Berrien County Drain Commissioner George McManus is planning a meeting for property owners near the Grand Mere Drain for this month to explain the ongoing effort to address flooding in the area and how assessments for it will work.
McManus tells us the project stems from a 2019 petition that proposed consolidating 11 drains located between the Grand Mere Lakes area and Bridgman to reduce the flooding near North Lake. A board of determination approved the idea in 2020, but the consolidation was never completed.
“They were trying to actually come up with a way to take care of some outflow going into Lake Michigan because all those drains drain into an outflow at Lake Michigan out of North Lake, and it never got done,” McManus said. “There were some attempts to stabilize that outflow, and that never happened, and I’m going to take a different approach. I think a simpler approach is we’re going to just make that outflow a drain itself.”
McManus says the work won’t be done right away, and for now, the drain commissioner’s office will continue excavating that outflow to Lake Michigan when needed.
The all-day Day of Review of Apportionments meeting on May 27 will be for residents, local governments, and businesses to speak with the drain commissioner and his engineers to learn more about their assessments. McManus says it’ll be from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Berrien County Administration building, as required under state law.
The day won’t be a formal meeting, but more like an open house. Anyone with questions about the Grand Mere effort is welcome to attend.
