DETROIT – Robert and Edna Nelson have lived in their home near Scripps and Philip streets in Jefferson Chalmers since 1970.
“You got a lot of people that’s still recovering,” said Robert. “They haven’t recovered from this thing, you know, or even three, four years ago.”
The Jefferson Chalmers neighborhood on Detroit’s east side is one of the most unique in the city.
This community, located along the Detroit River and bordering Grosse Pointe Park, has a canal that runs through it along Alter Road.
It last experienced a major flood in 2021, when heavy rains caused its sewer lines to back up, inundating basements with upwards of 6 feet of filthy water.
“We had a whole we had a whole living room in the basement,” said Edna. “We had to put it on the curb.
The neighborhood is located in a federally designated floodplain, and the increasingly frequent basement floods are attributed to issues with the current sewage system.
The infrastructure issues have made life frustrating at times for residents.
“You look at Grosse Pointe, which is just right across the canal over there, and they get taken care of like that,” Briton Maciuk, who has lived in the neighborhood for 10 years, said outside of his home on Thursday (Sept. 4).
“We pay our taxes just like anybody else,” Maciuk said. “We take care of the neighborhood, and we’ve been keeping it up for all these years.”
The flooding issues were going to be addressed by an $11.3 million FEMA grant that was approved in 2022. However, the Trump administration killed the grant earlier this year.
Widening the sewage pipes through this project is necessary to adapt the current infrastructure to higher stress from storms and rainfall.
“(The year) 2021 was devastating for more than 70% of residents in District 4,” Detroit City Councilwoman LaTisha Johnson said on Thursday. She represents Jefferson Chalmers.
“The grant was going to address upsizing the pipes in the Jefferson Chalmers community,” Johnson said. “There are various areas throughout the community where the pipes are just not large enough to be able to manage inclement weather.
With climate change bringing more rain to the city, it feels like an issue that will only get worse for families in this area without more action.
“I think that’s the greatest challenge,” Johnson said. “Recognizing that there are infrastructure issues that need to be addressed.”
“We’re doing everything that we can to make sure that people can continue to live here and not have to deal with the traumatic experience of having backups,” Johnson said.