With Lakes Michigan and Huron now having gone more than 14 straight years with below-average water levels, the International Joint Commission is recommending that the U.S. and Canadian governments explore some sort of engineering fix on the St. Clair River to slow its outflows and restore the lakes closer to their historical levels.
"Although future water levels are uncertain, we cannot ignore the damage from record low water levels," Joe Comuzzi, Canadian chair of the Joint Commission, a binational board appointed by the U.S. and Canadian governments to oversee boundary water issues, said in a news release.
"From Georgian Bay to Door County, from shoreline property owners to the shipping industry, we heard calls for action, and we urge governments to act in response to our recommendation."
Specifically, the Joint Commission, in a formal report to the U.S. and Canadian governments, is recommending an investigation into some sort of structure in the St. Clair, the main outflow for Michigan and Huron, to raise their water level by as much as 10 inches. As part of this investigation, the Joint Commission is recommending a cost-benefit analysis and an environmental impact study that would evaluate the potential downsides of such a project.
Lakes Michigan and Huron, which are actually one body of water, hit an all-time low in January, more than 2 1/2 feet below their long-term average and more than 6 feet below their record high.
They rose 3 inches during February and March, and then the remarkably wet weather this month hit. Precipitation over the Michigan and Huron basin was over 200% above average for April with five days still left in the month, the Army Corps reported Thursday.
The lakes climbed 8 inches in April alone. The U.S. Army Corps is expecting them to climb an additional 3 inches by the end of the month.
Still, as of Friday the lakes remained 21 inches below their long-term average for April and are 7 inches lower than they were this time last year. The lakes have not been at their long-term average for 14 straight years, and historic dredging on the St. Clair River has exacerbated the problem. But scientists point to warming temperatures and, consequently, increased evaporation as the main culprit.
Dredging in the river to provide access for deep-draft freighters into the upper Great Lakes has led to more water flowing out of Michigan and Huron and, ultimately, out to the Atlantic Ocean.
Army Corps hydrologists have long acknowledged that historic dredging and mining in the riverbed lowered the long-term average of Michigan and Huron by about 16 inches. A riverbed restoration had been planned following the last major dredging project in the early 1960s to compensate for the lower water, though the Army Corps never proceeded with it and above average levels subsequently returned in the next two decades.
Then the water level dropped precipitously in the late 1990s, and has since stayed low.
In 2007, the Joint Commission hired a team of scientists to determine if ongoing erosion in the St. Clair was behind the persistent low water, and this "study board" found that unexpected erosion on the riverbed since the last major dredging project in the 1960s had indeed cost the lakes an additional 3 to 5 inches from their long-term average, though it determined the erosion was a one-time event and was not ongoing.
The study board initially recommended doing nothing to slow the flows in the St. Clair but was overruled by the Joint Commission, which asked the study board to evaluate a range of potential solutions. The study board came back with another study that concluded a variety of structures could be used to slow flows in the St. Clair and raise lake levels by as much as 20 inches, but its leaders said such a project likely would take decades to complete and cost as much as $170 million.
The study board leaders also said such a project could bring with it a host of environmental troubles, including temporary low water levels on downstream Lakes Erie and Ontario as well as flooding and erosion on the shores of Michigan and Huron during extreme high water years, if they return. They also cautioned that a riverbed restoration project could harm efforts to help endangered sturgeon recover in the St. Clair.
Much of the public didn't buy the recommendation to do nothing.
In February, a binational group representing nearly 100 mayors from across the Great Lakes region wrote President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to ask them to do something about the low water that poses trouble for navigation, recreational boating and water intake facilities as well as wetlands and beaches.
"As mayors of the 96 cities in the United States and Canada along the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence (River) with over 16 million residents, we are living with the effects of these low water levels on a daily basis," wrote leaders of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative, which is chaired by Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. "We ask that you engage the full authority of your offices to find near, mid, and long term solutions to this problem."
That letter followed a request last fall from the mayors to the Joint Commission to further investigate engineering options on the St. Clair to raise lake levels to specifically compensate for dredging on the St. Clair.
Most conservation groups have said they are opposed to the idea of a dam-like structure on the St. Clair that could be manipulated to increase or decrease flows depending on weather patterns and water supplies. They contend that naturally fluctuating levels are good for the lakes' wetlands and fear a controllable structure would politicize water level management, with economic interests trumping ecological ones. But a major coalition of environmental groups urged the Joint Commission in a letter last summer to explore putting in some type of static water-slowing structure that would compensate for the dredging but still allow natural fluctuations of lake levels.
The Joint Commission on Friday also recommended that the governments pursue a strategy of "adaptive management" so the region can learn to live better with low - and possibly high - water levels in the coming years.
It is the strategy that was pushed by the study board.
The U.S. chair of the Joint Commission, Lana Pollack, refused to sign the letter because, according to a Joint Commission news release, "it places insufficient emphasis on climate change and the need for governments to pursue and fund adaptive management strategies in the (Michigan and Huron) basin."
She also cautioned against "false hopes that structures in the St. Clair River, if built, would be sufficient to resolve the suffering from low water levels of Lake Michigan-Huron, while at the same time causing possible disruption downstream in Lake St. Clair and Lake Erie."
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