Secord, Smallwood and Sanford dams are fully permitted. Secord and Smallwood construction was suspended in 2024 due to a lack of funds. Sanford construction will be suspended shortly because of a lack of funds. It was documented in the January hearing and February county meeting that FLTF was planning to obtain $80 million in municipal bonds in June of 2024 to pay for construction work on all four dams through 2024 and 2025. Municipal financing has not occurred as a result of the appeal.

Congressman Dan Kildee requested $3 million and Congressman John Moolenaar requested $2.25 million in community project funding for Four Lakes Task Force. Each year, members of Congress can direct federal resources to local projects. Kildee and Moolenaar submitted these funding requests to the House Appropriations Committee. 

Interest rate increases have been a big headwind for our project. We recently met with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) about the Corps Water Infrastructure Financing Plan (CWIFP). FLTF provided input to the rulemaking on this program last year, with $7.5 billion appropriated to this program. Rule making will be completed later this year, and funds available in 2024. These are for very large projects and the USACE was very confident that the FLTF project qualifies. Some of the benefits are listed below, but this would give us a rate below other available financing and get us back to an interest rate much closer to the facilities that were available to the project with the USDA loan. 

Click to read FLTF's Q3 report: 

1. Financial Summary
2. Bottomland Improvement and Path Forward for Vegetation Management
3. Permit Status
4. Dam by Dam Updates

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) allocated over $71.9 million in long-term recovery funds to the State of Michigan to support recovery and mitigation efforts following severe storms and flooding in 2020 and 2021. Michigan received $59 million in Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) funds for 2020 and $12 million in CDBG-DR funds for 2021 to solve outstanding disaster recovery needs. The funds are being distributed through the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC).

Tomorrow, Tuesday, July 12th, at 12:00 PM, the Gladwin and Midland county Boards of Commissioners will jointly meet at Meridian High School (3303 N Meridian Rd, Sanford, MI). The public is welcome to attend and there will be a public comment period.

Based on the Public Sector Consultants (PSC) Report of its 2022 Survey which was published last week, of those that participated in the survey:

• 90% supported rebuilding the dams and restoring the lakes
• 75% were willing to pay some level of assessment
• Most of those who said they would be unwilling to pay an annual assessment believe that someone else should pay for the capital improvement and maintenance of the dams