Panel: St. Clair River's water loss not alarming

[Spiel]

Panel: St. Clair River's water loss not alarming

 

 

Dec. 15, 2009

TINA LAM / www.freep.com

 

 

In blunt terms, members of an international study panel said the idea that the St. Clair River is losing billions of gallons of water each day, causing the levels of Lakes Michigan and Huron to drop, is bunk. A Canadian group put forth that idea five years ago after a study by an expired it hired concluded that the river was acting like a bathtub drain that had been enlarged by dredging and was allowing billions of gallons of water to escape too quickly into Lake Erie.

 

“The bathtub drain is not a good analogy” and doesn’t represent what’s really happening, said Eugene Stakhiv, co-leader of the study panel, appointed by the International Joint Commission. Two years of study shows that while there were small changes in the river bed between 1971 and 2000, it’s now stable, and whatever water loss occurred lasted only a few years. No man-made fix to the river is needed, the panel concluded. Stakhiv said the water loss that did happen was good, because it would only have occurred when water levels in the lakes were extremely high and provided a relief valve; otherwise, the high levels would have led to widespread flood damage for homeowners around the lakes.

 

Lake levels, which were low in the past few years because of a lack of precipitation, have now risen to near their long-term historic averages.

 

The $3.5 million study was done by more than 100 scientists and engineers at the request of the International Joint Commission, a body that makes recommendations to the U.S. and Canadian governments on water policy and other issues.

 

Georgian Bay Forever still insisted today that something needs to be done to stop water loss and said the study panel missed an opportunity to protect the lakes by recommending a fix in the river. “Losing this much water from the lakes must not continue,” said Mary Muter, a member of the group’s board of directors and a longtime activist on the issue. The group said in a press release Tuesday that the lakes are losing 23 billion liters per day from Lakes Michigan and Huron.

 

“These numbers are made up and they are not credible,” said Ted Yuzyk, the other co-leader of the panel.

 

The study group said it was no longer certain that a 1984 ice jam had scoured out the St. Clair River bottom, as it said in May. Instead, the changes in the river were probably from a combination of factors, from weather to large ships hitting the bottom. Fluctuations in lake levels over the last 40 years were more due to nature than man, the panel said.

 

The International Joint Commission will hold hearings on the study around the Great Lakes starting in March. While the study panel did not recommend any changes to the river, the IJC could, after hearings, make a different decision.