By Susan Carroll

Review Writer

During a public meeting at the village hall on May 1, several property owners on Lakeview Street raised concerns regarding flooding and property damage issues which they feel have been caused by the design of the roadway and its breakdown from lack of maintenance.

Village Manager Joe Young, along with Jeremy Richert, DPW director, and the engineering firm of Hubble, Roth & Clark (HRC), discussed the problem and offered a variety of solutions.

“This is an exploratory meeting,” Young said, “and we are looking at all options for the best solution.”

Paul Widlak, owner of 292 Lakeview, said that around 2005 the road was raised and widened by 30-50 percent. Prior to that roadwork, there were no flooding issues. Immediately after completion, flooding occurred.

The water pouring off the road onto Widlak’s property flooded not only his crawlspace, but was “powerful enough to knock over his children,” he said.

The road was redesigned to alleviate the problem and, after being repaired the second time, seemed to initially work. The current road and drainage system, consist of four underground collection basins, a built-up roadway with an inverted crown bowl, a pavement lip and a berm.

However, over time the system started to break down. Today, the water collects in the road, the road and lip pavement have broken down substantially, the berm is washing away and the problem continues to grow steadily worse including increased flooding, Widlak said.

During a rainstorm last September, Widlak forwarded several photos to the village.

“You can see the wall of water that is created from the pond that is centered on the Village road. This wall of water goes over the road, over the berm and ultimately onto my property. You can also see that my property cannot handle any more water from your road, as there is now a pond that has formed at the foot of my driveway. This water is continuing to damage my property.”

“You can see by inspection that the dirt berm has worn down and that there is a hole between the dirt berm and the edge of your road. The edge of your road has broken off and dirt is now washing down at the foot of my property. The water not only floods my driveway, but ends up overflowing between my garage and the neighbor to the north’s garage and down towards the back of my house and ultimately to the side of my house,” Widlak said.

He is also concerned that the pollutants in the water will damage his trees, many of which are 75-years-old or older.

One of the solutions offered by the village is to install a catch basin so the water would collect into a pretreatment station and be “cleaned.” The final step in the process is to discharge the water into Lake Orion.

The village would need a 6-foot easement to install the discharge drain pipe from the road to the lake. The property owner of 288 Lakeview said he would allow the easement on his property, which would include drilling through his seawall to get the pipe to the lake.

The property owners were not in favor of discharging into the lake, questioning whether the pretreatment station would extract 100 percent of the pollutants; how the pipe would be maintained; and what would happen if the pipe became clogged with debris?

“Your plan would have the water emptying right where there is a concrete pier that would limit the water flow. Between the concrete pier and the shoreline, the area has only about 70 degrees of opening to the water. The additional 290 degrees is walled off. This area right now collects all sorts of debris including dead fish, dead animals, weeds, bottles, cans, paper, plastic and other things that don’t belong in the lake. If you were to dump the water from the road here, imagine what the salt and other debris would further do to this area. In addition, this is adjacent to the area where we often swim. This would be a horrible result,” wrote Widlak in an email prior to this meeting.

Property owners proposed to have a French well system, a less invasive solution installed, either under the road or under the road and/or under the dirt driveway that is there currently.

It was also suggested that the village put the road back to the original design back when there were no flooding issues – in which the road would be dropped, the ridge build up and French drains installed.

Village officials stated that that would cause the standing water to remain on the road and not drain off, nor do they feel a French drain system is a viable solution.

The village, in the interim, agreed to build up the lip of the road while further investigation is done on installing a drainage pipe into the lake.

“The village is picking up the cost to repair the road. There will be no cost-sharing to home owners even though this improvement will increase the value of their property,” said Young.