One year ago, torrential rains caused serious flooding in Brady Township. Indian Lake filled rapidly and spilled over its banks, threatening homes, yards, and robbing residents of usual summertime waterfront activities. June and early July rains caused some flooding, but the incessant rains continued through July, causing severe flooding that resulted in submerged docks, disappearing yards, a lake-wide no-wake request, and many homeowners using sandbags to try and mitigate the damage.
The Indian Lake flooding on July 22, 2024.
It would be more than a month before lake levels returned to normal. A full year later many residents are still dealing with the damage.
A group of neighbors, spanning South Indian Lake Drive and East Indian Lake Drive, met in the early spring to talk about needs, wants and wishes in terms of yard repairs and preparations for future flooding. The result of that meeting was to investigate what could be done within the rules and regulations of the township. Brady Township has a number of common-sense rules designed to protect the waterway and non-participating lakefront owners as well. Each property owner is required to obtain a permit, which ensures inspection and compliance with inspector visits before and after the work. While the group could not raise the yards to their wish level, filling low spots, creating slight berms where applicable, and filling lower yards to grade was approved.
After reaching out to several contractors, a group of eight homeowners decided to accept a bid from JMS Landscapes of Kalamazoo. JMS owner Joel Schoonbeck said, “It’s not uncommon for each individual homeowner to be required to pull a permit. With waterfront properties there are more levels of oversight, in addition to the local government, the Department of Natural Resources (DNR), the Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE), and the county drain commission can be involved in these types of projects.” JMS specializes in these types of jobs to include ponds, waterfalls, and retaining walls. Schoonbeck added, “When neighbors work together, like in this project, it eliminates a lot of concerns, and there’s the added benefit of less access damage, volume cost savings, and less neighborhood disruption.”
“It’s hard after last year’s flooding to deal with the noise and mud of this year’s restoration,” according to homeowner Susan Lee, “But doing it all together with the neighbors has made it easier and given us a daily topic of conversation.”
Schoonbeck added, “We have done everything we can, within the rules, to bring things back to normal, make improvements, and to attempt to mitigate damage from future flooding.”
