By DREYMA BERONJA

Journal Staff Writer

ISHPEMING — Several Ishpeming residents voiced concern and frustration about water damage in their homes during an Ishpeming City Council meeting Wednesday.

Ishpeming resident Hugh Hart said he has lived in Ishpeming at his current home since 1988. Flooding is a new problem and has happened three times, he said.

“This was the result of blocked and slow drainage at the corner of Maple and Arch streets due to debris or snow and ice pack,” Hart said. “We contacted the emergency (Department of Public Works) number during the May 2022 flood and were abruptly told several instances of flooding were occurring in the city at that time and the DPW worker hung up the telephone.”

The May 2022 flood caused over $15,000 in damages to Hart’s garage and finished basement, he said. He later filed a claim with the city’s insurance ,which was denied.

“There were two other instances, the most recent in July of 2023. DPW was again called, a message left at the answering service and never responded to,” Hart said. “Subsequently, we were told that the emergency number is not responded to after hours. I’ve been outside at 2 in the morning clearing off storm drains while standing in knee-high water. The next day we spoke with the city DPW foreman, who told us the drain becomes clogged with debris from yards and the road itself and because there was no ordinance required citizens to keep their property free of potential washout (material), there was nothing the city could offer.”

Hart said he wrote a letter to the city manager and mayor outlining the problem. City Manager Craig Cugini responded in a letter that “Stormwater is a specific program fund for which the city neither received program funds nor has a fund balance within the city’s operational budget.”

Hart noted a solution was offered by the city.

“The DPW workers who flushed the storm drain after the floods offered a new open graded storm cover rather than the solid manhole cover currently in place. This has yet to happen,” Hart said. “We have resorted to placing sandbags in our driveway to hopefully block any water flow to our home. Noting the city of Ishpeming has the highest property millage in Marquette County, I would ask the council to move forward addressing these property issues with short and long-term plans.”

Not an isolated problem

Other residents voiced similar frustrations. Kathy Sylvester, who has been in her home since 1977, said she had had a dry basement for 30 years until the Partridge Creek Diversion Project was put in place.

According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the project began in 2011 in an effort to eliminate a major source of mercury from entering Deer Lake.

“Since then, we have a stream every spring running through our basement,” Sylvester said.

She said other policies have been put in place since then that has caused the drainage to increase “exponentially.”

Sylvester said her husband has one paralyzed hand and she is disabled.

“He cannot do any of the work, so that means that I have to set up the three sump pumps and 75-foot hoses to man 24 hours a day to keep our basement at a level where everything was not destroyed,” Sylvester said. “I have learned since the 15 years that this has started, everything in our basement is in plastic totes to protect (it) … now. We have contacted our insurance company a couple of times and have had SERVPRO come in and do professional cleaning since we have raw sewage that comes up through all of our floor drains in our basement.”

She said this year was so bad that a waterfall was coming out of the toilet in the basement, resulting in her jamming towels into the toilet to try and “stem the waterfall from escaping.”

Their current insurance company told Sylvester and her husband that their rates would go up and they will not be able to find an insurance company to insure them.

“I just don’t know where to go from here,” Sylvester said. “We would love to sell because I can’t personally keep up with this anymore, but can we sell a home with a clear conscience for somebody else to come in and have to deal with this every year? We have to come up with some type of a solution, all of us, both the city and the residents.”

The city’s response

During the meeting, Cugini said the city sought and acquired $16 million for sewer work but “cannot speed up those timelines but (the city) is working through them.” The city is also in the process of seeking $20 million in water project funds.

“There are a lot of actions that are being taken, none of them are quick timelines but those are all things that have been brought to the council,” Cugini said. “All of those things have been approved by the council for action and directed to the city staff to take those actions and we’ve been working through those things.”

Although no action was taken by the council, discussions were made on “remediations for emergencies.”

Councilor Pat Scanlon said getting rid of groundwater would be the “biggest potential temporary fix.”

“If we can put a well down or if we can drop and pick a pit, whatever we got to do to remove the groundwater, that’s going to be the biggest potential temporary fix,” Scanlon said. “If all the things we’re talking about, none of those are going to come to be quick, but we can have a crew go over and get the groundwater moving and put up a pipe if it’s got to go down the street to a sewer three blocks away that the DPW says it’ll hold the water, that’ll carry it. That will solve both (issues) because if we stop the migration then the sewer system is probably going to operate on its own.”

In an email Friday, a city spokesperson said the city’s downtown water infrastructure was “operational and functioning as it should. But due to the high water table, it was also beyond capacity.”

“In May, City of Ishpeming reached out to (Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy) and EGLE granted a permit to allow the discharge of sewage into the storm sewer, in order to not overwhelm the treatment plant, which avoided catastrophic failure of the wastewater treatment plant.”

City officials reported that to the public in a May 6 press release.

“The City of Ishpeming began implementing this health safety protocol due to water infiltration of the sanitary sewer system. The sanitary system is currently overwhelmed by significant increases from ground saturation caused by the rapid melting of the snowpack from the storm occurring on May 1. When this happens, the rainwater (also known as clear water) infiltrates into the sanitary system through cracks in pipes, manholes and basement stormwater sump pumps and can result in sewer backups on some occasions, as well as additional costs of treating extra water.”

As to the funding piece, the spokesperson noted that a state emergency declaration was made for seven counties in May. Marquette County was one of those counties.

“Generally speaking, local government provides information about and connections to state and/or federal emergency relief funds after an emergency declaration has been made by the governor. It is not typical for local governments to hold funding for this purpose (rather the state and federal governments hold the funding).”

The rapid melting caused widespread problems; it was not isolated to Ishpeming residents.

She said the city put out a Facebook post to share state and federal resources with flooding victims.

City officials said they have taken several steps to mitigate the problem:

≤ A catch basin was installed to replace another that was not positioned well initially.

≤ The city intends to apply for a federal FEMA grant, working with an engineering firm on that currently. This one is focused on stormwater. This was requested to city council during the July meeting.

An official statement about an upcoming city sewer project is expected to come out next week.

To watch the full meeting, go to youtube.com/@cityofishpemingmi987.

Dreyma Beronja can be reached at 906-228-2500 ext. 548. Their email address is dberonj@miningjournal.net.