I had been planning to blog about the International Upper Great Lakes Levels Study (IUGLS)and its implications for Lake Erie in a series of future posts. When the Army Corps subscription notification of the Monthly Levels Bulletin arrived in my in-box this morning, as is my practice, I clicked my way to the Lake Erie levels chart for the month at:
Once there, I realized that there was a strange dip in the Lake Erie level for the past month. Such a dip, but to a lesser degree, occurred in February 2010 as the result of an ice jam on the St Clair River. To check the cause of this year’s dip, I clicked the link to the chart which displays the six month projection for all the lakes at:
Sure enough, there was another St Clair River ice jam this year. Amazingly, this year’s jam was apparently worse than last year’s and earned a special note on the Lake St Clair chart. Even more amazing, this year’s jam was sufficiently bad to affect not only Lakes St Clair and Erie, but also Lake Ontario. As the chart shows, Lake Ontario was totally unaffected by last year’s St Clair River Jam.
For those unfamiliar with the IUGLS activity, it has been ongoing for about five years. The documentation of the study activities to date and the overall plan is available at http://www.iugls.org/ . The study has an extensive public input activity and has held meetings around the Great Lakes over the past years. The public comments received in 2009 are at the following location:
I was the author of “Comment 9” on page 8 which reads as follows.
I attended the IUGLS presentations in Toledo and Cleveland and reviewed the draft report and project summaries. I am a life‐long resident of Northern Ohio, a Great Lakes boater for 40 years, and a lakefront property owner for 18 years.
I was, in general, positively impressed by the preliminary results to date. It is clearly a vast improvement over the control algorithm that has governed the control of the Lake Superior outflow for the past several decades. I hope that the results of the multiple studies will be applied to the improvement of the IJC control algorithms. I do not believe that control structures in the St. Clair River are advisable at the present time and I am deeply concerned that the impact of any such structures on Lake Erie has not been fully evaluated. Lake levels should be allowed to follow their natural seasonal patterns to the extent possible with the minimum amount of human intervention.
There is clearly a conflict between the interests of various lake users as well as conflicts between similar users in different areas. For example, what is good for Georgian Bay property owners is bad for property owners along the Michigan/Lake Michigan coastline and any changes will clearly affect all users of the Great Lakes.
I believe that the most valuable portions of the present study were those dealing with climate change and isostatic rebound. The climate change segments clearly indicated the shortcoming of the Residual NBS determination approach that has been used for decades. I hope alternate approaches will be adopted.
The change in calculation methods for isostatic rebound using the basin outlet locations rather than basin averages is also an improvement over past practice. Isostatic rebound is a fact of nature that all residents must live with. It should be pointed out that Edwin Moseley looked at Isostatic rebound along the south shore of Lake Erie more than a hundred years ago. He predicted that Port Clinton Ohio would be underwater by now. He was wrong. In the future, the science of GPS should allow more and more accurate evaluations/predictions of rebound as the science develops. I hope it will be used to its fullest capability.
The least encouraging portion of the presently used science is the continued use of outdated and inappropriate approaches for evaluating the river flow conditions. The use of “Manning’s equation” for control purposes by the IJC is inappropriate. When Manning derived it 120 years, he established its limits of applicability and these are not met by the conditions of the St Clair River. The so‐called “weed factors” and “ice factors” seems to have little correlation to what actually exists in the rivers. I see little value in the high resolution static analysis of a highly dynamic river system which is poorly understood even at a gross level.
Hopefully, a specific recommendation of the study will be to implement a new control algorithm for the Lake Superior outflow with a closer connection to actual conditions in the rivers and over the lakes and their watersheds.
Thank you for the opportunity to submit my comments.
The board’s response to my comment can be found on the website. Since the time of my comments, the study has continued to proceed with its very detailed, albeit flawed, analysis which ignores the effect of the Niagara River flows on levels throughout the lakes.
While the analysis may be flawed, the study team seems extremely certain of its conclusions, stating that the effect of any “Rounding Errors or Unknowns” is “Negligible.” (Final Report, December 2009, Figure Ex-2, page vi.) I respectfully disagree. I also hope that any readers with property or marine interests in Ohio will urge the study team to leave the river alone unless and until they can get a better handle on what effect any changes they may recommend will actually have on Lake Erie’s levels.
In general, I think Ohioans objectives should follow those of the Lake Michigan residents in Michigan who have asked the Study Team to leave well enough alone. For some of their comments, see:
If you agree, drop the IUGLS folks a note at http://www.iugls.org/ContactUs.aspx
Much more on this topic later.
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