810-Lancaster Farming, Saturday, July 18; 1887
Shore Mlets' Fears Continue To Rise
As Great Lakes Fill, Me Shoreline
WASHINGTON Shell Lulk
n once could see beach behind her
Chicago condo. But now it’s gone,
a victim of Lake Michigan waves
that sometimes slap her building’s
fifth floor. “We are no longer on
the shoreline, we are the shore
line,” she says.
Other residents along the Great
Lakes are paying a heavy price for
the delights of lakeside living.
Beaches, back yards, roads, sea
walls, and homes are disappearing.
“Do you know what’s down in
the lake?” asks Donna Asselm of
St. Joseph, Mich. “The roof of my
house, sinks, a stove, beds. I’d nev
er go back on the lake. I don T think
people belong on the shoreline any
more.”
Record Water
Levels
North America’s fresh-water
seas are filled to the brim. Four of
them Superior, Michigan,
Huron and Erie recently reach
ed their highest recorded levels in
this century. Ontario is close
behind.
“All told the lakes cover almost
95,000 square miles,” writes Char
les E. Cobb Jr. in a recent issue of
National Geographic. “Together
they hold some six quadrillion gal
lons of fresh water. That is one
fifth of all the surface fresh water
on earth and 95 percent of all the
surface fresh water in the United
States. Pour that over the conti
guous United States and we’d all
be in water 10 feet deep.
“Today there are waves and surf
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more akin to oceans than lakes,”
Cobb writes. “On these huge
expanses of water, even after a
storm has passed, the waves con
tinue to crash. Erosion occurs
everywhere.”
Why are lake levels at their
highest? For two decades, more
rain than usual has fallen, and
cooler temperatures have slowed
evaporation. “You can’t predict
climate; it’s like the stock market,”
says Frank Quinn, head of the
Lake Hydrology Group of the
Great Lakes Environmental
Research Laboratory.
One way to think of the lakes,
Quinn suggests, is as a senes of
bathtubs filling with precipitation,
ground-water inflow, and surface
drainage from surrounding water
sheds. Each bathtub, from Super
ior to Ontario, is lower than the
next.
Channels connect the lakes, but
they are so narrow that outflow is
slow. For instance, a complete
exchange of water in Superior
would lake 200 years. This means
that when the lakes arc full and
little evaporation occurs, the water
is not going anywhere anytime
soon. “Everybody thinks there’s a
plug you can pull, but there’s not,”
says Quinn.
Another reason for the changing
lakes is something called “isostatic
rebound.” The earth’s crust still is
rebounding from the weight of the
last ice age’s glaciers. Although
this upward thrust is only a few
inches a century, it has the effect of
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tilting a pan of water downward
toward the south as the outlet
channels of Michigan, Eric, and
Ontario arc tilted upward more
rapidly than their southern shores.
Diversions Change
Levels
Man-made structures modify
lake levels somewhat. For
instance, the Long Lac and Ogoki
diversions bring water from Cana
da’s James Bay watershed into
Lake Superior, while the Chicago
diversion removes water from
Lake Michigan via the Illinois
River.
A 1985 study by the Internation
al Joint Commission a
U.S.-Canadian body created by a
1909 treaty concluded that
changes in existing diversions
would lower the upper Great Lakes
less than a foot. Enc would drop
nearly half a fool.
Last November, a preliminary
report by the commission said high
water levels post a threat of a'“pos
sible emergency.” The report
called for improving warning
programs and greater coordination
of flood-control efforts.
But some along the Great Lakes
say they find little comfort m read
ing commission reports while
wailing for the next storm to strike.
Two years ago, homeowners, con
vinced that more could be done
and rejecting blame for building
near shore, organized a coalition to
persuade officials to pull the plugs
that let water out and turn off the
faucets that let it in.
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juse :ven,. >h., let ,rs on a storm
eroded bluff over Lake Michigan. Some geologists,
believing the Great Lakes have been at long-term lows
and are returning to more normal water levels, wonder
whether humans can do much to reduce further dam
age along the 8,000 miles of coastline.
Coalition co-founder Cliff Sas
fy wants officials to turn off the
Long Lac and Ogoki diversions,
which pour an average of 5,600
cubic feet of water a second into
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Superior. He also wants outflow
through the Chicago diversion
increased.
But there are other political con
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