St. Claire River

Latest St. Claire News:      Report says lake drainage is worse

A U.S. and Canadian study exploring recent lower water levels on Lakes Michigan and Huron has dramatically miscalculated the amount of water the lakes have lost due to erosion on the St. Clair River, a new report says. The new report found that the water loss was more than nine inches – more than double the four inches estimated by a study released in the spring by the International Joint Commission. That nine inches is in addition to the 16 inches that previous St. Clair dredging and riverbed mining have already cost the lakes. The report was launched presumably to substantiate the commission study on what is happening on the river north of Detroit that is the main outflow for Lakes Michigan and Huron, which is one body of water connected at the Straits of Mackinac. It did the opposite. The dispute over what is happening comes at a time when interest in the health of the Great Lakes is high, and the Obama administration has made the freshwater system’s health a national priority.

Nine inches escaping out the river, tumbling over Niagara Falls and ultimately spilling into the Atlantic Ocean is not an insignificant amount of water. For comparison, Chicago reversed its namesake river a century ago so it flows out of Lake Michigan instead of into it. It now takes from the lake about 2.1 billion gallons a day. That has dropped Michigan-Huron’s long-term average level by about two inches. The International Joint Commission study was released on May 1. Two weeks before the release, its authors received what has come to be known as the "Baird Report" challenging their findings. The commission’s authors kept the report’s findings private for nearly three months, releasing them just a few weeks shy of the Aug. 1 public comment deadline for the commission’s study. During that time, the authors also asked the Baird Report’s author to refrain from commenting publicly about his findings; they said they needed to review the work for themselves.

However, the commission study’s official spokesman showed no such restraint. "We’re very much in disagreement with their (the Baird Report’s) approach and with the way they answered the questions that we asked them," study spokesman John Nevin told Ontario’s Parry Sound North Star newspaper in June. Now that the Baird Report has been released, its author said he does not want to get into a public spat with the study authors or their bosses at the International Joint Commission. He said he intends to let his report’s findings speak for themselves. His findings say the International Joint Commission study authors wrongly calculated the increased conveyance in the St. Clair River by using flawed river depth – or bathymetry – data. He says the commission study’s authors made a huge mistake by assuming a one-meter (39-inch) depth for the entire river’s edge. The reality, his report says, is that in many places along the river’s edge, particularly where natural riverbank has been replaced with artificial walls, the water is dramatically deeper. The result, according to the Baird Report, is that the study "significantly" undercalculates the conveyance changes in the river in recent decades. The Baird Report recommends that the International Joint Commission study authors try to better calculate the river depths. The study authors contend that they used the best riverbed data possible. "While identifying some of the same issues (that the Baird Report found), the external peer review found that our modeling results do adequately interpret the conveyance capacity change," the International Joint Commission study board co-chairmen wrote to Baird Report author Rob Nairn on July 9. The independent peer reviewers employed to evaluate the many research projects that related to the commission’s study were paid $250,000, according to contracts the commission provided the Journal Sentinel. Nairn has a history with this issue. In 2004, a Canadian homeowners group called the Georgian Bay Association, distressed by what it believed were unnaturally low water levels on Lake Huron, hired him to investigate the issue. He theorized that a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers navigational dredging project in the 1960s unleashed an uncontrollable erosion problem in the river, resulting in a huge water loss for the two big lakes that feed it. The International Joint Commission study says a deeper St. Clair River channel has cost Michigan and Huron only about four inches. It says climate change has cost the lakes a similar amount. The science behind all this is complicated, and few people know enough to judge who is correct, or even closest to correct. One is Marcelo Garcia, director of the University of Illinois’ Ven Te Chow Hydrosystems Laboratory. "They are both predicting things that are reasonable," he said. Science, he said, isn’t precise enough to know exactly how much the river has changed since the last major Army Corps of Engineers dredging project in the 1960s. "There is an uncertainty in the predictions both models have to live with," said Garcia, who was hired by the International Joint Commission study team to work on other aspects of the study. Garcia said that doesn’t mean that little changes in the river flow aren’t a big deal.

"The Lake Huron-Michigan system is like a gigantic bathtub that has a pretty large drain, so any changes that happen in that drain – which is the St. Clair River – lead to big impacts on the bathtub," Garcia said. Roger Gauthier, a retired Army Corps hydrologist, said he has seen enough in the International Joint Commission study and the Baird Report to be convinced that something big is going on. "The emphasis on the study … was to identify whether or not there has been erosion occurring in the St. Clair River, and the answer is yes," he said. "The magnitude of the increase is still in debate." Gauthier now works for the Great Lakes Commission. He said he speaks on the matter only as a private citizen, but he doesn’t think the International Joint Commission study is complete. Study authors say their work is essentially done, and the study does not recommend pursuing some sort of fix to compensate for the water loss. The reason is murky. Study team co-chair Eugene Stakhiv, an Army Corps employee, initially told the Journal Sentinel that the International Joint Commission specifically instructed him that he could not recommend a fix if it deemed the erosion to be nature-caused. That is exactly what the study found; it says an ice jam in the 1980s likely triggered the erosion, and that the riverbed has since stabilized. Things got more complicated when Stakhiv’s Canadian co-chair told the Journal Sentinel no direct orders on the matter had been received from the International Joint Commission, and the study board decided on its own to take no action. Then at a public hearing in Door County on July 7, Stakhiv gave another reason. He said the change "was not significant enough to undertake any actions."  He said the issue could be further explored depending on the results of the study’s second phase, which will look at Lake Superior water levels and the impact climate change could have on the lakes. That second phase will be completed over the next couple of years

Mother Nature Lowered Lake Levels – Some of the Causes:

  • Major St. Clair River dredging – last done in 1962 – most likely did not cause water to drain away and drop the level of Lake Huron since the mid-1980s.
  • Instead, an historic ice jam in April 1984 may have scoured the river bed enough to account for some of the water level drop. In addition, some of the lake level decline noticed in Georgian Bay actually is because the lake bed and land there is still rebounding from the two mile-thick ice sheet of the last ice age.
  • Probably the largest factor affecting the lake is the climate, the report says. Precipitation across the upper lakes was down, and evaporation was up.
  • The St. Clair River – the river bed has stabilized.
  • This isn’t the last word on lake levels. The final draft of the report will be delivered to the IJC this fall, after a series of public hearings to take comments on it.

What Can You Do:

  • Attend the meetings in your area and voice your concerns.
  • Join Forum discussions on this subject.
  • Read the articles on the subject, and add your views.

Only My Views:

  • How much would the ice have removed if the river bed had not been dredged ?
  • If controlling the flow wasn’t an issue, then why were the original plans by the ACOE to place devices in the river’s bed ?
  • If the River bed fills in, are we going to allow them to dredge again ?, If so, will they have to place controlling devices in the river ?
  • They have now spent more money on studies than it would have taken to add control strips in the river. It’s time to stop spending tax payers money creating jobs that aren’t needed and simply fix the problem.
  • Lakes Michigan/Huron are the only Great Lakes without level controls. Next time they need a method of sending freighters through the river install a lock system.
  • Look at what it is costing us to stop the "Invasive" problems on the Lakes. Are the freighters really worth it ?
  • It seems the ACOE are trying to get out of paying the bill.

Some Facts:

  • Everyone agrees that the 1960s dredging, combined with early dredging and riverbed mining on the St. Clair River, resulted in a permanent loss of about 16 inches in the long-term average of Lakes Michigan and Huron, which are actually one body of water connected at the Straits of Mackinac.
  • The reason: The St. Clair is the major outflow for the two lakes, and dredging led to more water flowing down the river and into Lake Erie.
  • The study pointed to the relative difference in lake levels between Lake Erie and Lakes Michigan and Huron as evidence of the water loss. Although both Erie as well as Lakes Michigan and Huron fluctuate, the relative difference between the two basins has historically remained constant. If, for example, Lakes Michigan and Huron dropped 8 inches, Lake Erie would as well. That has not been happening.
  • Regardless of the study results, three separate times in the last century the federal government authorized the installation of some sort of flow-slowing structure on the St. Clair River to compensate for the acknowledged 16-inch loss to Lakes Michigan and Huron, but the work was never done. (This one keeps coming up in all discussions)