Carrollton Township, on the river north of Saginaw

Carrollton Township is one of the smallest townships in Saginaw County and one of the most built up. The 2025 Census Gazetteer gives it just 3.3 square miles of land, and its centre lies about three miles north of the middle of the City of Saginaw in a straight line, less than two miles from the centre of Zilwaukee. The April 2020 Census base counts 5,747 people, about 1,700 to each square mile, and the July 2025 estimate is 5,585. The county history of 1881, read through a search summary, says the township was organised under authority from the Board of Supervisors on 4 January 1866, with its first town meeting on 2 April that year, and that the early riverbank was lined with sawmills and salt works. A state gazetteer of 1863 and 1864 is summarised as crediting the village of Carrollton with six large salt works.

A postwar township

The 2020 to 2024 Census survey counts 2,604 homes in Carrollton, and the median build year is 1958. The 1950s alone produced 902 of them, roughly a third, with 597 more from the 1960s. The oldest layer is large too: 441 homes, about one in six, went up in 1939 or earlier, and 148 in the 1940s. In all 2,275 homes, 87.4 percent, were standing before 1980, and only 39 date from 2000 onward, so there is almost no new construction here at all. Single detached houses make up 85.3 percent of the stock, 250 homes are in small apartment buildings of five to nineteen units, and 56 are mobile homes. Owners live in 1,637 of the 2,381 occupied homes, or 68.8 percent, and the median owner occupied value is 82,300 dollars, well under the figure for the newer townships to the west.

On a house of that value the sensible first step is a diagnosis, not a system. A postwar Carrollton basement is most often concrete block over a clay tile footing drain, and seventy years on, the tile is commonly cracked, silted or rooted. Block walls fill with water in their hollow cores and release it at the bottom course, which is why seepage at the floor joint is the usual complaint. Whether that calls for interior drain tile and a pump, or just better grading and downspouts, depends on what the water is doing.

Sewers from 1955

The township's sanitary sewer system is old by local standards. An engineering firm's project page, read through a search summary, says Carrollton's wastewater system was built in 1955, and that a 2014 state asset management grant of 636,446 dollars paid for 435 manholes to be inspected and 24 miles of sewer pipe to be televised. The Northwest Utilities Authority, formed in the late 1980s, is summarised as carrying sewage from Carrollton and its neighbours on to the City of Saginaw's treatment system. Water that rises through a basement floor drain in a storm is a sewer question first, so ask the township office whether the backup was on the public line or on your own lateral before booking any drainage work.

The Universal Drain and the river

Storm water from much of the township does not simply run to the river. A pump station page from the same firm, also seen through a search summary, describes the Universal Pump Station at the lower end of the Universal Drain in Zilwaukee, built in 1968 and since upgraded, as protecting parts of Carrollton Township, Saginaw Charter Township and Zilwaukee from flooding. It serves 4,148 acres of developed land and discharges to the Saginaw River, with pumps rated at a combined 121,600 gallons a minute. On ground this flat, a lot that ponds after heavy rain may simply be waiting for the county drain to catch up; the Saginaw County Public Works office on 989-790-5258 handles county drain problems. The township also keeps a flood damage prevention ordinance, seen only through a summary, which is worth asking about before any digging close to the river.

Permits at Mapleridge Road

Carrollton runs its own building and zoning office. Its web page, read through a search summary, says a permit must be obtained for any new construction and for any changes or upgrades to existing buildings, and lists building, electrical, plumbing and mechanical permits along with roof, fence and zoning permits and a fee schedule. Several listings put the township hall at 1645 Mapleridge Road, Saginaw, with a main line of (989) 754-4611; an older county directory gives a different street, so ring the office before you go in person.

Nearby

Zilwaukee, immediately downstream, has a clay soil series named after it, and the City of Saginaw to the south has its own written rule on footing drains and the sanitary sewer.