HOLLAND, MI (WHTC-AM/FM) – Not lost among the attention that the race relations and COVID 19 issues have been getting is the ongoing concerns about water levels.
According to the Detroit District office of the US Army Corps of Engineers, Lakes Michigan, Huron, St. Clair and Erie set new monthly mean water level records last month, eclipsing marks set in 1986 in Lakes Michigan/Huron and last year in St. Clair/Erie. This continues a trend of high water, not only on the big lakes, but on the rivers and smaller lakes that feed into those lakes, that has gone on for over a year.
The impact of high water has been seen in Holland, according to first-term City Council Member Nicki Arendshorst, whose Fourth Ward encompasses much of the southern shore of Lake Macatawa. “It’s a concern all over the city, from the causeway to Windmill Island, the Pine Avenue-First Street junction, and especially several of the houses in the Central Park neighborhood,” she said on “WHTC Morning News” during a Friday appearance. “The streets get flooded, the road ends, the water rises, and the city has done a lot, working with the neighbors, BPW, streets department, to help mitigate that as much as possible.”
Another city dealing with high water is Saugatuck, where HESCO temporary barriers have been set up to keep the waters of Kalamazoo Lake from overwhelming its downtown district. “This flooding is causing terrible erosion in all of the river systems that connect to (the Great Lakes),” observed Allegan County Commissioner Dean Kapenga, the Hamilton Republican who appeared in “WHTC Talk of the Town” on Friday. “Saugatuck is trying to spend a lot of money in trying to save some of these businesses that are really in dire straits.”
