East Lansing assessing flooding damage after 7 inches of rain overwhelms storm sewers

EAST LANSING — East Lansing received far and away the most rain in the Greater Lansing area Tuesday night because of Hurricane Beryl, and city officials blamed the storm for causing flooding to streets and property.

East Lansing received more than 5 inches of rain within two hours on July 9, resulting in flooded streets and properties, officials said in a release Wednesday. The National Weather Service said it had observational reports from the city of 3.62 inches and 4.15 inches of rain Tuesday, and final observations placed the overall total near 7 inches. East Lansing's wastewater treatment facility measured 6.57 inches of rain at the Woodingham Pump Station.

“Our first priority is to provide assistance and reassurance to our residents,” City Manager Robert Belleman said. “We are actively working to identify how widespread the damage was from this storm. Whether residents have losses from basements or other areas of their home where they have standing water, or from vehicles caught in flooded streets that are no longer operable, we realize there is a lot of pain today and we want to help.”

In downtown Lansing, the roof of the Kositchek's Menswear building partially collapsed. "Due to the torrential rain storm last night, our roof has collapsed and we are unable to do business," the store said in a Facebook post.

The building was red-tagged and the store was closed Wednesday.

David Kositchek, the owner of Kositchek's Menswear, said the roof collapsed during the night.

"The important thing is, no one was hurt," he said.

Hooked, a bookstore on Michigan Avenue in East Lansing in the new Red Cedar development, announced Wednesday that it had to close for a day because of flooding issues.

Water began flowing into the bookstore Tuesday while customers were inside. Staff noticed the water and evacuated the customers. Matt Grossman, the owner, wasn't at the store at the time but was quickly notified.

"Good news — the source of the water coming into the store is known and addressed," the store said on social media Tuesday. "No additional flooding since yesterday. We expect to be able to clean up and reopen by Thursday at 2 pm, but we will update if there are any delays."

Thursday morning, the store was nearly ready to open.

"People might notice a few things out of order," Grossman said. "But we'll be open (this afternoon) and there was no impact on the cafe part of the store."

Very few books were damaged, and the worst damage was on the bookshelves and carpet. Any books that got wet are now being sold for $3. Grossman plans to replace the bookshelves completely in the next six weeks.

"We've only spent about one or two thousand on clean up," Grossman said. "Of course, we did lose revenue being closed and staffing costs add up."

Several thousand Consumers Energy customers were without power Wednesday morning in southern Ingham and Eaton counties because of the weather.

The largest single outage was in the Charlotte area where about 1,300 customers lost power about 4 a.m. Wednesday.

Additional outages were reported west of Eaton Rapids to the Calhoun County line, and east and south of Mason. The Eaton Rapids area outages were affecting about 1,000 customers while the Mason-area outages affected about 800. Several hundred customers remained without power Thursday morning.

In East Lansing, city officials canceled the scheduled Tuesday night council meeting because of the weather.

By Wednesday morning, numerous streets and parking lots were flooded. Heavy rain left vehicles were submerged in a parking lot at The Quarters of East Lansing apartments on Abbot Road in East Lansing Wednesday morning.

The Lansing Wastewater Treatment Plant said it recorded a combined stormwater and sewage overflow during the storm that sent effluent and water into the Grand River. A release said the overflow into the Grand totaled 15.545 million gallons while the Red Cedar River overflow totaled 4.058 million gallons.

East Lansing's wastewater treatment plant said the city experienced a sewer overflow. Josh Moore, the assistant superintendent for the East Lansing Water Resource Recovery Facility, said the overflow into the Red Cedar River began at 5:12 p.m. July 9 and lasted until 8:20 p.m. July 10. About 25.83 million gallons of wastewater was discharged into the river.

"Everything was cleaned: disinfected, chlorinated, before it went into the river." Moore said.

The city said DPW crews spent the day clearing out storm drains throughout the city ahead of the storm to ensure the proper flow of water.

"During an extreme, short-duration storm like yesterday’s, the pipes were likely at capacity, taking in water from multiple places," the release said, "When this happens, the catch basins cannot accept any more water until there is enough space in the downstream network of pipes. Once water has sufficiently drained away, the catch basins start draining simultaneously as fast as they can.

East Lansing DPW crews spent Tuesday and Wednesday unclogging drains of storm debris, the release said.

The city’s Department of Public Works is providing a special collection by request for water damaged items. Community members who were affected should visit DPW at 1800 E. State Road until July 17 to schedule an extra pickup and receive a pickup voucher. Collections will then take place on July 12, 15, 17 and 19.

Check back for updates.

This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: East Lansing assessing flooding damage after 7 inches of rain overwhelms storm sewers