US critics worry about locations of lake level consultation hearings
By Dan Egan of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
The level of Lakes Michigan and Huron has plunged some two feet since humans first dredged the massive river that flows from them, and a warming globe could lower the lakes further in coming decades, jeopardizing shipping channels, marinas and city drinking water intakes.
But to attend a series of upcoming public hearings on the shrunken lakes – and what to do about it – the more than 10 million people who live in southeastern Wisconsin and Chicagoland must brave a day on March roads to travel to little Sturgeon Bay in Door County or to Muskegon, Mich.
The hearings hosted by the U.S. and Canadian governments will focus on a controversial report that concludes the government should take no action to reverse unexpected water losses due to riverbed erosion after a 1960s Army Corps of Engineers’ dredging project on the St. Clair River, the main outflow for Michigan-Huron.
…Says Mary Muter, a member of the study’s citizen advisory board and a harsh critic of the study board and its conclusions:
“Maybe they don’t want the people of Chicago to know that the amount of water lost down the St. Clair River due to (recent erosion) is more than double what’s being lost down the Chicago River.”
The reversal of the Chicago River sucks 2.1 billion gallons a day away from Lake Michigan, much to the consternation of just about everyone outside of Chicago.
Its permanent impact on lake levels: about 2 inches.
The controversy started in 2004, when a Lake Huron property owners’ group released a $200,000 engineering study that alleged the Army Corps’ 1960s dredging scraped away the St. Clair’s rocky river bottom in a manner that helped unleash a large – and ongoing – water loss from Michigan-Huron.
The International Joint Commission, which oversees U.S. and Canadian boundary waters issues, responded by creating a binational study board – co-chaired by an Army Corps employee – to explore the issue.
Last spring, that study board released its draft findings that said a massive ice jam on the St. Clair River in 1984 was the most plausible explanation for scouring the river bottom and triggering enough erosion to cause a 3- to 5-inch water loss.
“We have no other explanation,” study team co-chair and Army Corps career employee Eugene Stakhiv said at the time.
Muter’s group and some conservation organizations were instantly skeptical of the ice jam theory. They were also critical of the fact that the study team reached conclusions before it publicly released – and in some cases even completed – the scientific studies that presumably drove them.
The study team spokesman responded to the criticism by saying it was coming from a group of self-interested residents trying to capitalize on the lakes’ natural low-water cycle to win public support for a river restoration project that would benefit them.
“Ultimately, the crisis mongers will look foolish when the lakes return to normal levels, albeit at somewhat different relative levels than in the past,” study spokesman John Nevin said last spring. “That’s why they want action now before Mother Nature proves them wrong.”
But by December it was the study board that was proved wrong on its ice jam hypothesis, concluding in its own final report that the 1984 ice jam “was not the key contributing factor” to the riverbed erosion. The final study offers no definitive cause for the erosion.
Full story
FOTTSA meeting on IJC report, 7 p.m. on Wednesday March 10, Brian Orser Hall, upstairs in the Penetang Memorial Community Centre 61 Maria St., Penetanguishene
IJC public consultation , 7 p.m., Monday March 22, North Simcoe Sports and Recreation Centre, Community Hall A, 527 Len Self Blvd. Midland

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