After the Spring rain, our Lake is usually high, and over the summer it evaporates down. The Summer of 2018 was different. The water just kept rising and rising. The house next door, which we had recently purchased to rent out, quickly had water in the basement. We started with a few sandbags and water hoses, but as the summer went on, the water just kept winning.
More sand bag fortification and more pumps to just push more water over the sand bags than was leaking in. There are a lot more gory details, but finally in the Spring of 2019 we had a 14 foot steel wall erected, and the township was able to construct a short term pump to start getting the water out of the lake. Eventually, the lake would rise over 4 feet, and the pumps would pump over a billion gallons out of our lake and the one next to it. In September of 2019, we found someone to tear down the house next door. I was able to capture a video of it here.
Fast forward to 2021, and most things have calmed down. We have a long term gravity drain set to be constructed in the spring, and most people have either re-claimed or re-built their yards and homes. A strong reminder of how Mother Nature always gets her way.