For Frank Dunnigan and his neighbours, high water levels in Georgian Bay have led to high repair and insurance costs due to property damage.
The Bluewater Beach resident lives right on the water and said the effects of the high waters in Lake Huron have been devastating.
“First, we lost our stairs to the beach,” said the Tiny Township resident, “then we lost the boardwalk that goes to the stairs to the beach. Then the waves came in and undercut our entire deck.”
Dunnigan said he had to spend up to $20,000 hiring a company to put in big pilings underneath that deck because it was cantilevered.
“I had to crane in 11 cement traffic barriers across the front of my property,” he said. “I had to bring in a truckload of boulders and have people manually put them in.”
And that’s not the only damage to the property, said Dunnigan.
“I've lost my well; it's gone,” he said. “I have no water in my cottage, making it virtually unusable. I had to go to a very, very expensive insurance (company). That's costing thousands a year more.”
It’s not just Dunnigan’s property that has been affected by high water levels.
His neighbour, Tara Marshall, who had to spend up to $13,500 in mitigation efforts has also been through a similar ordeal.
“Excessive high water has caused staggering damage,” she writes in a letter to the International Joint Commission (IJC). “Our neighbours along the coastline are in similar shape.
"We have had to contract construction of rock retaining walls to protect our buildings, septic systems are leaking sewage into the Bay and wells are compromised. Erosion is of upmost concern, not to mention the spread of non-native, invasive plant species and destruction of coastal plant, fish and animal habitat.”
Aisha Chiandet, water scientist with Severn Sound Environmental Association (SSEA), said she understands the impact to shoreline properties, but animal and plant communities are more adaptable to changing water levels than humans.
“Plant communities have tendencies to expand and contract depending on what the water levels are, she said. “In a higher water level year, you'll see expansion of certain aquatic species and in a low water year, those species would retract and move further out and you would get more upland plants take their place. It's not always as detrimental of an effect on natural plant communities.”
Dunnigan said something needs to be done.
“We are currently 27 inches over our long-time average,” he said, adding he believes it’s in the hands of the IJC.
The long-time average surface water elevation level, according to data shared with Tay Township council by Mary Muter, chair of the Georgian Bay Great Lakes Foundation (GBGLF), is 176.6 metres above sea level.
According to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Detroit District website, the difference from long-term monthly average for March is +26 inches. The data also shows the Lakes Michigan-Huron level is nine inches below the highest monthly average on record for March.
Muter approached council at a recent meeting requesting their support in approaching higher levels of government to affect a change in the situation.
“We are, in essence, a forgotten part of the great lakes,” she said at the meeting. “They do nothing to address our water levels at all. In fact, by discharging excess water and by keeping Lake Superior at a four-foot range, they're probably exacerbating our levels.”
Dunnigan points to the IJC water-level study that recommends the manipulation of the four major Great Lakes diversions: Long Lac, Ogoki, Lake Michigan at Chicago, and the Welland Canal, during crisis situations when conditions permit.
Water from Lake Superior flows into St. Mary's River, which has a dam on it at Sault Ste. Marie, to Lake Huron and Michigan. The water then outflows into the St. Clair River, which does not have a dam on it, then connecting with the Detroit River and eventually into Lake Erie.
All fingers point to the IJC, which was formed in the early 1900s for approving projects that affect water levels and flows across the boundary and investigating trans-boundary issues and recommending solutions.
But there is no neglect, said Pierre Béland, co-chair of IJC.
“What controls the levels of the lakes is the weather,” he said. “What we call the supplies to the lake, snow, rainfall, and run off and tributaries that flow into whichever lake you want to consider. What comes out is the evaporation from the lake and the water going through the outlet. The capacity to outflow is very limited.”
Presently, Béland said, precipitation has been lower and the lake is going down.
And even though for the last three years the IJC has been flowing much above what we would normally flow out of Lake Superior, the action has been to no avail, he said.
"It's simply when the weather decided to be on our side that Lake Huron went down some seven centimetres this year," Béland said. "This is much more than what we could have done with any control structure we could have had.”
Dunnigan said he understands climate change also plays a part and that water levels are going to swing both ways.
“But they should come up with a more equitable way of sharing the pain that also minimizes total economic impact for everyone,” he added. “We understand you might be able to do everything but that's not an excuse to doing nothing. It's how you mitigate and fairly spread some of the pain. It's certainly not being fairly spread right now.”
As for Long Lac and Ogoki, Béland said, they are under Ontario Power Generation’s (OPG) control.
“More than 200 rivers and tributaries flow into Lake Superior and the combined Long Lac and Ogoki diversions are a relatively small contributor to the water level on Lake Superior and the Great Lakes,” said Neal Kelly, director media issues, information management, with the OPG. “The impact of ceasing the diversion would likely not even be noticed by a property owner.”
He said Long Lac and Ogoki diversions contribute about 155cms of inflow to Lake Superior that is a small amount in comparison to the average inflow of approximately 3,500cms contributed by precipitation and runoff from the local watersheds around the lake.
The Chicago diversion, which takes water out of Lake Michigan, said Béland, is limited to 90 cubic metres per second discharge by the U.S. Supreme Court.
“You cannot manipulate that unless you go through the courts,” he said.
As for the recommendations brought up by Dunnigan, Béland said the board also said further studies around potential impacts of those steps need to be undertaken before diversion can be manipulated.
“We concluded that adding these controls at the outlets of the lakes will not solve the problem,” he said. “We recommended these not be pursued. The main reason is that these impacts would be transferred downstream. You would be transferring impact from one place to another.”
To fulfil its balancing mandate, Béland said the IJC is determining and fixing the flow at Sault Ste. Marie.
"So that we can, as much as possible, not cause more harm at one place than the other place,” he said. “That's all we can do. We cannot prevent water from flowing.”
As well, Béland said the IJC stresses adaptive management.
“The only thing to do is that governments do what they can to help communities reduce their vulnerabilities to water damage,” he said, adding this can be done by improving on land use policies and land management practices. “For example, moving people away from the shores, favouring marshlands that accumulate water building coastal resiliency.”
Chiandet said the SSEA has also helped people work on this.
“We've been advocating softer landscaping options, rip rap (rock rubble) combined with vegetation to absorb wave energy,” she said. “You're still protecting your shoreline by providing that support but it's not going to deflect the wave energy down, as opposed to a concrete seawall would.”
