Like A Hurricane: Northport Dries Out After Massive Downpour

It certainly could have been worse.

That’s the general consensus after a monster storm hammered the northern tip of Leelanau County Monday morning. While rain fell over much of the county, Northport absorbed the biggest blow.

Village Manager Jered Ottenwess tells The Ticker that a whopping five inches of rain fell in about 90 minutes starting around 9 a.m., according to local storm chasers. Anecdotal reports of seven to nine inches were reported online.

“I don't recall ever seeing rainfall like that in Michigan,” he says. “I lived in Florida for a number of years, and it reminded me of what I saw in tropical storms and hurricanes in Florida, that level of rainfall. And it was incredibly dark, like nighttime during the day.”

The dam on Northport Creek was quickly overwhelmed, with water rushing over the top and washing away a wooden walkway at the top. The extent of any damage to the dam itself, which has already been the topic of much recent discussion, is not yet clear.

“The force of the water involved was extreme, and we just don't know what that did to the structure itself,” Ottenwess says. “We know it's intact to an extent, and functioning, but our next step is we have to wait until the water comes down a little bit and…drain the pond and inspect the structure to assess the damage.”

The village council only recently approved putting a millage for dam repairs on the November ballot (which would effectively let village residents decide whether to keep or remove the dam) but if it’s badly damaged it might come out before then.

“Depending on what damage we might find, we might need to reconsider how we move forward with addressing the dam,” Ottenwess says.

All things considered, though, that amount of rain could have caused much more serious infrastructure problems, Ottenwess says. As of Tuesday afternoon, the only lasting sign of the storm was water on some roads.

“No one was hurt, thank God, and that’s the most important thing,” Ottenwess says. “We didn't lose power, and our water and sewer systems operated properly as they're supposed to. We don't have any evidence that there were any overflows from the lift stations or cross contamination with the surface water that was there.”

That’s just infrastructure, though.

“There are many people who have flood water in their basements or water in their houses and structures that would never expect to because they're not in flood zones, and they don't have flood insurance,” Ottenwess says. “I don't think they have a way to recover some of those damages. So there were some really serious impacts in that respect, and I don't want to downplay that, but in terms of our village infrastructure…I think we’re fortunate considering the magnitude and uniqueness of something like that.”

Outside of the village, the damage was also minimal, but not insignificant.  M-22 was closed as a precaution for a few hours just south of Lee Mann Road as the waters of Ennis Creek bulged under the bridge there and came up onto the road.

On the other side of the peninsula, North Gills Pier Road washed out completely roughly a mile north of its intersection with M-22. Leelanau County Road Commission Manager Brendan Mullane tells The Ticker it washed out at a culvert where a brook passes under the road.

Mullane has been in contact with emergency services personnel who have stressed the importance of getting the road fixed as soon as possible, as it would now create a significant re-route for homes north of the washout.

“It matters that that road gets opened up as fast as we can,” Mullane says. “The biggest issue we have for that is trying to get the (culvert) pipe to put back in there, and we're scrambling to figure out where we can find the right size pipe. That's our big effort right now.”

Like Ottenwess, though, Mullane feels things could have been much worse.

“I think we fared pretty well. Antrim County has maybe six or seven roads that washed out and they probably got just bad as we did across the bay,” Mullane says. “I'm not thrilled about losing Gills Pier, but to be honest, the fact that that's the only road we lost with that amount of rain, I would say we’re doing pretty good.”

Photos: Water rushes over the dam (L) and gushes into the marina.