Photo by Julie Snyder This boat dock at a home on Koerber has been surrounded by mud and dry weeds since last spring.

Lake levels low, but not at record low

By Julie Snyder
C & G Staff Writer

The water levels on Lake St. Clair may be excessively low right now, but according to some local experts, the levels are not near their lowest on record.

Longtime St. Clair Shores resident Dave Den Baas, chairman of the St. Clair Shores Water Resource and Advisory Board, has lived in the city nearly his entire life, and has no memory of the water levels in Lake St. Clair ever being so low.

“You just don’t know what’s happening, but there are all kinds of theories,” said Den Baas, 73. “We have no idea where this water is going.”

Whatever the cause, it’s making boating impossible at the moment, and may ultimately mean more canals will be classified as wetlands. The Department of Environmental Quality recently deemed a Benjamin Street canal a wetland due to overgrown vegetation and the depleted water levels.

State Rep. Jack Brandenburg, R-Harrison Township, said he believes the decreasing water levels are due to diversion.

His belief and his desire to end the problem make him the sole republican representative who is sponsoring of a series of House bills aimed at regulating the amount of water being withdrawn from the Great Lakes and amending several provisions concerning water user sector guidelines, including use by bottled water manufacturers.

Brandenburg said current state legislature requires all individuals who use 2 million gallons of lake water a day to get a permit. The bills would ultimately reduce that number to 150,000 gallons per day.

“Something needs to be done now because the canals is Harrison Township are drying up,” said Brandenburg, who also represents St. Clair Shores.

St. Clair Shores real estate agent Bob McKenzie said there has been no data that indicates the low water levels and dried canals are affecting real estate sales along Jefferson in St. Clair Shores.

He said there currently are 55 lakefront homes for sale in St. Clair Shores, and approximately 340 combined homes for sale in Harrison Township, Chesterfield Township, St. Clair and New Baltimore.

“The water levels do fluctuate over time,” said McKenzie, who has lived on the lake side of Jefferson since 1983. Since then, McKenzie said he does not recall lake levels ever being so low, though they are not at an all-time low.

“The water levels are not at the average and they are not at their lowest,” said McKenzie, an agent with Real Estate One for 35 years.

And the water levels don’t appear to be deterring would-be buyers, he said. He said recent weekend open houses at three residences on Jefferson saw a massive response.

He did say, however, that the number of sales in 2007 was 50 percent of what they were 10 years ago.

He has seen some areas where once the shoreline does meet the water, water levels stay at around 3 feet for nearly a half-mile.

“But there is seasonal fluctuation,” he said. “In the spring, it rises again.”

According to www.great lakes.net, Lake St. Clair is traditionally a shallow lake, averaging only 10 feet deep. This is why the lake must be dredged periodically to allow clearance of larger ships passing through between Lake Huron and Lake Erie. The lake is a little more than 26 miles in length (162 square miles in the United States and 268 square miles in Canada) with a maximum depth of 21 feet.

And the condition of Lake St. Clair isn’t unique.

According to the Jan. 4 weekly report released by the Army Corp of Engineers’ Detroit office, Lake Superior is 6 inches higher than it was one year ago. The remaining Great Lakes, including Lake St. Clair, are 11 to 16 inches lower from what they were one year ago. Lake St. Clair is approximately 11 inches lower than it was in January of 2007.

The low levels and current forecasts are now bringing to mind the new FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) floodplain map that went into effect in 2006.

“It needs to be thrown out,” said St. Clair Shores resident Jim Goodfellow. Goodfellow recommends that residents in the new floodplain map contact their local representatives, including Congresswoman Candice Miller, R-Michigan, Congressman Sander Levin, D-Michigan, and democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow, about a possible push for reconsideration.

Keith Kompoltowicz, meteorologist for the U. S Army Corp of Engineers in Detroit, said Lake St. Clair is expected to remain below its levels of a year ago through June.

Superior, Michigan, Huron, St. Clair and Erie are predicted to fall another 1 to 2 inches over the next month, while Ontario is expected to rise an inch.

Lake St. Clair, dubbed the Heart of the Great Lakes, is 9 inches lower than the long-term average for January, and it is 46 inches lower than the record level for January in 1986. The lake is also 29 inches higher than the record low in 1936.

Kompoltowicz said the forecasts, which are done each Thursday, are known to change somewhat rapidly. He said there are some lakes that are affected dramatically by diversion, specifically Lake Michigan, which is used to provide fresh water to Chicago. However, the Army Corp of Engineers anticipates more water being diverted into the lake via the Lake Superior basin by hydropower use in Canada.

“Lake St. Clair responds rather quickly to heavy rain events,” Kompoltowicz said. “And we have not recorded as much rainfall in the past few years as normal. Precipitation levels are key to lake levels.”