2020 Floods

The village of Sanford and Midland Center for the Arts are still awaiting reimbursements for the cost of rebuilding after the devastating 2020 floods.

Victims of the floods that devastated Midland, Gladwin and Saginaw counties will have their day in court this month as they pursue a lawsuit against the state of Michigan for improperly maintaining the Edenville dam.

Property owners were unsuccessful in their court challenge of the special assessments that will go towards repairing the Secord, Smallwood, Sanford and Edenville dams after they were destroyed in 2020 by mass flooding.

The grant will go to reduce some of the assessment being levied on property owners in the area. It is not yet clear how much the grant will bring bills down.

Starting this week, crews are laying concrete on a portion of the Sanford Dam breached by flood waters that inundated parts of Gladwin and Midland counties in 2020.

A bill proposed by Congresswoman Kristen McDonald Rivet (D-Bay City) and Congressman John Moolenaar (R-Caledonia) are pushing to cut red tape for communities impacted by natural disasters.

In partnership with Central Michigan University’s College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, WCMU's “The Sanford Voices Project” documents the personal histories of those affected by the disaster, and how they recovered.

Five years after the Edenville Dam failure, around 60 dams in Michigan have received grants for repairs, but the state program, that oversees these projects, is running out of funds.

Five years after historic rainfall destroyed the Forest Lake spillway, the community is on the verge of getting their lake back after cobbling together a series of grants.

Gladwin County homeowner Jim Hall says it took 8.5 hours for the canals around Wixom Lake to drain after the Edenville Dam failed in 2020. Officials estimate it could take two to seven years for all the water to return.