High water on Lake Ontario: Who's to blame?
The waters of Lake Ontario, already at their highest point in a quarter-century, are continuing to rise. Shoreline property is flooding and erosion is worsening — and the lake level is expected to go up at least another four inches and quite possibly more by mid-summer.
In Monroe County, the Lake Ontario shore is lined with modest cottages, palatial homes and vintage businesses worth a combined $400 million to $500 million. Millions of dollars more worth of homes and businesses sit near the water in Wayne, Orleans, Niagara, Cayuga and two counties farther east. Many of those properties are one bad storm away from flooding that could prove exceptionally damaging.
And that bad storm could be on the horizon. Gale-force winds and large waves are forecast for Lake Ontario early next week. The wind direction, which remains unclear, will determine who ends up with the nightmare scenario — streets flooded, the first floor of businesses underwater and homes destroyed.
Already, the people who own those homes and businesses on the lakeshore are fuming, and politicians are increasingly pointing fingers and demanding action.
But things are not all as they might seem.
Who or what is really to blame for the high water?
This spring's high water is an act of God. It is the consequence of heavy rainfall in March and especially in early April, when the amount of water entering Lake Ontario set a record. Similar high water has afflicted the St. Lawrence River, which carries the flow from Lake Ontario to the Atlantic Ocean.
This is a natural, cyclical event. Over the last-half century, high water of this magnitude has occurred roughly every 20 years, typically due to heavy precipitation.
What about this Plan 2014?
Plan 2014 is the set of rules for regulating the water levels in Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence. Passage of water from the lake to the river is controlled by a huge hydroelectric dam on the river. Plan 2014, approved in the waning days of the Obama administration, went into effect in January. It was designed to allow the water to rise a bit higher and stay that way longer compared with the plan it replaced.
For that reason, many shoreline interests were wary of the new rules. Those folks have been quick to blame Plan 2014 for the on-going high-water episode, just as they often blamed the old regulatory plan during high-water periods then. Local politicians and several members of Congress have demanded that the lake level be taken down at once and the plan be amended.
So Plan 2014 is to blame then?
Apparently not. All the experts have disavowed any connection between high water and the regulations.
The International Joint Commission, the U.S.-Canada treaty organization that developed and adopted the plan, said an overabundance of water entering the lake is the reason for high water. Hydrologists at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which provides technical support to lake-level managers, told the Democrat and Chronicle the same thing last week. The appointed board that oversees the operation of Plan 2014 issued a public statement Tuesday saying that the plan deserves no blame.
And finally, the senior U.S. member of that board, an engineer from Brighton who has been a vocal critic of Plan 2014 since it was conceived — someone who has no vested interest in making Plan 2014 look good — said Tuesday that he feels the same way.
"Under either the old plan or the new plan, we would be where we are now," Frank Sciremammano told the Democrat and Chronicle.
That's not to say the regulatory plan won't make the high-water problem worse later this spring or summer. Sciremammano believes it will.
"May, June and July — that’s when we’ll feel the pinch," he said. "It (the new plan) will increase the duration of the high water event. That’s the intention."
How often has the water been this high?
Many shoreline property owners regard 248 feet above sea level as the doomsday stage for Lake Ontario. When the lake rises past that point, serious shoreline flooding is almost a certainty.
This has happened in seven spring-summer periods since 1918, when record-keeping began: 1993, 1974, 1973, 1952, 1951, 1947 and 1943. The lake's waters rose very close to 248 feet on four other occasions dating as far back as 1929.
Four of those 248-foot years came before regulation of the lake level began in 1960. Three others came during the time when the old regulatory plan was in use, and it's now happening again under the new plan.
Will the lake level get higher?
Oh, yes. No doubt about it.
As of Wednesday, the lake was at 247.68 feet, roughly 20 inches over the long-term average for the date.
The last time the lake was so high at this point in April was 1993, when erosion and flooding were extensive.
With spring rains continuing, it seems very likely that the lake's water level will reach and surpass 248 feet in the coming weeks. The latest forecast calls for the level to be just above 248 feet by mid-May. If it rises much beyond that, the lake would be at rarefied heights reached only in 1973 and 1952.
"It could be worse than that, it could be better than that. It depends on the weather," Sciremammano said.
Look back: Tales from past lakeshore flooding episodes
Already, this is the second-wettest March-April period on record for Rochester, and the fifth-rainiest for Buffalo, the National Weather Service reported recently.
More rain is forecast Thursday night, this coming weekend and on Monday. The eastern Great Lakes can expect wetter-than-normal conditions for at least the next two weeks, according to the Climate Prediction Center, a branch of the weather service.
That doesn't bode well for shoreline property owners.
Neither does the shorter-term forecast, which calls for gale-force winds on Lake Ontario next Tuesday and perhaps Wednesday.
Details remained scarce on Thursday, though the weather service said winds could blow in the 30 mph to 40 mph range for at least 24 hours.
"We’re keeping an eye on it, but pinning details down this far out is not prudent," said Jeff Wood, a weather service meteorologist in Buffalo. "With the lake levels as high as they are, high waves on the lake are certainly going to present an issue for people on the lakeshore."
If we're flooding, why not just let out more water?
It's not that easy to do.
Think of the lake as a bathtub. The faucet, which is stuck on open, pours water from the other four Great Lakes. The shower head, also going full tilt, adds rain and the flow from Lake Ontario's own tributary rivers to the tub. All you've got some control over is the drain plug — the dam in the river — which you can nudge one way or the other to affect how much water is being let out.
When you've got more water coming in than can reasonably go down the drain, you've got a problem.
That's the situation this spring. Shoreline erosion and flooding were already a concern during fierce storms in March. Then heavy rain in early April caused the water in Lake Ontario to rise far faster and higher than predicted.
Ideally, officials could have opened up the dam and let the water flow out as hard and fast as possible in order to lower the water in Lake Ontario. A number of local government leaders, including Monroe County Executive Cheryl Dinolfo, called for just that.
So can't we pull the plug?
Not the way some folks would like, because of a big complication: downriver communities such as Montréal.
Regulation of the water level is a complex balancing act.
By agreement, any plan must consider the interests of property owners both above and below the dam, commercial shippers who navigate narrow channels on the St. Lawrence, the government agencies that generate hydroelectric power at the dam, and recreational boaters on both lake and river. Plan 2014, meant to restore wetlands and wildlife habitat, added the lake's ecosystem as a competing interest.
At present, the two groups of property owners are the issue.
When there's too much water in the bathtub, Lake Ontario residents suffer floods. Yet, let too much water flow into the St. Lawrence and the residents of Montréal start building arks.
Especially problematic this year: heavy rains in and around Montréal and Québec have engorged rivers there to flood and near-flood stages already, limiting even more how much lake water can flow down the St. Lawrence. Three hundred Québécois had to evacuate their homes.
Plan 2014 aims to equalize the damage and discomfort suffered along the Lake Ontario and Québec shorelines.
Earlier this month, for example, the flow through the dam was scaled back a bit, making shoreline problems here a bit worse, because flooding was escalating near Montréal. In recent days, flood waters in Québec have begun to recede, so the outflow from Lake Ontario has been increased. Between Sunday and Thursday, it went up about 19 percent.
As flooding continues to let up in Québec, Plan 2014 will automatically increase the outflow from Lake Ontario. It was nudged upward again Thursday morning, for example.
But the increase in outflow probably won't be enough to reduce shoreline erosion and flooding here. For one thing, on-going spring rain is likely to feed more water into an already swollen lake.
But that's only part of it. The other factor, Sciremammano said, is Plan 2014.
How so?
IJC and Corps of Engineers officials have said the lake is only a smidgen higher today than it would have been under the old regulatory plan. Officials acknowledge that that gap, between what is and what would have been, is likely to increase as the summer goes on.
That's what steams Sciremammano.
Under the old plan, the regulatory panel of which Sciremammano is a member likely would have kept ratcheting up the outflow from the lake as much as it could without re-starting flooding or interfering with navigation on the river.
"The board would have taken it more seriously to take out as much water as we could," he said. Such deviations from the old plan were not uncommon.
But Plan 2014 doesn't allow that. While the regulations call for further adjustments of the outflow to reduce the high water in the lake, Sciremammano said there's a limit to how much that will happen. The level likely won't be reduced as fast or as far as it would have been under the old plan, he believes.
The board can step in and take extraordinary steps to lower the water level only when certain predetermined "trigger points" are reached — and the trigger points in May and June are at or above 248 feet.
The lake could remain very high and flooding could be widespread, Sciremammano maintains, and the regulatory board would be powerless to step in.
That's the way the plan was designed, he said. "This (high water) is what the IJC thinks is acceptable."
Frank Bevacqua, a spokesman for the IJC in Washington, D.C., said Sciremammano's assertion that the current levels are "acceptable" under Plan 2014 is an interpretation with which the commission disagrees.
"The levels we’re seeing this year have very little to do with the plan," he said. "Yes, it’s possible that later in the summer the level would be higher under Plan 2014. That’s different, though, than saying the plan encourages the current level."
Why not change Plan 2014 — or get rid of it?
That's not easily done.
It took 16 years and more than $20 million to come up with the plan, which was adopted after lengthy closed-door deliberations by the federal governments in the United States and Canada.
By treaty, the plan can only be rescinded if the IJC representatives of both nations agreed to it. Politicians from upstate New York say they're continuing to lobby the Trump administration, but in statements to the Democrat and Chronicle in recent weeks, Trump's State Department and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Global Affairs Canada indicated they had no interest in undoing Plan 2014 at present.
More: Shoreline on edge, Plan 2014 intact
Sciremammano said the IJC commissioners and their government sponsors will get heat for the on-going high water and accompanying damage, but probably will not agree to withdraw Plan 2014.
But while getting rid of the plan may be very difficult, amending it is not. In fact, the possibility of periodic modification is built into Plan 2014.
Sciremammano sat on the IJC committee that studied lake levels and came up with the proposal that evolved into Plan 2014. He opposed the proposed new plans, partly because he believed they badly underestimated the extent of damage that prolonged high- and low-water periods could cause.
The current high-water episode will provide a sound test of Plan 2014's assumptions about that damage.
"The data that could be collected now ... can be used in two or three years when they could make a recommendation for changing the plan," he said. "They can assess the environmental benefits. That would give the plan a fair run, a fair trial."
Whether review and modification does take place remains to be seen.