Post by ppat324 on Nov 16, 2010 6:49:01 GMT -5
11/16 - Port Huron, Mich. - If the average water level of Lake Huron rose by 4 inches, what would it mean for cottage owners, boaters and other interests?
What if the lake rose 20 inches? What might it mean in a gale with 20-foot waves crashing ashore?
These are among the questions the Upper Great Lakes Study Board hopes to answer with a $17.5 million inquiry. The International Joint Commission, created as part of a 1909 treaty between Canada and the United States, is financing the research.
In the past 150 years, water levels on the Great Lakes have been affected by diversions, dredging, mining and other human activity. No one questions this, but there is a fierce debate over what, if any, remedies are required.
In the strictest sense, lakes Huron and Michigan are a single body of water. Chicago and Port Huron share the same elevation above sea level. The five-mile-wide Straits of Mackinac connect the two basins. Water drawn from one lake affects the level of the other.
Huron-Michigan's natural outlet is the St. Clair River, which drops five feet over its 40-mile course. Its average flow of 182,000 cubic feet per second is greater than the Mississippi River at St. Louis.
Georgian Bay Forever, which seeks to protect the quality of life on the bay's "Thirty Thousand Islands," commissioned engineering studies of the St. Clair River. It linked human activity, primarily dredging in the 1980s, with an increase in the river's flow of as much as 20,000 cfs.
To put that in perspective, the added flow would be the equivalent of a Colorado River in its natural state.
Not everyone agrees. IJC-sponsored research suggests dredging has increased the St. Clair River's flow by about 1 percent, or perhaps 2,000 cfs.
Huron-Michigan's level also is affected by man-made diversions such as the Chicago Ship and Sanitary Canal, which opened in 1900. By the 1920s, the diversion of water from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River watershed had reached 10,000 cfs, or about 6.5 billion gallons per day.
A U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1967 capped the Chicago diversion at 2.068 billion gallons per day. Michigan and several other states are suing to seal the canals as a way of slowing the spread of Asian carp and other invasive species.
If the Chicago diversion is plugged, or if the St. Clair River is restored to a more natural flow, average water levels on Lake Huron-Michigan could rise by as much as 20 inches.
Results from the new study are expected by early 2012.
Port Huron Times Herald
What if the lake rose 20 inches? What might it mean in a gale with 20-foot waves crashing ashore?
These are among the questions the Upper Great Lakes Study Board hopes to answer with a $17.5 million inquiry. The International Joint Commission, created as part of a 1909 treaty between Canada and the United States, is financing the research.
In the past 150 years, water levels on the Great Lakes have been affected by diversions, dredging, mining and other human activity. No one questions this, but there is a fierce debate over what, if any, remedies are required.
In the strictest sense, lakes Huron and Michigan are a single body of water. Chicago and Port Huron share the same elevation above sea level. The five-mile-wide Straits of Mackinac connect the two basins. Water drawn from one lake affects the level of the other.
Huron-Michigan's natural outlet is the St. Clair River, which drops five feet over its 40-mile course. Its average flow of 182,000 cubic feet per second is greater than the Mississippi River at St. Louis.
Georgian Bay Forever, which seeks to protect the quality of life on the bay's "Thirty Thousand Islands," commissioned engineering studies of the St. Clair River. It linked human activity, primarily dredging in the 1980s, with an increase in the river's flow of as much as 20,000 cfs.
To put that in perspective, the added flow would be the equivalent of a Colorado River in its natural state.
Not everyone agrees. IJC-sponsored research suggests dredging has increased the St. Clair River's flow by about 1 percent, or perhaps 2,000 cfs.
Huron-Michigan's level also is affected by man-made diversions such as the Chicago Ship and Sanitary Canal, which opened in 1900. By the 1920s, the diversion of water from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River watershed had reached 10,000 cfs, or about 6.5 billion gallons per day.
A U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1967 capped the Chicago diversion at 2.068 billion gallons per day. Michigan and several other states are suing to seal the canals as a way of slowing the spread of Asian carp and other invasive species.
If the Chicago diversion is plugged, or if the St. Clair River is restored to a more natural flow, average water levels on Lake Huron-Michigan could rise by as much as 20 inches.
Results from the new study are expected by early 2012.
Port Huron Times Herald