Larkin Township, north of Midland

Larkin Charter Township lies in the east of Midland County, with the City of Midland on its southern edge and Bay County on its eastern line. The 2025 Census Gazetteer gives it 32.0 square miles of land, and its centre is about 5.7 miles from the middle of the City of Midland in a straight line. The April 2020 Census base counts 5,326 people, about 167 to the square mile, and the July 2025 estimate is 5,390, a small rise of about 1.2 percent. Much of the township is the outer edge of Midland itself: subdivisions off the main roads, with fields and woodlots still between them.

The newest houses north of Midland

The 2020 to 2024 Census survey counts 2,095 homes, with a median build year of 1987. The 1990s were the busiest decade, with 468 homes, more than one in five, and 502, 24.0 percent, date from 2000 or later, including 261 from the 2010s. About 40 percent, 839 homes, were standing before 1980, and 162 go back to 1939 or earlier. This is almost entirely a township of single detached houses, 2,014 of them or 96.1 percent, with 36 mobile homes and very few flats. Owners live in 1,907 of the 1,987 occupied homes, 96.0 percent, the highest share of any town with a page on this site, and the median owner occupied value is 382,500 dollars, also the highest.

A house of that age and value usually has a poured wall, a plastic footing drain and a sump pit from new, often under a finished room. When it takes water, the cause is most often the pump, the check valve or the discharge line rather than the wall: a pump that has run for twenty years, a line that freezes in January, or a pipe that empties close enough to the house for the water to come straight back. Finished basements also hide small leaks until carpet or drywall shows them. Testing the pump and following the discharge to where it ends is the cheapest first visit; a sump pump check comes before anyone quotes for new drain tile.

The Waldo Drain

Surface water from much of the township leaves through the Waldo Intercounty Drain, which runs to the Kawkawlin River in Bay County. The engineering firm that designed its renovation, read through search summaries, says the drain was first built in 1905 and stretches just over 20 miles. After the 2017 storms left many Larkin properties flooded, especially in spring, the township petitioned the Midland County Drain Commissioner in March 2018. A hearing of practicability followed on 17 May 2018 and a hearing of necessity on 17 June 2019 at the township hall, and the firm reports a project cost of 5.4 million dollars, finished in spring 2022. The drainage district takes in Larkin, Midland and Mills townships, the City of Midland, and Beaver, Williams and Kawkawlin townships in Bay County.

The Drain Commissioner's office looks after county drains everywhere in Midland County outside the City of Midland and asks residents to report high water. Its number is (989) 832-6770. If your yard holds water days after rain, that office can tell you which drain serves your parcel and whether a problem has been logged.

Who issues the permit

We could not open the township's own pages from here, and the search summaries we read did not settle whether Larkin runs its own building department or uses the Township Code Authority of Midland County, a shared office that, per a summary, was organised on 1 May 1996 to inspect for several townships. Directory listings put the township hall at 3027 N. Jefferson Road, Midland, with a main line of (989) 835-6399. Ring the hall, give your address and ask who issues the building and plumbing permits for a sump, a drain or a crack repair.

Nearby

The City of Midland, just south, pays owners to take footing drains off its sanitary sewer, and Williams Township, to the east in Bay County, shares the Waldo Drain district.