Holiday Beach disappearing as water levels rise
Breakwalls on Essex County shoreline in danger of crumbling
Conservation officials warned Thursday that the encroaching lake and disappearing shoreline at Holiday Beach are harbingers of a more devastating problem than losing a place to suntan.
The Essex Region Conservation Authority said high lake levels — thanks to increased precipitation that also caused flooding on the Toronto Islands and receding shorelines on Lake Huron — have eaten away at Holiday Beach.
Tim Byrne, ERCA’s director of Watershed Management Services, said it’s one symptom of a widespread issue as lake levels continue to rise.
The conservation area’s beach has all but disappeared and will never fully return.
Private breakwalls on shorelines throughout Essex County are in danger of crumbling and there has been $1.7 million in damage to breakwalls on Pelee Island.
“Holiday Beach is kind of like the canary in the coal mine,” said Byrne.
“It’s showing what’s going on on other private properties that people don’t really realize.
“If they’ve got a breakwall in place, they don’t see what’s going on at the base of that breakwall. They don’t see how the soil is being eroded from the face of that breakwall. They’re just thinking, ‘I don’t have a problem.’ ”
Byrne said the lake is about a metre higher than normal and within 100 mm of the 1986 level, which was the all-time record high.
You can still swim, but there’s no place to put down a beach blanket.
Kevin Money, ERCA’s director of conservation services, said 50 or 60 feet of beach is gone.
The water has advanced all the way up to the tree line.
“We have a row of large, mature trees and it’s essentially stopped there, where the roots of the trees are,” said Money. “So those roots have acted as some form of erosion control in some areas to kind of halt the erosion.”
But the erosion is even taking a toll on those mighty trees.
“Some of those trees are falling over now because they’ve been undermined, which is unfortunate because they’re mature trees,” said Money.
Money said ERCA has engaged an engineering firm to come up with options for trying to stop the erosion.
But even if it is stopped now, the damage is already done.
“The erosion that’s taking place will never ever come back,” said Byrne.
“The lake may push sand back up again but what you’ve lost in erosion, like the clay and till underneath the sand, is gone.
“It will never come back. When lake levels drop again you may have a beach, but your beach will be landward probably three to five metres depending upon the rate of erosion and the extent of erosion.”
Every storm or windy day makes it worse, he said.
“You keep losing every time there’s a storm,” said Byrne. “We’ve been battered by significant and serious northeast and southeast gale-type storm events. That is the most destructive wave action that we can receive within the Essex region.”
But there’s more at stake here than a sandy beach, he said.
“You’ve lost acreage in land,” said Byrne.
“That has a value. Over time, that is a significant and very expensive loss. If it gets to the point where the erosion now allows wave damage to affect infrastructure, now you potentially lose that infrastructure.
“What’s the value of it? We have recreational boating and dockage and other things that are significantly being affected by what’s going on.”
Those storms, deepening the already high lakes, pound and destabilize breakwalls as well.
He said it’s also happening on Pelee Island, where there has been $1.7 million worth of damage to breakwalls over the last couple years from wind-driven waves pounding the shoreline.
“At one point or another you reach a tipping point where the breakwalls start going into rotational failure or climate and wave activity is powerful enough that it will destroy the wall,” said Byrne. “It is very systematic. “You don’t see it from this storm but the next storm you’re saying, ‘Is the wall kind of leaning a little bit?’
“Then all of a sudden you get hit with a storm again, the wall peels out.”
The lake may push sand back up again but what you’ve lost in erosion, like the clay and till underneath the sand, is gone.