WHITE CLOUD, Mich. (WOOD) — For more than 150 years, there has been a lake in White Cloud.
The city of White Cloud built a park on Lake White Cloud with a beach for kids — the only beach for miles. Families built lakefront cottages.
But as of this week, the lake is all but gone. It's mostly mud. Community leaders are angry. They say the state forced them to drain it in a dispute over the safety of a dam.
"You hate to see it go," said Tom Coon, who owns what used to be a lakefront cottage on Lake White Cloud. "Obviously, I've enjoyed it. Part of my retirement is being able to get out and be in nature."
He kayaked on the shallow lake from the back yard of his cottage. A family of trumpeter swans circled just offshore. Now, critters leave tracks in mud that stretches some 150 yards out to the narrow White River. He said his wife no longer wants to spend summer days there.
"Right now, it's mudflat property," he said.
This all centers around the safety of the White Cloud Dam on the White River. The dam is one of two on the 89-mile long river, which starts in northern Newaygo County and empties into Lake Michigan near Montague and Whitehall. For most of the last 150 years, the city-owned dam has held back enough of the White River to form the 42-acre Lake White Cloud, a perfect place not only for cottages, but also for a city park and beach. Most of the lake was less than 6 feet deep.
"The water was right at the bottom of the slide," Newaygo County Commissioner Jim Maike Jr. said, pointing to the slide on the city's Lake White Cloud beach. "See the slide there? The water was there."
So kids could slide right into the water.
"This was the place to be on a hot day," he said.
The lake was a bit deeper at the park, near the dam, so there's still some water left there. But with the water so low, the beach is almost unusable. The city is trying to figure what to do with it.
"This has been a part of so many people's lives," Maike said. "For years. For us, my wife and I and our kids, 50 years. Our kids took swimming lessons here and this is where they hung out."
A plaque on the dam tells its story: It was built in 1872 when White Cloud was a lumbering town, rebuilt in 1910 after a flood and rebuilt again in 1990 after it was destroyed in the flood of 1986.
The water is held back by thick beams of oak stacked up within the dam called stop logs, similar to horizontal fence planks.
But city crews started removing a plank or two a day last week to lower the lake 1 foot a day, until it was down by 7 feet.
City leaders say they had no choice. The state Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, or EGLE, has deemed the dam unsafe and threatened legal action and fines of up to $10,000 each day if the city refused to lower the water and ease the pressure.
The dam is among 160 in the state rated in poor or unsatisfactory condition, according to state records.
In an email to Target 8, an EGLE spokesman said a recent study found "several deficiencies that make the dam unsafe." Failure of the dam, he wrote, would "likely cause loss of human life and significant property destruction."
EGLE said it has provided the city $300,000 in grants for the dam to make interim repairs and for the recent engineering study that showed it was unsafe.
"As a result of the dam’s poor condition and high hazard rating, the consulting engineer who completed that study recommended immediate drawdown of the impoundment (lake) to prevent a failure," the EGLE spokesman wrote.
"EGLE does not intend to assess fines as long as the city continues to meet its obligations to protect downstream people and properties," he wrote. "We remain committed to working with the City and its engineer as they consider options for the long-term fate of the dam."
The state Department of Natural Resources says removing the dam, which warms the water and keeps fish from swimming upstream, would also improve trout fishing on that stretch of the White River.
"The future success of trout fisheries in the middle White River are tied directly to the White Cloud Dam," a DNR report states.
"If the dam remains in place, the fishery between White Cloud and Hesperia, at best, will continue to be a second-class, stocked Brown Trout fishery that will never rival other wild Brown Trout fisheries like the Pere Marquette or Little Manistee Rivers," according to the DNR report.
But White Cloud City Manager April Storms said the dam is in better shape than it was in 2019, when a state inspection found it in fair condition with "no apparent structural deficiencies."
The city manager, who swam at the beach as a child, told Target 8 that she fought to save the lake, which she called the heart of the community. She said EGLE has refused to work with her.
"That is basically what I've been working to do the last three years, is fighting for the dam on behalf of the people who live here because it is really the one recreational asset that we have in our community, not to mention that we have residents who have homes on the river and cabins on the river and lakefront property," Storms told Target 8.
A save the dam committee is forming in town, but the city manager isn't optimistic. She said the city, with an annual budget of $1 million, can't afford the $10 million cost to replace the dam. The state, she said, won't help rebuild it.
The city has already canceled this summer's free swimming lessons for kids at the beach, a tradition going back 50 years.
"It's very hard to not be emotional about it, because we have the poorest kids in this county," Storms said.
She said she has talked with legislators, tried to set up a meeting in Lansing and has gotten legal opinions. The city is planning a public meeting either this month or in August.
She's angry with how the state has handled it.
"We've not been walked alongside, we've not been given any type of collaboration, and EGLE wants to communicate as if they have been cooperative and collaborative, but that is not true," Storms said.
Maike, the county commissioner, lives on the White River downstream from the dam. He believes the state is exaggerating the threat. He was there when the dam broke during the flood of 1986.
"Nobody lost their life, nobody lost any buildings. It didn't do hardly any damage at all," he said. "(Lowering the lake) is going to devastate the kids and the families around here that have used this their whole lives."