a community in Midland County, was devastated by the incident. Five years on, the community is doing better, but is still facing challenges.
Longtime Sanford Councilman Carl Hamann showed WCMU around the village, which has rebuilt significantly from flooding.
He described some of the initial damage left by the flooding.
“Right where the tracks are going up there, that's where our village office was. The village office went from there, all over…see where the hot dog stand is? That's where the village office building ended up on top of the museum,” Hamann said.
Large swaths of residential housing, and businesses on Saginaw Road were all but destroyed.
Porte Park was once an entire neighborhood of homes, so badly damaged that they couldn’t be fixed, and all the owners left. No one was killed.
“And all this was houses here. 17 houses and 17 families we lost," Hamann said.
The city has overcome challenges, with many businesses reopening. But the five-year process has left the village on significantly shaky financial ground.
The Red Oak Restaurant is one of the many businesses that have rebuilt from the ground up. Melissa Ayotte is the 3rd generation in her family to run the establishment since 1973.
Three restaurants were located on Saginaw Road before the flooding; the Red Oak is the only one left.
"We didn't know what we were doing, you know, rebuilding a complete bar from, you know, the studs, like we're not construction people. So it was, that… was hard," Ayotte said.
While the Red Oak is doing well, like many business owners, Ayotte was forced to take out a loan. The company borrowed $250,000.
"It's a 30-year mortgage, but I, we actually are fortunate enough to pay extra on it every month,” Ayotte said. "It was just like another mortgage, and we had just paid the building off in December before the dam failure."
Those fiscal strains are a common theme in Sanford. 30-40 businesses and houses were permanently lost.
While Sanford has built many new properties, it has lost revenue and funding for entities like schools from the people and businesses who couldn’t come back.
In addition, a special assessment has been implemented to rebuild the dams and fill the four lakes that were lost in Midland and Gladwin counties. Hamman says the assessment will cause financial stress for people.
"The numbers on it, it went from $260 million dollars. To over $400 million on the same number of people, 7,700 and some change, you do the math on that and I'm not a mathematician, but that's a lot of money," he said.
"Some of these are five, six, $7,000 on top of your property tax. That's going to put a financial line on people that cannot afford it."
In addition, he says the community didn’t get much help from settlements related to Boyce Hydro, the now-bankrupt former owner of the dams.
“I got a check for $12.00, something like that…. maybe it was $50. I really don't know because I kind of looked at it….and a lot of people did what I did, threw it away,” Hamann said.
Hamann also discussed a road bridge and a rail bridge on Saginaw Road above the Tittabawassee River. He says they’ll need to be replaced.
The city needs to install infrastructure to redirect water away from the main street in the event of another flooding incident. The numbers for the project could cost between $12-14 million if not more.
"We started on this, and the number was about $4.7 (million). The last number I got back, and this is not a final number, it's $14.7 (million). My projection is, we've been, nine years, trying to get funding to do this prior to the dam failure. Now, since the dam failure, my projection is going to be over $20 million because we're going to have to re-engineer both of these.”
It’s one of many financial headaches. The state received $71.9 million dollars in federal aid to spend on recovery from flooding in 2020 and 2021.
Hamann said the village is still waiting for some of those funds.
In addition, he talked about red tape on a project the village has been approved for.
"Redoing a drain system, a storm system. It's about a $4.3 million dollar project. and we're working through that, and but there’s so much red tape and so much bureaucracy, it just takes forever.”
Despite all the headaches, the future does look bright, according to Dolores Porte, the village president and namesake of Porte Park. She says there's much to look forward to.
"I see our economic future being really good because we have a lot of new businesses in town and a lot of new homes,” Porte said. “So even though we lost, 30-40 homes and businesses, we have a lot of brand-new construction that is making up the difference."
Earlier this month, opening statements started in a case against the state for damage caused by the dam breakages.
