Rising sea levels; submerged streets; homes and businesses left in ruin. These consequences have long been touted as the eventual impacts of climate change. But what if they’re already here? It’s a question worth asking in Traverse City, which has been battered in recent years by epic storms, record-high water levels, destructive floods, and devastating erosion. As the area goes through one of its warmest autumns on record – on the heels of its wettest summer – some local experts say its past time to start planning for what’s next.

“The Great Lakes, in terms of the water levels and the amount of precipitation that we get, those things, fluctuate,” says Christine Crissman, executive director of the Watershed Center Grand Traverse Bay. “But what climate change has done is made for more intense highs and lows. 10 years ago, when we were dealing with extreme low water levels, I'm sure nobody expected what we got these last couple of years, where we’ve had extreme high water levels. We’ve broken those [records for] low water levels and high water levels at an extremely fast rate, compared to the hundreds of years of data that we have. The same is true with precipitation. And everything is connected, so when you start to see things like higher water temperatures, that has an effect on how much water is evaporated in the fall, which has an effect on how much precipitation we get.”

Kate Madigan, director of the Michigan Climate Action Network, points to Detroit as a prime example of the wild weather shifts affecting the Great Lakes region.

“In southeast Michigan, there were multiple major storms this summer that led to flooding of I-75, which was shut down,” Madigan says. “That qualified as a once-in-every-500-years flooding event. But the last 500-year flood event in metro Detroit was just seven years ago. So these extreme downpours are happening much more frequently, and our infrastructure is not built to handle them.”

Traverse City has seen its own version of that phenomenon. In 2020, massive rainstorms caused significant flooding in May and then again in October. This past August, big rains struck again, sparking power outages and causing a section of Alden Highway in Antrim County to collapse.
For locals, big storms have become synonymous with sewer overflows. Stormwater gets into the sewers through manholes, loose joints in pipes, or other gaps, and if enough rain falls, it overwhelms the infrastructure. The city is working to address those infiltration points, but Crissman insists the true solution is “to better address the stormwater itself.”

Shawn Winter, planning director for the City of Traverse City, agrees.

“We need to respect the fact that natural systems tend to be way more resilient to the impacts of climate change,” Winter tells The Ticker. “So, when we have development occurring, we can start trying to incentivize – if not require – more green infrastructure, so that rainwater is being stored on site in ways that mimic natural cycles. Bioretention, rain gardens, green roofs, permeable pavement, things of that nature: They ensure that we’re not letting all that stormwater leave the site and overwhelm the sewer system.”

The city is already eyeing ways to add green infrastructure. A possible partnership with the Watershed Center, for instance, would launch a green redesign of the Governmental Center parking lot.

And it’s not just the city thinking about changes. Claire Karner, director of planning and zoning for East Bay Charter Township, says climate resiliency was a big topic during the township’s recent master planning process.

“There’s a section [of the new plan] that looks at the trends we're seeing in this region [when it comes to climate change],” Karner says. “It talks about trends in agriculture, and about how spring warming is happening earlier but the time of the last frost is not changing, so that has implications for growers. And it talks a little bit about evaluating the location of critical infrastructure and community facilities, in relation to changing water levels and areas that are at risk for flooding.”

Karner thinks the new master plan could have implications for the township’s land use policies, and might even provide “an opportunity to update our stormwater ordinance,” which currently “doesn’t really address green infrastructure.”

But while it’s one thing to implement policies that will make climate resiliency a consideration for future development, the harder question is what to do about existing development that has been damaged or threatened by climate change.

In the city, for instance, there are dozens of examples of damage along the public waterfront – from the crumbling parking lot at West End Beach to damaged sidewalks near the Murchie Bridge underpass. Winter says the city could spend “millions of dollars, collectively” repairing it all.

And then there’s Bluff Road, which has been closed since January 2020 due to massive erosion caused by rainfall and rising water levels. 22 months later, there’s no indication of if or when the road might reopen.

“The consultants that are out there evaluating [Bluff Road], they're talking about $1.5 million just for materials,” says Brad Kluczynski, manager for the Grand Traverse County Road Commission. “That doesn't include staging, it doesn't include [fixing the road]. That money is just for the baseline materials: for the large rock that needs to go down to stop the shoreline from sliding. So, you're talking about a massive expenditure out there. And if it's an incredibly high dollar cost, we have to weigh that against where those funds come from. Who's going to pay for it? And does that negatively affect the rest of the county, if we're dedicating that much money into a location that gets 200 cars a day, at peak?”

Kluczynski adds: “[The consultants] may also come to us and say, ‘Realistically, the only way to solve this problem is to move the road.’ And if that's the case, there's not many places we can move that road. We're out of space. We would have to start talking about whose land do we take to move the road, to get it away from that shoreline?”