High water levels hit locals in the wallet
By Linda Alice Dewey
Sun contributor
June swelled Lake Michigan by another 4 inches which is bad news for Megan Grosvenor Munoz, whose family owns and operates Manitou Island Transit.
The company ferries passengers on pleasure tours to the Manitou Islands out of Leland. Their service began in 1917, when her great-grandfather, George Tracy Grosvenor, ran U.S. mail to residents on the islands. Now her husband, Jimmy, and her brother, Mike Grosvenor, captain the ship. The two couples—Mike and Sarah Grosvenor, Jimmy and Megan Munoz—co-own and manage the company. Their children help them run it.
This spring and summer, they’ve had to cancel four or five trips, Munoz says, “because we can’t get people on South [Manitou] safely” due to water splashing over the dock on the island. The problem isn’t as much the surges after the storms, she explains. “Mostly, it has to do with the lake level and wind direction. The water is right up to the dock level on South Manitou.”
In fact, a boater who visited the island July 8 reported that if you stand at the edge of the South Manitou dock and curl your toes over the edge, they will be in water.
As the company’s bookkeeper, Munoz is keenly aware of the cost of these cancellations due to the high water levels. “It’s such a short season—from Memorial Day through Labor Day weekend,” she says. “Any time we lose a trip, we’re losing money.” Each trip ideally carries 40-50 passengers at $42 apiece. Plus, she says, “two-thirds might take a tour [of the island] at $10.” There’s also income from the cash bar on board. “It all adds up,” she laments.
Do the math. Five canceled trips, multiplied by 50 passengers, multiplied by $42, equals $10,500 in losses due to high water—and that doesn’t include cash bar revenues and tours on the island.
Jimmy raised their dock in Leland by 14 inches in June. That cost another $3,000 in materials plus the three days of labor that took him away from his day jobs as a charter fisherman, ferry captain and construction contractor.
He can’t fix the South Manitou dock though. It’s owned by the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. “We’re still waiting on the National Park to raise the dock on the island,” Megan says.
Until the Park raises the dock or the lake goes down, Manitou Island Transit is forced to occasionally cancel. Munoz is concerned. “I don’t know how many more [trips] we’ll lose,” she says. “Hopefully the water will go down pretty soon.”
As of the second week in July, it hadn’t receded yet. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers estimated Lake Michigan-Huron water levels on July 12 at 581.92 feet above sea level—3 inches higher than it was on June 12, 15 inches higher than July 12 a year ago, and a whopping 31 inches above the long-term monthly average for July.
“Typically by the end of July, beginning of August, it will go down,” says Munoz. “If not, we’re at the mercy of the weather and east winds that blow into the dock, or northeast winds.”
Although the weather forecast for mid-July shows generally clear skies, the water level forecast still doesn’t look good, as far as Munoz is concerned. The Army Corps, which has kept tabs on lake levels since 1918, expects Lake Michigan to gain another 2 inches this month.
The cause of the meteoric rise from low water levels in 2013 to near-record high levels now, according to Great Lakes scientists and meteorologists, is a change tied to the break-up of the Polar Vortex, caused in turn by warmer than normal Arctic air. This brings extreme weather, such as our heavy precipitation and resultant floods, while other areas experience droughts which bring wildfires such as the recent ones in Canada that sent the smoky haze over Michigan the second week in July.
Manitou Island Transit isn’t the only dock being raised at Fishtown. The Fishtown Preservation Society plans to raise the rest of the Fishtown docks, and a few of its shanties, this fall.
Flooding basements
For businesses along M-22 in Glen Arbor, the problem is often the water table, which rises along with the lake.
One such business has spent $10-12,000 so far in 2018 and 2019 to combat water coming up through the cement floor of its basement. Its owners prefer to remain anonymous for fear this might affect their inflow of customers or tenant business. The company’s tenant had to dispose of inventory which had been on the floor, as they sloshed through 3 inches of water last year to reach their items.
“The water came through the cement floor and cracked it,” confirms the owner. Multiple cracks angle across the floor throughout the basement. Because the damage was due to water seeping in from outside, insurance would not cover it. “We won’t replace the floor.”
They’re grateful it wasn’t worse. “We’re fortunate that it was clean water,” they say. “There was no contamination. We had to throw away some things,” she says, “put things in plastic tubs and install pumps.” They also added a new dehumidifier, which runs continuously throughout the spring and summer.
The couple purchased the property a few decades ago. One of the buildings is over 100 years old. “We don’t know what they did before we bought it,” one says, but they were informed there were no water problems in 1986, the last time the water rose to this level.
When it initially flooded last year, the couple called in a cleanup company out of Mesick. “We had to call the trash people,” says the woman. “I did not go downstairs, because I couldn’t stand to look. I said, ‘You go ahead and help the folks that are helping us. You just go ahead and make a good judgment.’”
When water seeped through again this spring, they bought new surface pumps to funnel water to areas where the two sump pumps from last year were installed.
For the owners, the cost and the damage were not the worst of it. “More troubling was the anxiety that something like that causes you in terms of, ‘what do we do now?’”
Like Munoz, the couple knows this is not over. “The water level is persisting. It came up again this spring. As you know, we’re 500 feet from the water, so the water table is just rising.”
Lake Michigan-Huron is currently about 15 inches above its level for the same time last year.
For now, the couple is adapting to the situation one step at a time. “It’s a process,” they say, “not a solution.”
They also know they’re not the only ones suffering with water issues. “This is affecting everyone in the area with a basement. The question is, have we reached a level where we can continue to mitigate it adequately?”
She notes that the water is higher in the spring, then goes down over the summer. She hopes it won’t go higher next year.
What if it does?
“We don’t want to think about that,” she admits. “The issue is that you have to keep addressing it as it happens, because no one is really able to predict where it’s going from here.”
Glen Arbor Town hall and homes
The Glen Arbor Township Hall has, in the words of Township administrator Peter Van Nort, “a small upswelling of what would appear to be ground water, that leaks into the basement and runs over to the sump periodically. It’s not a continual situation.”
Van Nort is not concerned, except for one thing. “It’s a small amount, but I didn’t see it last year.”
Sump pumps were installed before he came into office two and a half years ago. He doesn’t know the history beyond that.
“Right now we’re just keeping an eye on it,” he says. “It’s very small, just a trickle.”
However, Van Nort observes, “You’ve got homes all over town, too, that are having that impact.”
Van Nort, himself, had to deal with this in 2014 when water flowed into his home at Woodstone after the drought ended. “We had 310 feet of trench cut into the basement floor and a piping system laid in the trenches that took the water, as it rose up, over to the two sump pumps.” The cost was $7,000, and no, it was not covered by insurance.
He thinks the water has topped off now and is diminishing. “Based on our sump pumps at home, I would say it’s already going down. Our sump pumps in early June were running within 15-30 seconds between each other. Now it’s minutes between runs.”
On July 12, Lake Michigan-Huron (considered one lake hydrologically) was only 1 inch below the record all-time high for that date, set in 1986. The Army Corp’s forecasts that it will rise another 2 inches by August 5.
The version of this story that ran in print incorrectly reported that Manitou Island Transit raised its dock by 14 feet. In fact, they raised the dock by 14 inches. We regret the error.
