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TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) — A U.S.-Canadian agency adopted a fiercely contested plan Thursday designed to improve environmental conditions along Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River by letting water levels rise and fall more naturally.
Approval by the International Joint Commission, which advises both nations on managing the Great Lakes and other shared waterways, was the final step in a 16-year quest for a policy that would heal degraded wetlands essential to wildlife while protecting shoreline property from erosion and flooding.
"Our challenge was to be as fair as possible to all interests," said Lana Pollack, the commission's chief U.S. representative, adding that the process had moved "frustratingly slowly."
Technical experts and citizen groups spent years and $20 million developing and debating hundreds of alternatives. They sought to balance the needs of stakeholders including recreational boaters, hydropower generators, commercial shippers and waterfront residents along with ecological restoration.
The commission released its plan in 2014 but only recently won permission from the U.S. and Canadian governments to ratify it.
In addition to rain, snow and other natural factors, water levels on Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence are influenced by releases from the Moses-Saunders Dam on the river between Cornwall, Ontario, and Massena, New York.
Since the 1950s, the rates at which water flows through the dam have been designed to keep lake levels stable, which shoreline property owners prefer. But that approach has devastated coastal wetlands — home to fish, waterfowl, amphibians and mammals — that require fluctuating levels.
"The scientific evidence for the harm ... is clear and too strong to ignore," the commission said, adding that the updated policy would restore 64,000 acres of wetlands.
The new plan will allow modest rises in spring and fall. The increase in the maximum Lake Ontario level will be 2.4 inches, said the commission, frequently providing longer recreational boating seasons while boosting commercial navigation and hydropower production.
The commission has authority to regulate the levels under a 1909 boundary waters treaty, which includes no appeal procedures. The incoming Trump administration could not reverse the deal without Canadian approval, Pollack said.
Even so, opponents pledged to continue the fight.
"If the International Joint Commission thinks for a second that (the plan) will ever be fully implemented, they are sorely mistaken," said U.S. Rep. Chris Collins, a Republican from New York. "I can guarantee you that I will do everything in my power to protect the taxpayers, homeowners and small businesses along the Lake Ontario shoreline that are set to be devastated by this bureaucratic disaster."
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