After the remnants of Hurricane Beryl caused flooding in East Lansing this week, city officials are seeking more responses to a survey on flooding issues.
Rob Dale, Ingham County’s deputy emergency manager, said as much as six inches of rain fell in less than two hours on Tuesday, with much of the heavy rainfall occurring during rush hour.
“I’ve never seen flooding in East Lansing to look that bad,” said Dale. “There has been some property damage as a result.”
City officials report the flooding flowed through yards and basements, renewing calls for residents to share their experiences to identify areas of concern.
“We’re still identifying where our biggest vulnerabilities are in our wet weather resiliency plan that we’re performing,” said Cliff Walls, East Lansing’s environmental sustainability and resiliency manager.
In June, the city began asking residents to share their experiences with flooding in an online survey. Walls said some affected areas this week had been impacted by flooding in past storms.
“There’s going to be a lot more data to support some things that we have known just from experience,” he said.
Walls said the city is trying to engage residents to learn how they are impacted by flooding to be able to plan for future extreme weather events under a changing climate scenario. The city has been working on the wet weather resiliency plan since January, supported by a $600,000 grant from the state.
“It’s expected to go through the middle of 2026,” Walls said. “It’s a very large project that is going to include technical analysis of our actual drainage system.”
Walls said he expects the information from the plan will enable the city to predict where future flooding will occur and direct development of flooding mitigation infrastructure.
East Lansing City Manager Robert Belleman said some properties still have standing water on their lawns and city staff are responding to calls from residents.
“It’s going to be probably a couple of weeks, maybe a month, before we can assemble all the initial information to assess what was impacted and to what extent,” he said.
East Lansing is scheduling extra collections for water damaged items, asking residents affected by flooding to visit the Department of Public Works at 1800 E. State Road for a pickup voucher. Personal identification or other forms of address proof are required.
Collections are occurring through Wednesday, July 17 and will not take place over the weekend.