Detroit neighbors say street flooding issues have spanned several years

By Faraz Javed , Collin Frederick

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    DETROIT (WXYZ) — Residents on Detroit’s west side are frustrated with the ongoing street flooding problem.

Collingwood Street between Wildemere and Lawton — that’s where residents say it has been an issue for the past four years.

They met up with 7 Action news reporter Faraz Javed earlier today and showed Faraz some of their concerns and the number of times they’ve reported the issue.

“It’s flooding here, it’s flooding the block down that way, below Wildemere and Lawarence as well. We just sick and tired of this,” said Gina Peoples.

Gina has been living in this neighborhood for over five decades, and she says lately, street flooding has become a massive problem in the area.

“This affects our quality of life; this is not good,” said Peoples.

I measured the water, and it was just below 6 inches deep. Neighbors tell me on bad days, the water reaches the sidewalk and sometimes even the front yard. Lynn Reeves says she replaced the brakes in her car twice due to water damage.

“My basement flooded, it messed up a lot of stuff, pictures, clothes, washing machine, dryer,” said Reeves.

They say traffic has also become an issue.

“We’ve been calling about this problem over and over, nothing is been done,” said Peoples.

Another resident, Clarence Harrell, showed me a three-page document. It lists all the times this area has been flooded since 2021 and the number of times he called the Detroit Water and Sewage authority as well as the city to report the problem.

“I don’t see why we have to go through this, when we are paying bills. The water department is doing everything else, but they are not taking care of us,” said Harrell.

We called the Detroit Water and Sewerage Authority’s Bryan Peckinpaugh, and within 30 minutes, he showed up with his team to investigate.

“We will come out here and pump out the water, pump it to the basins, so the water can go down, and then we will have our engineers look at the street conditions as well as the sewer infrastructure,” said Bryan Peckinpaugh, Deputy Director of Public Affairs, DWSD.

“Have you got a message for folks who have been suffering from this issue,” asked Faraz Javed.

“On behalf of DWSD, we do apologize that it has taken this amount of time to that they’ve reported this street flooding on several occasions. When there is flooding like this, we want people to be cautious, so not walk in the area, because there is a dip in the area, be safe, try not to drive through it,” said Peckinpaugh.

In the meantime, Bryan recommends reporting such problems on the Improve Detroit app.

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