Friday, December 9, 2011

Headwaters of the Humber River - December 2011


The Headwaters of the Humber River Watershed may not be at risk but the Nottawasaga and Grand River watershed areas are!

Melancthion Twp. Mega Quarry Information from The Suzuki Foundation

http://www.davidsuzuki.org/blogs/panther-lounge/2011/05/billion-tonne-mega-quarry-to-improve-the-local-environment/

Monday, November 7, 2011

Great Lakes Water Levels November 2011

NOAA Water Levels November 4, 2011 (click image to enlarge & <= to return to Blog)
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Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Letter to MP Dr. Kelly Leitch from Joe Hayward

Restoring Lake Michigan-Huron Water Levels:
The history and facts surrounding the significant, 12 years of unprecedented low water levels of Lakes Michigan-Huron are well documented. I have lived on Georgian Bay for over thirty-five years and it is obvious that we are losing wetlands and exposed shorelines have been taken over by the invasive reed Phragmites Australis which is so tall and dense that it provides no opportunity for wildlife or fish habitat.
This water represents over one fifth of the World’s Fresh Water and carries the term “fossil water”, as it dates back 10,000 years to melting of the Glacier Ice Age. Only one percent of this water is renewed annually. But the International Upper Great Lakes Study Board has recommended that nothing be done about the 5.8% increased conveyance in the St Clair River. This loss of water from Lakes Michigan and Huron is over 2 times the diversion of Great Lakes water at Chicago and is a breech of the Boundary Waters Treaty. The gravity of the situation should be obvious. Severe impacts are already raising economic, environmental, biological and social concerns. Time has come to save these Lakes!
Many solutions have been explored. Until recently, submerged, fixed or water-inflated weirs, installed in the St. Clair River to slow the water flow (like a speed bump), thereby backing-up Lake levels, seemed the preferred choice.
                Today, the best solution is available. This proven technology consists of a field of 396 submerged electricity-generating turbines, which would be installed on the deep sections of the river bottom of the St. Clair River near the Blue Water Bridge. The technology was invented in the Netherlands and is used extensively there and in Scotland and England to generate power from tidal action.
The Bay of Fundy also has some very large 100 feet wide turbines. . Here, government studies have shown that the presence of a field of these turbines results in no impact on fish or other marine life. The Quebec Government has installed three turbines in the St. Lawrence River near Montreal on final test. Once approved, they will be used to allow communities to become energy independent. Perhaps most importantly, the State of Michigan has provided a permit to an independent private company to install three test turbines in the St. Clair River. The turbines are installed now. They will evaluate if this type of installation can generate electricity profitably. Reputable hydrologists have recently studied what impact the installation of a grid of 396 turbines would have. Their conclusions suggest that if the turbines are installed very slowly, over a 10 year period, Michigan-Huron water levels would gradually increase by approximately 25cm (10 inches) over an 18 year period. Also, during this period water levels of Lakes St. Clair and Erie would decline temporarily  by 5- 8cm (2- 3 inches) over  the first 10 years, then gradually recover to  normal levels by the end of the 18 year period.
                This well-proven technological solution provides a well-balanced path to avoid the catastrophic effects of serious, further water level declines in Lake Michigan/Huron. At the same time, this solution generates significant electrical power on a constant rate, 24 hours a day, every day. A green solution that is on the shelf, ready to be implemented.
                Thank-you for your consideration and I look forward to further discussion with you on this important issue.

Respectfully,
 
Joseph Hayward
Tel: 705-443-8684
Email: snowyjoe@rogers.com
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Tuesday, October 4, 2011

The Ripple Effect by Alex Prud'homme - Review

Wednesday, 15 June 2011

New Water Book: Alex Prud'homme and 'The Ripple Effect' on 'The Daily Show'

Just when I thought I was getting caught up on water books...
Alex Prud'homme hawks his new book - The Ripple Effect -  on The Daily Show of two days ago.
Prud'homme also has a blog - The Ripple Blog - it's about all things water. Hmmm....
Here is the blurb about his book:
Experts call it “the next oil,” and predict water will be the focus of increased tension125-tn-ripple  and great innovation in coming decades.  In response, I set out in 2007 to discover how people across the U.S. and around the world are using and abusing water today – and how they are preparing for what the UN has deemed “the looming water crisis.”
The result is THE RIPPLE EFFECT. The book’s title comes from my observation that every time we use water – even for something as mundane as washing our hands, spraying the lawn, or generating power for light – it sets off deep and wide hydrologic ripple effects, with consequences that most of us are unaware of.  But today we no longer have the luxury of ignorance: we must understand how our actions impact the earth’s limited supply of fresh water, and learn to value H2O more highly.  After all, we can live without oil, but not without water.
IMG_7783small-200x300 I think of this book as an intellectual adventure story.  In the course of reporting, I traveled from inside New York City’s new Water Tunnel No. 3 (the $6 billion water tunnel being drilled 600 feet beneath Manhattan) to the disputed aquifers of Poland Springs, ME, the “intersex” fish and Dead Zone of the Chesapeake Bay, poisoned wells and flooding rivers in the Midwest, the “water-energy nexus” in oil and gas fields, the failed levees of Katrina-wracked New Orleans, drought-threatened Las Vegas, California’s vulnerable San Francisco Delta, and up to the resource wars of the Alaskan Peninsula.
Each of these stories features compelling characters who grapple with crucial water issues, and is written in a narrative style for a broad audience. Water is a vast subject, and while THE RIPPLE EFFECT is inclusive it is not encyclopedic.  The book is divided into four parts: water quality (what’s in our water?); drought; flood; and water in the twenty-first century.
Some of the themes I address include:
  • New types of water pollution, and their mitigation
  • The cost of failing infrastructure such as dams and levees
  • Debates over bottled water and water privatization
  • Climate change, population growth, and changing diets
  • Sewage treatment
  • Water law and the prospect of water wars
  • Weather modification and desalination
Although I did not report abroad each story is a local drama with global implications: I compare US water pollution to that of China; drought here to that in Australia; US floods to those in Europe; mining and energy use here to that of Central America and other parts of the world, and the like.
Water is a timely issue.  The U.S. is using water in unsustainable ways, but now – some forty years after the burning of the Cuyahoga River and the poisoning of Love Canal, the founding of the EPA, and the passage of the Clean Water Act — there is a slowly growing public awareness of the value of water, a booming market for water efficiency and treatment technologies, and a vibrant dialogue about potential solutions to the water problems of the coming decades.
“…Alex Prud’homme makes a vast and desperately serious topic flow beautifully through the rocks and hard places that our planet is caught between” - John Seabrook, staff writer at the New Yorker
 Prud'homme is a grandnephew of the late Julia Child.
Looks good...another review to do...
Maybe we can get him for the AWRA November conference?
‎"Sooner or later,wittingly or unwittingly, we must pay for every intrusion on the natural environment." ~Barry Commoner

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 An informative and good read. Robert Galway

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Saturday, October 1, 2011

Book Review of Water by Marq de Villiers

41 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant--Puts Water in Context of War, Peace, and Life
By 
Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States) - 
I rank this book as being among the top ten I have read in the decade, for the combined reason that its topic concerns our survival, and its author has done a superior job of integrating both scholarly research (with full credit to those upon whose work he builds) and what must be a unique background of actually having traveled to the specific desolate areas that comprise the heart of this book-from the Aral Sea ("the exposed seabed, now over 28,000 square kilometers, became a stew of salt, pesticide residues, and toxic chemicals; the strong winds in the region pick up more than 40 million tons of these poisonous sediments each year, and the contaminated dust storms that follow have caused the incidence of respiratory illnesses and cancers to explode.") to the heart of China ("According to China's own figures, between 1983 and 1990 the number of cities short of water tripled to three hundred, almost half the cities in the country; those who problem was described as 'serious' rose from forty to one hundred." The author provides a thoughtful and well-structured look at every corner of the world, with special emphasis on the Middle East, the Tigris-Euphrates System, the Nile, the Americas, and China; and at the main human factors destroying our global water system: pollution, dams (that silt up and prevent nutrients from going downstream or flooding from rejuvenating the lower lands), irrigation (leading to salination such that hundreds of thousands of acres are now infertile and being taken out of production), over-engineering, and excessive water mining from aquifers, which are in serious danger of drying up in key areas in the US as well as overseas within the next twenty years. The author provides a balanced and well-documented view overall. His final chapter on solutions explores conservation, technical, and political options. Two statements leapt off the page: first, that it is the average person, unaware of the fragility of our water system, that is doing the most damage, not the corporations or mega-farms; and second, that for the price of one military ship or equipped unit ($100 million), one can desalinate 100 million cubic meters of water. The bottom line is clear: we are close to a tipping point toward catastrophe but solution are still within our grasp, and they require, not world government, but a virtual world system that permits the integrated management of all aspects of water demand as well supply. This book should be required reading for every college student and every executive and every government employee at local, state, and federal levels; and every citizen.
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An informative and good read. Robert Galway

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Wednesday, August 24, 2011


August 19, 2011

Re: Comments on IUGLS report “Options for Restoring Lake Michigan-Huron Water Levels: An Exploratory Analysis”

The Great Lakes Section of Sierra Club Canada wishes to submit the following comments on the May 26, 2011 document of the International Upper Great Lakes Study entitled “Options for Restoring Lake Michigan-Huron Water Levels: An Exploratory Analysis”, and on the ensuing Public Meetings that occurred in Canada.

Impact of Another Scenario: Zero Restoration of Lake Michigan-Huron (MH)
Although Zero Restoration of MH was part of the study proposed by the IJC Commissioners, details of the impact of such an approach were not given in this report or in any detail at the public meetings.  The implications of this oversight are discussed later in this submission; however it should be pointed out at once that this oversight is representative of the general lack of balance in the report and in the presentations at the public meetings, which is a major issue. By not evaluating the “do nothing” scenario it is implied that there are no negative impacts to the status quo or that they are considered acceptable.  Existing and possibly worsening negative impacts to the environment and economy around Lakes Huron & Michigan should be included in this report for the IJC’s consideration.

Use of IUGLSB Great Lakes levels and connecting channels flow data
In a previously submitted Sierra Club report on restoration simulation modeling  by Bill Bialkowski, (one of the engineers in our Great Lakes Section), by using three different approaches found the outflow of Lake Huron to be missing 200 cu.M./second flow. Was the correction of the connecting channel flows made prior to running the restoration simulation models for this Restoration Report? If not, why not? An explanation is needed, for this significant missing 4% amount of the flow could influence the results.

Error Found in Presentation of Downstream Impacts
Sierra Club has confirmed with IUGLSB Co-Chair Dr. Eugene Stakhiv that there are errors in the presentation of restoration’s downstream impacts.  There is a contradiction between the report’s graphs and the “Table 3.3 Downstream impact of restoration, comparing staged and instantaneous scenarios”.  The numbers on Table 3.3 and in the text are consistently higher than the values portrayed in accompanying graphs.  Though this error was confirmed, we have not yet received the clarification.  Is one of the portrayals correct, or are they both wrong? On the one hand, the model shows that the impact on the Port of Montreal would be almost zero.  On the other hand, the result looks as if the Port of Montreal would be unusable for a period of time – a possibility that would quickly and categorically turn some stakeholders against the restoration option.   We recommend that all possible efforts be made to correct the report and to clarify to stakeholders the best prediction of conditions.

Lake St. Clair Fishery
In Section 6.8 (page 138), the following statement appears: “A lowering of Lake St. Clair water levels by a metre or more could eliminate more than 40% of the available fish spawning habitat in shallow near-shore areas of Lake St. Clair.”  At the public meeting a colourful map was shown on the screen to illustrate the dire habitat and sport fishing loss if this 1-metre lowering occurred.  However none of the St. Clair River restoration scenarios show a lowering of Lake St. Clair by more than 7.5 cm.  At the same time, what was flashed on the screen and discussed was an old map created for a different project to outline the problems that would ensue if Lake St. Clair were hypothetically lowered by one metre.   The use of that map in the report and at the public meetings could have misled the public into thinking that Lake St. Clair was going to be lowered by 1 metre.  

Water Levels Imbalance
The current situation of 13 years of low water levels on Lake Michigan-Huron (MH) and several years of higher than long-term average water levels on Lake Erie is presented in the report as the normal base from which to describe the impact of any possible efforts to raise MH.  It is, however, not the historical normal base, for Erie and MH were usually in harmony regarding higher and lower water levels.  At the public meetings Study Board representatives justified their interpretation of the current relationship as normal by citing changing weather patterns that have been leading to greater precipitation south of MH and directly on Erie and its basin.   Though what the Study Board states may be partly true, it is not credible that the weather pattern has changed so much over 13 years to lead to the current imbalance, for 79% of the total water supply to Lake Erie flows from MH through the connecting channel, and only 21% of the water in Lake Erie comes from its own receipt of precipitation and runoff from its basin.  Where are the data to support the claim that the main factor in the creation of the imbalance in the current water levels there is precipitation?  The changing weather patterns explanation was also used at several public meetings to refute statements that the increased flow through the St. Clair River has been an important cause of the imbalance in those lakes’ water levels

Fixed Structures vs. Other Measures
In Section 8 (pages 154 and 155) of the report, the IJC directive to the Study Board is outlined.  Part of it follows: “The analysis will include an investigation of structural and non-structural measures at an exploratory level of detail.  The Commission is aware that as part of the first phase of the study, you have already undertaken a preliminary reconnaissance of structural measures to remediate the impacts of past dredging for the St. Clair River.  The public has also suggested a range of approaches, including inflatable weirs and power generating turbines.”

What is in the report are dozens of pages on fixed structures in the St. Clair River presented in great detail.  Even peer-reviewer Loucks criticized the excessive detail of the description of the fixed structures.  Inflatable weirs are dismissed in a couple of paragraphs in the report and received similar treatment at the public meetings.  Power-generating turbines are presented briefly and at first positively in the report, followed by a report on modeling in the St. Lawrence River that “.showed less than a 3 cm (1.2 inch) increase in water levels immediately upstream of six turbines”. The report authors should be aware that a proposed project with up to 396 turbines in the St. Clair River is under investigation.  The National Research Council is conducting a study of the ability of submerged turbines to hold back water.  Unfortunately, that study will be published after the deadline for public comment on this report.  Before that study and the environmental impact studies of the turbine proposal for St. Clair River are published, the U.S Co-chair Dr. Eugene Stakhiv is known to have circulated an email stating that the turbines will turn local fish into “chum”.  This is not a foregone conclusion: the evaluation of the submerged turbines in the Bay of Fundy states that there is neither an increase in the mortality rate of fish nor damage to the very productive marine life.  In short, a more thorough and balanced study is needed of both the submerged turbines and inflatable weirs concepts.

In addition, it has been well known for some time that the environmental community is not promoting fixed structures but rather flexible ones. The elaborate printed details of the nature and cost of fixed structures are a further example of the lack of balance in the May 26 report. 

Worst Case Scenarios
The following appears in Section 3.5 (page 36) of the May 26 report: “Results of a worst-case, poorly-timed restoration show that instantaneous 10 cm (3.9 inch) restoration might drop record low Lake Erie surface elevations by an additional 7 cm (2.8 inches) for almost one year. Also, a worst-case poorly-timed instantaneous 25 cm (9.8 inch) restoration might drop record low Lake Erie surface elevations by an additional 12 cm (4.7 inches) for almost 1 year. These outcomes require terrible timing of an instantaneous restoration during a period of already record low water levels.”  In a balanced report this devastating statement would be followed by the description of a “Best Case Scenario”.  That would be accomplished by excellent timing of a gradual raising of MH levels during a period of high water levels on Lakes Erie and Ontario and low water levels on MH.  Such conditions exist today, and it is quite possible that gradual remediation measures would result in only a very small, temporary lowering of the high levels of Lake Erie.  The May 26 report has many worst case scenarios presented in detail, as summarized in Section 3.3.3 (page 22). The lack of a balanced approach to this study is exemplified by this stress on worst-case scenarios.

Justifying the Cost
Section 7.5.4 (page 150) of the May 26 report reveals what is possibly the true agenda of the Study Board.  It begins with the following: “The proposed works, while potentially benefitting some select area-specific riparian, recreational boating, and environmental interests, likely will not provide the broader scale of economic benefits that has traditionally been demonstrated to support funding of major lake regulation initiatives.”  Economic benefits are, then, the key issue.  Thankfully the study does show in detail the future economic benefits to the shipping industry of raising MH levels in order for commercial ships to carry full loads as opposed to the loss of income that industry is currently suffering because of low water levels on MH.

Even as a primarily economic evaluation this report has gaps:
·         Where are the data on economic consequences to the sport and commercial fishery of this ongoing loss of fish habitat on Georgian Bay and the North Channel  (already 30-40%) if MH water levels are not raised and do not fluctuate normally? 
·         Where are the data on the cost to marinas of dredging and the closure of docking spaces in the past 13 years and in the foreseeable future if water levels on MH continue to remain this low or go even lower? 
·         Where are the data on the economic consequences to riparian interests of the invasion of Phragmites australis due to the continuous exposure of new shore where they thrive? 
·         Where are the data on the cost to water-access property owners of current and very likely future lower water in MH that leads to inaccessibility?
·         Where are the data on the future cost to municipalities on MH, particularly Canadian ones, of the likely adaptive management measures that the Study Board has already discussed, if nothing is done to raise the water level of MH?  
These essential data to decision-making on economic grounds are nowhere to be found in this report. These are just some of the costs of the “do nothing” alternative that has been left out of this report’s evaluation of alternatives.

Paragraph 3 in Section 7.5.4 (page 150) provides a troubling rationale for not restoring water levels: it may be ‘politically’ difficult.  It begins with: “The problem is that many changes have occurred since the completion of the 8.2m (27-foot) project in 1962.  First, many riparians have adapted to the present water level regime and would experience significant additional losses from flooding and erosion if average Lake Michigan-Huron levels were to be permanently increased”, and the paragraph ends with: “This would suggest that such prospective restoration would be politically infeasible.”   The riparians who have “adapted” are almost exclusively U.S. citizens in western Michigan who obtained the right to own the newly exposed land down to the water’s edge and created splendid beaches and, in many cases, some structures on that land which, if traditional fluctuations in a normal, balanced water level situation occurred, would be threatened at the higher levels of the usual range.  Their claims and, at the Parry Sound-Muskegon public meeting on Phase I, the  public threat of court action “if  anything placed in the St. Clair River raises our water level one inch” explain the ‘politically infeasible’ statement.

Although at every recent public meeting in Canada, Dr. Ted Yuzyk repeated that his team were exclusively scientists and part of an independent agency with no political aspect to it, it is clear that the politics of dealing with a powerful U.S. group that has already won one court action against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has steered the agenda of this study towards rejecting, for both unsubstantiated economic and clearly political reasons, any logical correction of the current low water levels in MH. Further evidence of that is the $8 Billion price tag that was quoted at the recent public meetings  for 5-lake regulation and the new structures and studies necessary for it.  No figures were given to show that this price tag is accurate. Nor was there any mention that future shipping industry and other financial benefits would make such an investment very sound economically.  Once again, where is the balance?

Government’s commitment to compensate
Thanks are extended to the Study Board for acknowledging on in Section 7.6 (page 151) under “Findings” that: “There exists an existing government commitment to compensate for the lowering effect of the 7.6 m (25-foot) and 8.2 m (27-foot) navigation channel deepening projects” and “There is no record, however, of a government decision not to complete compensation in the St Clair River.”  That should speed up the process of decision-making.

It is important to note that Ralph Pentland, in his report to Phase I of the study, stated that, if both federal governments declared the situation an emergency, the work could be completed in eight to ten years.  That official report makes it all the stranger that the current report’s proposal for restoration as it would impact Georgian Bay is to raise its water level by only 10 cm over 40 years.  The report points out that 40 years of GIA in, say, the Parry Sound area, would render that rise negligible, while the corresponding rise in water level caused by a combination of the restoration and GIA would be unpopular to some shoreline property owners in western Lake Michigan.  If, however, the restoration raised MH water levels by 25 cm in 10 years, the net impact of that rise along with 10 years of GIA would be +22.6 cm at Parry Sound and +26.4 cm in south-western Lake Michigan. Surely that modest difference in impact would not be rejected by reasonable people in Michigan

It is clear that the exaggerated time requirement in the May 26 report caused a feeling of futility among some Georgian Bay residents. In addition, it is disturbing that, when in preparation for a local newspaper article, an Owen Sound Ontario reporter had a lengthy discussion with Chuck Southam at Environment Canada, the futility of any action to help Georgian Bay was stressed by Mr. Southam, citing GIA.  It is most unfortunate that Environment Canada is reinforcing the presentation of  as negative a view as possible of the restoration of MH water levels.

Hydropower
In Section 4.4.1 (pages 49 to 53) of the May 26 report, there are many statements about the negative impact of MH restoration on hydro-electric generation.  All of them are based on the assumption that the current level of MH is normal, which it is not; it is at a record-long period of sustained low water.  Returning MH to its normal range, that is, in equilibrium with Lake St. Clair, Lake Erie, and Lake Ontario, would in all probability result in the same levels of hydroelectric generation as those achieved before the 13 years of sustained low water levels on MH. This is a non-issue except for those who believe that MH should remain in this state of non-equilibrium with the downstream lakes.

1986 Revisited
In every description of restoration of water levels to MH by installing either permanent or the preferred flexible structures in the St. Clair River, there is the caveat that raising MH could, in various scenarios of frequency, lead to the high water level of 1986, or even higher.  At the same time, though in different parts of the report and in all the presentations at the public meetings, it is pointed out that the precipitation-carrying wind currents have altered their course such that there continues to be less precipitation on the MH and Superior basins and considerably more on the Erie and Ontario basins. These two statements – a possible repeat of shore-and property-damaging record high levels on MH, and ongoing low levels on MH induced climatically by lower precipitation on the MH basin, contradict each other. Yet those citizens at the public meetings seemed to accept them as plausible because they were presented in isolation.  These two future possibilities should be presented in juxtaposition to enable the public to weigh the balance between them.

It is also important to determine scientifically whether the flow of extra water through the St. Clair River caused by the increase in its carrying capacity has, by the present time, removed a significant amount of the base, glacier-deposited 99% of the water in MH.  That is a critical issue, especially as it concerns the inevitable future lows in the MH water-level range.  Those future lows received scarcely any mention in the May 26 report, as compared with the extensive coverage of the possibility of future highs.

Helpful Soft Measures
It is unfortunate that the May 26 report made no mention of some helpful soft measures such as the following: 
·         Re-naturalizing the extensive hardened shorelines on both sides of Lake Huron leading to the St. Clair River, in order to restore the previously natural flow of sand in the water entering the river;
·         Replacing the natural sand and gravel  bar at the outflow of Lake Huron removed in 1962;
·         Studying the feasibility of floating wetlands that would be moved in and out of the St. Clair River channel as needed.
These types of measures would improve fish habitat and would be looked on favourably by the environmental community and the general public.

Some Kudos
While this submission of comments is of necessity critical, we wish to compliment the Study Board for its coverage of Section 4.4.4 “Ecosystem” from pages 68 to 74 of the May 26 report.  Although we do not agree with the form of the restoration plans presented, restoration is important, and so it is encouraging that under “Evaluation Results” the following statement is made: “The restoration plans generally reduce the frequency of [extremely and permanently harmful] Zone Cs for three performance indicators (SMH-04, LMH-07, and LMH-08) while not increasing the frequency of occurrence of Zone Cs for any of the other 31 performance indicators.  Hence it improves the overall ecological performance of Lake Michigan-Huron somewhat, with the greatest positive effect being on the wetlands of Georgian Bay.” 

Ecosystem health is very important to the Sierra Club and to many of the stakeholders around the Great Lakes, and it is well known that a primary indicator of the health of a system is the health of its wetlands.  Let us share this strong concern for their care!

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Tuesday, August 9, 2011

IJC Study Group Meeting August 3, 2011 - Review

Well last week the International Joint Commission rode into Collingwood and held their public hearing on declining Lake Levels. A sincere thank you to everyone that came out! You were over 200!Phenomenal and you sent a powerful message to the IJC.

Unfortunately, the Study Group instead of presenting with clear facts and science, (calling a spade a spade), they chose a different route.

Through gross exaggeration, omissions and selective facts they tried to convince the audience of the futility of pursuing a real potential long-term solution to the St. Clair River outflow.

Two quick examples should illustrate the above.

First, they claimed that putting submerged generators into the river to slow the outflow would greatly harm the Sturgeon which is a protected species.This is nonsense as experts explain that large fish simply swim around such obstacles, and small fish pass through without harm. In comparison, their misguided concern is all the more misleading when they choose not to mention that Georgian Bay has already lost 20-40% of it's
wetlands, where 80% of Lake Huron's fish species spawn. It will get even more devastating with further declines.

Second, the Study Board's final report last year acknowledged that in fact, the St.Clair River outflow had increased by 5.8 %, and that is a major factor in Michigan/Huron Lake level decline. This Lake level has been at or near chart datum since 1999, a level at which the IJC Report back in 1993 stated that if that situation occurred for more than 2-3 years, immediate remediation be taken up to avoid disastrous impacts on the Lake's ecology.

All of this critical information was omitted from the Study Group's presentation, to downplay it's obvious importance to the issue. 

There are many other examples of selective presentation that further tarnish their credibility. Fortunately, it was obvious that not only was the audience not swayed of their story,but in fact they appeared insulted and frustrated that this Study Group could be so cavalier with the truth.

This clearly had a significant impact on the Group and I believe it was a small but important victory in a long war.

The cause is critical to our ecology and our local economy, and it is vital that you get involved! The battle will get political. Fortunately, the Mayors and Council of both Wasaga Beach and Collingwood showed their support at this meeting. 

You need to carry the message far and wide starting now. This next year will be the "Year of the Decision to Save our Lakes".

We can make the Decision...YES!!!! For more information contact The Sierra Club Ontario website. ==> http://www.sierraclub.org/greatlakes/ 

You can also reach me at tel 705 443 8684. or "snowyjoe@rogers.com"

Thank You for your support!!!

Joe Hayward
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