This year, flood emergencies once again swept the UP, prompting emergency management divisions across the peninsula to request federal assistance through programs like FEMA. There are two types of assistance to be applied for: public assistance (infrastructure, roads, municipalities, etc.) and individual assistance (privately owned properties and houses). Funds are then given back to the local emergency departments in a reimbursement process.

As of June, FEMA’s latest visit concluded, and they will now make a report to the state. According to Emergency Management Division Coordinator Chris VanArsedale, we now wait and see what happens. 

Preventing Flood Emergencies: The Quest for a County Drain

In April, abandoned railway grades in Lake Linden blocked a water drain, causing it to become waterlogged and burst, resulting in a flood emergency. Situations like this prompt questions about who maintains these culverts.

“We still are very interested from the county’s perspective in pursuing County Drains within a lot of these municipalities. In the long term, we think it will be the best way to manage them,” says VanArsedale. 

The Houghton County Emergency Division is working with the county board of commissioners to figure out how to get municipalities and people on board to have an established community drain. An established community drain would then be eligible for grants. It would give communities, in the long term, better overall preparedness.

“Right now, they are segmented. Part of the system might belong to the township, or the village, or the landowner. Even if they are maintaining their drains, are they coordinating together? If someone is putting in a 20-inch culvert, but someone [downriver] isn’t, that could cause problems. We want one continuous drain system to where it can be engineered to be coordinated,” says VanArsedale. “I think that’s a big step in the right direction.”

A county drain would make it so that the county assumes responsibility for the maintenance of a system of drains, rather than the individual municipalities or the landowners.

The catch is that a county drain has to be petitioned into existence by a group of at least 10 people that are within the drain district. Those people can petition their local township or city or village board. Then, the municipality can petition the county board of commissioners. 

For example, Dollar Bay residents would petition the Osceola Township, who can then petition the Houghton County Board.

There are 36 drains within the M-26 corridor alone, with the main area of concern in the stretch between Lake Linden and Dollar Bay. Other potentially hazardous areas include the drainage in between South Range and Painesdale, which threatens the ATV trail. The drains near Chassell all the way up to Ripley all have potential for damage, too.

“How much money it would cost is a concern,” said VanArsedale. “On the flipside, how much damage would it cost in the end? Are we paying more money by responding to it?”

Rural Hazard Resilience Project Hones in on Flood Preparedness

In the face of unpredictable natural disasters and the growing need for community preparedness, the Rural Hazard Resilience Project is empowering rural areas to overcome the challenges posed by flooding and secure a more resilient future for Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

According to Evan Lanese, GIS/Planning Technician, the project is a collaboration between WUPPDR, Michigan Tech, and the University of Washington and involves the development of three main tools; the GIS visualization tool, a photo submission tool, and Google Earth engine.

GIS Visualization Tool

The GIS Visualization Tool is a map where you can toggle on and off different layers: transportation layers (roads and trails), critical infrastructure layers (schools and hospitalization), and other important things that an emergency manager would need to know to evaluate flood procedures. The map shows where flooding is most likely to happen.

“Let’s say there’s a nursing home that needs to be evacuated,” said Lanese. “They could use the tool to find the best route, say ‘Oh, this road is flooded or washed out, so we’ll have to go this other route,’ and adjust the time accordingly.”

Lanese does outreach, social media and web design for the project, but most importantly collects map data from other townships to create a more accurate map. Some landowners don’t want their map data to be public, and sometimes the follow-up between townships and Lanese takes months.

According to Lanese, collecting data for the map is a full-time job. The good news is that they’re comparing it with modeling systems collected by FEMA, and they’re matching up pretty well.

Flood Photo Submission Tool

You can help contribute to the effort by using the Flood Photo Submission Tool. The team is trying to get community members to take pictures of the flooding and tag the location to upload to our database. The tool then checks to see if what is pictured matches our flood models using real life data.

Google Earth Engine

The third tool is the Google Earth Engine, which allows you to select a certain area and choose a return period for flooding, like 25-year-flood versus a 500-year-flood, and gives you a flood hazard risk assessment. The assessment includes how many buildings might flood, how many people might be affected, how much farmland will be affected. The tools are all publicly accessible and can be used by the community to assess flood hazard risks.

The goal of the project is to offer this model at low cost to rural areas, making flood hazard mitigation accessible for counties that may not have the budget. Lanese hopes to see the models they develop expand to the entire UP.

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