IJC panel rules no change needed at St. Clair River

Climate change cited as main driver of lake level

by Jim Moodie
LAKE HURON-Georgian Bay advocates and environmental allies in the US are appalled by a recent decision on the part of an international panel that no structural changes to Lake Huron’s outflow through the St. Clair River are required.

Last week, the International Upper Great Lakes Study (IUGLS) board ruled, in its final report on the St. Clair River, that “there has been no significant erosion” in the upper reach of the river in the past decade.

While the report’s authors concede that there has been an increase in the river’s carrying capacity-they measure this at seven to 14 centimetres (2.8 to 5.5 inches) over the period of 1963-2006-they contend that “change is not ongoing” and that, since 2000, there has actually been a decrease in the amount of water flowing through the St. Clair.

The report blames most of the water loss from the upper lakes in recent years on climate change, describing this as the “main driver of lake level relationships.” Erosion of the shipping channel and man-made changes to the shoreline along the St. Clair are deemed not consequential enough to warrant remedial measures.

That conclusion baffles and saddens Mary Muter, Georgian Baykeeper with the Waterkeeper Alliance and a board member of Georgian Bay Forever (GBF), the charitable wing of the Georgian Bay Association (GBA). One of two advisory members to the IUGLS study, along with John Jackson of Great Lakes United, Ms. Muter has repeatedly pushed for some action to be taken on the St. Clair River, which her organization believes hemorrhages twice as much water as has been quantified by the IUGLS team.

In 2004, the GBA commissioned a costly hydrological study by the respected engineering firm Baird and Associates, which concluded that the river, due to erosion and alterations to its banks, is responsible for a loss of 12 billion gallons of water per day, likening this to a “drain hole” in the bottom of Lake Huron.

That assessment is questioned by the binational team since set up through the International Joint Commission-a quasi-judicial body that oversees regulation of the Great Lakes-to study Huron, Michigan and Superior over a period of five years. The earlier Baird study, according to a comment provided to The Sarnia Observer by Ted Yuzyk, Canadian co-chair of the IUGLS board, had “no credible numbers” on water loss.

Ms. Muter believes otherwise, and suspects the international study board took a blinkered approach to the issue, driving towards a foregone conclusion. She notes that other individuals and groups, including the National Wildlife Federation in the US, have vociferously shared the concerns of the Georgian Bay Association, but this chorus has not had any impact on the final determination.

“They have basically ignored the public’s response to the study,” said Ms. Muter. “It makes you think the result was predetermined.”

A series of public meetings was held on both sides of the border over the summer, following the release of a draft report in May, and Ms. Muter was present for many of them. She recalls numerous individuals raising tough questions, including one posed by an attendee at a session in Midland.

“This person asked how much of a water loss (through the St. Clair) would justify remediation, and the study board representatives said they didn’t know,” she said. “The five inches they’re talking about is a huge amount when you think of that being taken off the surface of the whole lake.”

Her own group feels the loss is much greater, but even the amount gauged by the IUGLS group would necessitate some action, in her view. And she wonders about the commitment of the international crew of scientists to address the problem if they “can’t even say how much of a loss would justify remediation.”

To Ms. Muter, mitigating the outflow through the St. Clair River would be neither complicated nor all that costly. “You don’t need dams or locks,” she said. “It could be flexible structures like submerged inflatable weirs, or turbines at the river bottom that wouldn’t interfere with fish or ships at all, and would actually generate green electricity.”

Those options have been brushed off by the IUGLS board, based on what Ms. Muter describes as “flawed bathymetry data.” Bathymetry is the term for measurement of the depth in water bodies.

“They have said that we don’t need anything, but the data was created from a hypothetical St. Clair River instead of the actual measurable numbers,” she said. “It raises a lot of questions about the scientific integrity of this work. And I think it’s a huge opportunity missed.”

The “most egregious oversight” in the research, according to Ms. Muter, concerns a failure to measure the depth of the St. Clair “right up to the river’s edge on west side in the US.” The channel here features a steel wall, and recreational fishermen as well as more authoritative types have communicated that the water goes down a half-dozen metres, or 20 feet, along this man-made bank; the IUGLS, said Ms. Muter, assessed it as much shallower at just one metre (or three feet).

“They missed a whole chunk of the river where it flows the fastest and excluded that from the modelling work,” she alleged.

The IUGLS team also failed to properly assess the impact of dredging to a natural sand and gravel bar, which was opened up earlier for the passage of ships. “They dredged through that a number of times, cut through it and basically opened up the dam,” said Ms. Muter. “But the (IUGLS) modelling didn’t go out to where that used to be.”

Melinda Koslow, Great Lakes climate safeguarding manager with the National Wildlife Foundation, shares Ms. Muter’s frustration. “Dredging and erosion in the St. Clair River has had a massive impact on Great Lakes water levels, and there’s substantial evidence that this erosion is continuing,” she states in a release. “But the study ignores or dismisses that evidence in concluding that erosion has stopped and no action should be taken. That ‘no action’ conclusion puts the Great Lakes at further risk.”

Lake Huron is relatively flush with water at the moment, up a foot over last year’s level, but that swell is a deceptive one, said Ms. Muter. “We’ve had above-average precipitation and good ice cover in the winter (which prevents evaporation), but we’re still below the long-term average. And we’re still lower, in terms of the long-term mean, compared to the other Great Lakes.”

Ms. Muter fears this upward trend in the lake level won’t last long, and Huron could be back to a near-record low in no time if conditions change. “We’re in a cold, wet period,” she said. “But the next warm spell we get-boom, down the lake levels fall.”

Now is the time to act on the St. Clair River, she said, particularly since the lower lakes are at or above their long-term averages at the moment, meaning that curtailing the flow through Huron’s outlet wouldn’t have a huge impact downstream. “They’re missing a golden opportunity right now,” she rued.

Ms. Muter feels Huron and Michigan-the two are connected, so function as one system-have been unaccountably overlooked when it comes to the regulation of Great Lakes levels. All the other lakes in the basin have a method by which their levels can be managed and a control board to oversee that process.

“Why is this huge body of water ignored?” she asked, adding: “We’re often referred to as the ‘forgotten part of the Great Lakes.’” Huron and Michigan, in her view, deserve their own control board, at the very least, and better yet some structural mechanisms-be they weirs or a layer of substrate or hydro-producing turbines-that could be placed in the St. Clair River to slow the flow of water to the south.

The IJC, through its upper lakes study, may have judged this egress to be trivial, but Ms. Muter maintains that, even by their (undervalued, in her estimation) reckoning, this outflow is anything but a drop in a bucket. “The Chicago diversion permanently lowered Huron and Michigan by one to two inches,” she noted. “This, according to their research, is five inches, and it’s ongoing. Chicago was a one-time drop. So this is much bigger. Yet the board is saying it’s no big deal.”

There is still a chance to fight the decision by the upper lakes board, as “the IJC commissioners will hold public meetings on this at the end of March,” noted Ms. Muter. But the baykeeper worries the time has come and gone for citizens to make a difference, if it was even possible in the first place.

“I suspect the public is going to be burnt out on this issue,” she said. “And it looks like they (the study board) wanted to drive towards this conclusion from day one.”

Ms. Muter declined pointing a finger at a particular industry or political force for the failure to recommend action on the St. Clair, but vowed to continue pressuring for a change that would protect Lake Huron from future siphoning.

“I don’t want to assign responsibility,” she said. “I just want them to get on with this and do the right thing and solve the problem once and for all.”