Read Jim Townsend’s latest op-ed in the Detroit Free Press on the continuing risks to Michigan’s dam infrastructure.
Michigan studied its dam crisis, then shelved the solutions
by Jim Townsend — April 23, 2026
“Never let a good crisis go to waste.” A quote attributed to Machiavelli, Winston Churchill and Saul Alinsky applies to Michigan’s “slow motion catastrophe,” as one state senator called the half-dozen dams here now threatening to fail and drown their surrounding communities.
State Sen. John Damoose, R-Harbor Springs, was referring to recent heavy rains that have caused water levels in the rivers adjacent to these dams to rise to dangerous levels, including at Cheboygan Dam in northern Michigan.
But this crisis has been years, not weeks, in the making. Six years ago, another bout of spring rainfall precipitated (yes!) one of the worst dam failures in Michigan history. On May 19, 2020, the Edenville and Sanford dams collapsed, sending a wall of water that flooded downtown Midland and other mid-Michigan communities, forced 10,000 people to evacuate their homes and cost an estimated $250 million in damage.