HOPE TOWNSHIPS, Mich. – Lori Stade stood at the edge of her property looking with despair at the cattails and brush, trees and weeds that have grown tall in the space where a canal used to be.
Her seawall drops about 7 feet into a mucky gully where freshwater once flowed from a manmade reservoir known as Wixom Lake.
When the canal behind her house brimmed with water, “you couldn’t ask for a nicer place to retire. It’s a vacation spot. It’s agricultural. It’s family oriented,” she said of Hope, a 24-square-mile town of about 1,300 people in mid-Michigan, where cottages sit beside acres of farmland…