What wetland protections do you have in your area? Who enforces them? What "fill" laws are in your area? Who enforces and approves them? (what country are you in? state?)

If you have none of these, than you probably don't have much you can do.

We're in Oakland County, MI. The county hasn't been of any help, and neither has the township. Not sure about wetland protections, would that be the DNR?

Here I think it's the Department of Wildlife that shuts down previously unapproved wetland filling.

Well...you need an experienced real estate development attorney.

Did you neighbors have an approved building permit? If not, why not? If so, did they build according to the plans for which the permit was approved? Did the jurisdiction inspect their construction and issue an occupancy permit?

If the local jurisdiction approved their building plans and they built according to plans, and issued an occupancy permit, is it time to file suit against both neighbor and jurisdiction for making your property unusable? And reducing its value?

Your attorney will give you the necessary advice.

Agree with Virgil. DId they have building permits? They may also have needed permits for altering the drainage of the land. You really need an atty. to help you with this.

I think it is the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) that would have jurisdiction here. I have only had to deal with them with sand dunes (high risk erosion and critical dune). Had one project where I had to deal with wetlands, but that was a long time ago south of Traverse City.

Thanks for all the responses! They did file a permit, but I’m fairly certain it didn’t include moving the dirt to fill in the low ground.

I’ll look into the DEQ, maybe they will have a recommendation on how to get rid of the water. Would prefer this to getting a lawyer involved because of the awkwardness, but this also feels very unfair. Appreciate the insights!

Have you talked to your neighbors about it? What did they say?

Not yet. We had a very dry summer and early fall, so the issue is just now becoming obvious.

5 years ago I lived on Square Lake, on Heights Road in Oakland County Michigan. On a street of half million dollar homes, I couldn't get inspection to make a guy move his mother-in-law out of the 5th wheel parked in their driveway. Ran a hose and power out to mom and called it good.

I don't know you or your neighbor but very often things like this can be resolved amicably without involving attorney's or destroying relationships. Your neighbor may be horrified that they've caused this problem for you and do what then can quickly to resolve it.

Be nice. Most people are moderately reasonable. :). My neighbors would certainly fix this the instant this was a problem they knew about—or else I would fix it and they’d work out a payment plan (retiree).

I still say speak with an attorney to find out what permits were needed, what laws may have been broken and what recourse she has. She can speak with her neighbor cordially, but first she needs to arm herself with the facts.

It’s a sad world when you can’t be friends with your own neighbors. :(. “I just wanted to let you know that our lot’s flooding because of the grade changes.” That should be enough unless you live near a jerk. Other person says, “Oh no! Can you show me where?” Done.

I spend an hour every year convincing one of my neighbors not to spend $3000 taking down a 300-plus year oak tree that hangs over my driveway. I’m okay with not parking under it. Don’t kill the oak!!!!!

There are two problems I see with talking to an attorney first;

1) Some (many?) attorney's will push handling the problem as purely a legal and adversarial matter. The result of that is a lot of expense and a bad relationship with not just this one neighbor but others who now view the OP as aggressive and jumping to legal recourse at the drop of a hat.

2) You go in to the conversation with your neighbor 'armed'. It's too easy to then, if you don't get the perfectly contrite response you want, to throw out "well, I talked to my attorney..." which will immediately create an adversarial relationship. This puts them on the defensive immediately and for most people precludes their being able to think about it and come back the next day and say that they thought about it and agree with you and want to fix it.

I think it's a question of, do you want the problem fixed or do you want a battle.

If you don’t know what your legal options are, then there is no point in talking to your neighbor cordially. You need to speak from a position of strength of knowledge. That’s what $500 worth of consult can provide.

If the OP knows that what their neighbor did is or isn’t legal, they are less likely to make a donkey of themselves in holding a conversation with them. Now, some people open mouth and insert foot no matter what when conflict arises. In that case, they shouldn’t talk to them in the first place. Maybe a spouse or adult family member known to the neighbor has the initial conversation.

No, you don’t automatically assume that they are going to be jackasses, but you do go to a meeting armed with the knowledge of what you can do if they do act like jackasses. And that is what a consult with a construction lawyer can do for you. Not a real estate lawyer. Not the same thing.

This is not a cheap fix. And assuming the best of people when large sums of money are involved leaving their pocket invariable leaves one disappointed in the good heartedness of their neighbor. In nice vs cheap, being cheap will always win.

French drains aren’t that pricy. Fix is in the $300 to $5k range.

But you’re right—some people aren’t good at these sorts of conversations.

"French drains aren’t that pricy. Fix is in the $300 to $5k range."

Maybe, but how can you tell a french drain is all that is necessary from the info given?

Honestly- if they were neighborly - they'd have already noticed that they are FLOODING THEIR NEIGHBOR. And before they made the change, they would have discussed what they were doing and thought about the impacts.

In my experience, construction attorneys DO NOT want to litigate, nor handle it themselves (at least good ones). They want to arm you with information so you can may informed decisions. They also can tell you what NOT to say.

It's great to have a nice conversation, but it's better to know the real deal - that protects you, your property and your rights. And with a very small bit of self control, you don't even have to say the word attorney. (I too despise people who toss that out - and my response is usually "bring it"... because they are usually bluffing!)

In Michigan, it's the DEQ that has jurisdiction over wetlands. They do not allow indiscriminate filling of wetland areas but don't absolutely forbid it either. I had a DEQ engineer come out to the lot I had a sales contract on. The result of his evaluation was one of the contingencies in the sales contract.

The way he explained it to me, they evaluate a piece of property and what the (potential) owner wants to do. For example, if wetlands reside on one part of the property and the other part is high and dry, they will ask the owner why he can't build on the high and dry part vs. the lowlands. "Because of the view" is not a good answer. OTOH, if a potential driveway has to cross wetlands to access the high and dry area, they might allow fill in the wetland for a driveway. Filling in a low, swampy area because it breeds mosquitoes is also not an acceptable answer.

Many jurisdictions do not allow new development to cause drainage issues for neighboring properties. Definitely do a county/small level of gov't check with whoever issued the plans, in most cases they would likely have to create a swale (on larger properties) or other drainage (such as in your case).

Good luck!

Millworkman, a French drain or a swale, which is cheaper. NDS catch basin box and a non-perforated drain. There are pretty limited ways to control water.

Don’t attribute to malice what can be explianed by stupidity. My poor neighbor is taken to the cleaners by unscrupulous contractors just about every year. I can’t help her because they’re the Experts. *sighs* The latest? Her wood stove (with a fan) malfunctioned (an electrical issue, really) so she “needs” her entire chimney rebuilt.

Guys, there is an enormous difference between legal wetlands and a low-lying swampy area on a property.

Dont be an awful neighbor. What is wrong with you? No wonder your neighbors hate your guts, if you act like this, folks.

I have a neighbor who floods part of my property all the time by failing to maintain a swale. I mentioned it, so they do try to dig it regularly. I also dig it out myself, as we are friends, when they forget and I get flooded. And now they are all paying me materials for a permanent solution to all our problems, as their property gets flooded, too.

"Millworkman, a French drain or a swale, which is cheaper. NDS catch basin box and a non-perforated drain."

I get all that and know perfectly well what a french drain is and how they work. I am just curious how you know from your keyboard that the french drain is all she needs and the fix is in the $300 to 5k range?

We're also in Oakland County in Michigan and built on a peninsula on a small lake with designated wetlands along the entire shoreline, as well as a protected wetland near the street that our driveway passes over. There's a culvert that connects the two wetlands near the street and we needed to obtain a special permit when we wanted to improve the land for our driveway. DTE also had to obtain a permit and bore above the culvert rather than trench.

When I was researching the wetlands designation of our property before we purchased it, I stumbled upon a permit my neighbor submitted for a shoreline improvement, so it's possible to search for them somewhere to see if a permit was filed. The DEQ is pretty draconian when it comes to enforcing wetland setbacks and remediation and have strict rules when displacing wetlands. We had to ensure that our building site was outside of the 25 foot wetlands setback when placing the house and all silt barriers and visual construction fencing was in place so the wetlands weren't disturbed.

In short, if they just pushed dirt into the wetlands without a permit then it's a definite violation. If you're friendly with them, I would approach them about your increased flooding and get a dialog started to see if you can come to an amicable solution. If you're not friendly, then throw in questions like "Was it hard to get the DEQ approval to improve the site?" and gauge his reaction. If it comes to a legal issue, write to the DEQ to inquire if everything was done properly. Worst case scenario is that they get heavily fined until the wetland is restored and proper setbacks are adhered to.

I'd talk to them first. A simple opening might be: "Hi, I wonder if we can discuss an issue?" Non confrontational, neighborly, and polite.

Their response may well indicate the next step(s).

Our house/yard are lower than the neighbor to the east/north(fences separating properties) and higher than the neighbor to the south.

The neighbor directly behind us also has an inground pool(which is higher than our yard), that needs draining each fall. When we moved in, she contacted us about the situation, proposed her solution(which included our yard use being minimally impacted) and we now work together easily to deal with problems.

There are only 3 solutions for capturing water. A french drain is the most expensive, so I went with that. We have serious flooding problems here because the county sucks, so I checked out my options and costs. That’s about what they run in my very expensive part of the country.

They’re on a LAKE. All it takes is to direct the water to the back of the lot. To restore the normal water flow. They aren’t going to need dry wells or anything like that. They also have not enormous lots from the description.

I had the same problem. Put in a french drain and that fixed it. Would have never occurred to me to go all nuclear by lawyering up over something that simple.