They remember a time when they could take their families out on the boat, go swimming or fishing. But that time is no more.
Lake Waldon Village residents, living on Gulick Lake, are saddened that the water has near dried up, and they want something done about it.
“It’s gone. There’s no more lake. We used to ice skate out here. Go out on the boat. No longer,” Chuck Hamann said, who has lived in the subdivision for eight years.
Of the 18-acre lake, which used to have water levels six to eight feet deep, approximately a half an acre of water is left.
This isn’t a new problem, though. The lake has been receding since at least the year 2000. And it’s been that long since Lake Waldon Village residents have been wanting to know just why this is happening.
“Everyone’s been out here,” Hamann said, noting Department of Environmental Quality, DNR, Independence Township consulting firm Hubbell, Roth and Clark, township attorneys and more.
They thought they had found a cure in 2001, with a new pump station diverting storm water runoff from Clarkston High School retention ponds through a gravity drain and into Gulick. The $312,000 pump station helped stop flooding on Almond Lane, but only temporarily helped lake levels.
Water levels did rise. Boats did come back. And residents began to enjoy their lake again. Then, their hopes began to sink.
The lake is the worst it has ever been, Hamann said.
“It’s just a shame because it was a real wildlife area,” eight-year resident Brenda Vanderheyden said. “We had deer. Kids would come down and swim and fish. You could go out on your paddle boat, or rowboat. You could skate in the winter. We had a park in our subdivision and now its gone. Now its nothing. It’s a big swamp of muck.”
That quicksand-like muck is a safety concern as well for residents living on the lake with children.
“It was a beautiful lake and now it’s just dangerous,” Mark Benson said, of the lake’s leftover quicksand-like muck. Benson has lived there for seven years and has two children.
Awhile back, Benson recalled, an autistic child living in the area was lost. Everyone’s biggest fear was that the child wandered out and sank in the muck, he said. The child was safe, but the danger still exists.
Residents have theories on why the lake has dried, everything from new construction to dry weather. But Hamann thinks the biggest culprit is a watershed on Gulick Drive that no longer diverts water into the lake like it once did.
Vanderheyden said, “It’s kind of strange because we’ve been trying to address the problem and no one seems to know. We don’t know what’s causing the problem, and nobody really seems to care about it. Except us.”
Independence Township Trustee Dave Wagner went to see for himself the state of Gulick Lake. “I didn’t know it was this bad. This is unbelievable. It’s hard to say what’s causing this. This has been here forever. Is it from the new construction around here? Has water been blocked from another area? I mean, it’s definitely not normal. And even though we’ve had a dry year, we’ve had plenty of rain in the last month. You would think this thing would be filled right back up again.”
Wagner suggested residents attend an upcoming board meeting to voice concerns during the public forum.
“Obviously we’ll have to have Hubbell, Roth and Clark look into it and see what the problem is. It has to come before us in order to make that kind of decision. There has to be some cause. This is not a natural thing. There definitely needs to be some help out here.”
Consultant Tom Biehl of Hubbell, Roth and Clark said the firm would be more than willing to look into the problem, once given the word from the township.
“No, hydro-geologic study has been done that I know of,” he said. It will first need to be determined what type of lake Gulick is –ground water fed or surface water fed. If surface water, the dry season could be the main culprit, he said.