Two hundred Jefferson-Chalmers residents take to the canals in protest

More than 200 Jefferson-Chalmers residents took to the neighborhood's canals over the weekend of June 13 and 14, paddling kayaks and canoes and running motorboats through the east side waterways in a flotilla protest. The message was the one already posted in yards across the neighborhood: no canal closures.

The protest answers a city plan to spend a $20 million federal grant on chronic flooding in Jefferson-Chalmers, a low-lying neighborhood that sits along the Detroit River. The money comes from a HUD Community Development Block Grant for disaster recovery. The city has not committed to closing the canals, but residents say that option remains on the table, and that has been enough to push hundreds onto the water.

The flooding is real. River water overtops the canal banks during high-water years and runs into streets and homes. FEMA redrew the area's flood map, and the version adopted in October 2021 placed 96 percent of the neighborhood's 3,619 parcels inside a Special Flood Hazard Area, raising insurance costs and slowing development.

Residents argue the city can fix the flooding without sealing the canals. The neighborhood is only about a mile and a quarter square but has 10 miles of shoreline, all of which would need to be raised and hardened to remove the area from the floodplain. "Even if stop logs and flood walls are put in place, they'll only be put in a few places," Jay Juergensen said. "The entire community is at risk."

Others framed it as a livelihood question. "People make money down here. Their jobs are on the water," resident Traci Rubin said. Joe Kaled put it plainly: "I moved here for the canal."

This fight has happened before. In 2022, packed opposition stopped an earlier closure proposal, and a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers study floated sea walls as a way to address flooding and lift the FEMA designation without closing anything. That approach has returned under the new grant.

Tyrone Clifton, director of the Detroit Building Authority, has said the city will weigh every option. It plans to hire a consultant beginning June 22 to meet with residents, then run a feasibility study on both flood mitigation and floodplain removal. Officials say a final decision is years away.

Separately, a $1 million sea wall program funded by the Michigan Economic Development Corp. launched this year to help low-income waterfront homeowners repair deteriorating walls. A 2025 survey found roughly 70 percent of surveyed canal-front properties in fair or poor condition. The program targets 15 to 20 of them.

Sometimes called the Venice of Detroit, Jefferson-Chalmers was built on filled marshland threaded with channels that connect to the river. For many here, the canals are not a feature of the neighborhood. They are the neighborhood.