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David Nicholas: After last night's storms and with more severe weather on the way across Central and Northern Michigan, officials in Bellaire say there is a little seepage at their dam and they are in 'watch and see' mode as they monitor those water levels.
WCMU's Tina Sawyer talked with Antrim County's Public Information Officer Janet Koch to get the latest update on what's being done and how residents can prepare in case of emergency.
Janet Koch: The water level at the dam has gone up 6 inches. However, that is still 18 inches before the water would be likely to overflow. So there's a long ways to go. But in an abundance of caution and using cautionary measures that we can take, sandbags are being delivered today, later on, and they will put those across the top of the berm where an overflow would be likely to occur and more sandbags are going to arrive tomorrow to make that even a stronger defense against any more rising water levels because this chain of lakes is so long that it can take two days for the water to come down to the Bel Air Dam from the upper chain.
Tina Sawyer: Right.
JK: So it's not over.
TS: Yeah, and you were saying too that this dam was built like in 1903, was it?
JK: Yeah, early 1900s.
TS: Yeah, so it's an old piece of, we'll say, infrastructure, old infrastructure, and it's kind of falling apart. You guys are in the midst of repairs.
JK: Yeah, I mean, we know it needs upgrades. It's safe, and it's considered safe by FERC, but we know it needs upgrades, essentially, because at the end of the day, that dam was not built for flood control. It was built as a hydro dam. So the fact that we can do any flood control is a bonus.
TS: You're saying there was some seepage that's there, though?
JK: Yeah, at the toe of the slope, the toe of the berm, well, the bottom of the berm, which is kind of embankment southeast side of the dam. They detected a small amount of seepage, so they were hyper aware of that and dam engineers showed up and more dam engineers showed up and they've taken a look at it and they're bringing in kind of a series of materials to repair that on an emergency basis, and they really don't think there'll be any problems. This is kind of best practices for a fix for a situation like this. And we really anticipate that it will be fine.
TS: What's the next step for people? I mean, I know a lot of people living downstream from the dams are a little worried.
JK: Yeah, absolutely. This is totally understandable. We're telling folks that we do not anticipate any necessary evacuation. It just makes sense for people to have a plan, have that go bag ready just in case.
TS: And more rain on the way tonight. So at this point, you should probably be hooked up to some of those alerts.
JK: Yes, The rain alerts, we did, I don't have the numbers, but I'm pretty sure we had a whole bunch of people sign up for the rain alerts yesterday, which is, you know, the best way to get the quickest information, either emergency manager or dispatch, which is obviously 24/7, they would be sent out, targeted to a specific location. They wouldn't go to everybody. They would just go to the people that would really be directly impacted.
TS: Any other information you want to pass along?
JK: We are considering or evaluating the need, I guess, for any sort of emergency shelters or respite areas. We are still working on whether there's a need for that. If people think they will need that, we would love to know so that we can add that to our evaluation criteria to see if there's a need to help people out in that way.
TS: You think you're going to base it maybe tomorrow after the rains tonight?
JK: Yeah, well, and then somewhat based on need and the calls and the emails and the texts that we get, we'll just be constantly evaluating that. And I guess the other thing is, if water is coming in your house and you don't feel safe, please don't wait for us to tell you to leave. Please leave.
DN: That was Antrim County spokeperson Janet Koch talking with WCMU's Tina Sawyer.
