The city of Huntington Woods is looking into the issue of rear-yard flooding and what steps the municipality can take to address the problem. Engineers attribute the flooding due to a number of problems, namely the existing grading in the flooded areas and soil conditions.
By: Mike Koury | Woodward Talk | Published September 3, 2025
HUNTINGTON WOODS — There has been flooding in Huntington Woods residents’ yards, which led to an investigation on how to potentially solve the issue.
At its Aug. 19 meeting, the City Commission received a presentation on yard flooding from its consulting city engineer, Brad Brickel, of Nowak & Fraus.
According to Brickel, the issues with flooding are due to the existing grading in those areas, as well as soil conditions. The investigators also found that flooding issues were more prevalent on the west side of the city, where clay soil doesn’t allow for proper infiltration.
“Typically more east of Huntington (Road), more on the hill, it’s a sandier material, which promotes infiltration of groundwater,” he said. “The other problem that you run into in these backyards, it tends to be more the low yard of that block, right? A lot of these subdivisions were installed, you know, a long time ago and stormwater wasn’t really looked at as an option or an issue back then. I will say that nowadays it is looked at as an issue with new developments and things like that in communities. So, that’s generally where you see it is at the low points in the rear yards.”
Brickel presented some pros and cons of installing rear yard drainage systems. Pros include reduced ponding, the alleviation of stress on structure foundations and improved yard aesthetics and functional concerns
“In some of these situations that we’ve encountered, these rear yards are so flooded over a certain period of time that they’re not able to be utilized for normal hanging out or having functions in their rear yards,” he said.
The cons, according to Brickel, are that the drains wouldn’t completely solve the issue; there are maintenance concerns such as sinkhole issues and sediment infiltration; and the biggest concern he’s heard from other communities is increased sewer demand.
“What that means is essentially for however many years you’re looking at, up to 100 years the city’s been here, there’s never been a storm collection system in the rear yards,” he said. “And so you’re taking a combined sewer system (a single pipe for wastewater and stormwater) and you’re adding additional drainage that never went to it.”
Potential strategies introduced by Brickel include the installation of catch basins, French drains and leaching basins. There’s also an option to allow residents to tap into the sewer lines to drain their yards, which Huntington Woods’ current ordinance does not allow.
The city would have to look into that issue, interim City Manager Andrew Pazuchowski said, and determine if there’s any liability on the city’s part or a chance that the tapping could lead to basement flooding.
“That, to me, is my biggest concern,” he said. “I know a lot of other communities have done that. And listening to the engineer, he feels that in an event like the 100-year flood that we had, that could cause that to occur, but in a general rainfall or heavy rainfall, it appears that most of the other cities that have allowed this have not seen an issue with it.”
“Whether it’s a French drain or other drains that’ll just drain out towards the street and enter the regular catch basin, which already has a restrictor on it, which would then just flood the street, my personal opinion, that’s my concern,” he continued. “I’d be concerned that the last thing I would like to see is that water in a backyard flood somebody’s basement.”
Any home that would look to tap into the sewer line would have to cover the costs, which Pazuchowski estimated to be between $10,000 and $15,000. The line also would have a restrictor on it, which restricts how quickly the water can enter the sewer.
To view the entire presentation, view the Aug. 19 City Commission meeting on the city of Huntington Woods’ YouTube page.