High water for Great Lakes results in angst, adaptation
— Rising Great Lakes water levels are causing more anxiety for the region as beaches shrink, hillsides erode, and homes threaten to tumble into water — all while both the costs and environmental consequences of hardening shorelines become more difficult to justify during the coronavirus pandemic.
And while several experts agree climate change is likely exacerbating the problem because of heavier and more frequent thunderstorms in this part of North America, they’re at a loss when it comes to pinpointing a reason for this current high-water era.
The Great Lakes, for reasons unknown, have fluctuated between high and low levels in roughly 30-year cycles — sometimes less — since record-keeping began in the 1840s. The most recent surge came on relatively strong after the latest low-water era ended in early 2013.
“There are so many variables to how water levels will react. We do recognize that,” Deanna Apps, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers hydrologist in Detroit, said.
Along a gorgeous part of western Lake Erie’s Sandusky Bay, though, lives a couple who have seen levels fluctuate up close for years.
Joyce Edwards, 69, and her husband, Phil Edwards, 73, are so dug into their little piece of paradise they joke about one of the most common annoyances of high-water eras for them, putting on waders to get their vehicle out of their garage.
“It’s not unusual to see a fish swimming in our driveway,” Joyce Edwards said.
The couple, which purchased their home in 1969 from a retired Toledo police officer, soon experienced a series of frustrations from high water, such as having their indoor carpeting soaked so often they gave up tacking it down.
They experienced their first of several floods in 1971 while vacationing in Texas. Then in 1975, they had their house raised 31/2 feet on cinder blocks. With two young children living at home with them, they put up with the inconvenience of having one part of the house tipped higher than another as the work was phased in over weeks.
They couldn’t afford to get the garage raised, though. So they’ve lived for decades with the house 31/2 feet higher than the garage, and got used to putting on waders or rain boots to get the vehicle out at times. A friendly neighbor has allowed them to park on higher ground next door when needed.
Joyce Edwards jokes about how she received waders for a birthday present one year, and how her husband used to carry their longtime family dog, a Yorkshire terrier, in his arms through water when it was high so it could “do its business” on higher ground. Their current Yorkshire terrier has been trained to use puppy pads.
“We don’t know where our journey will take us, but we wouldn’t trade it for anything,” Joyce Edwards said.
Still unless the situation rapidly diminishes, there’s no way they will give up their piece of paradise.
“It’s just different,” she said. “It’s not for the fainthearted.”
Army Corps records show each of the five Great Lakes, as well as Lake St. Clair, have experienced record-high water levels for at least two consecutive months of either 2019 or 2020 — and, some, such as Lake Erie, more often than that.
Lake Superior, Lake St. Clair, and Lake Erie established or tied record highs for five consecutive months of 2019, from May through September of that year. Every month of 2020 so far has been an unofficial high for Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, and all but January for Lake Erie. Lake Superior also had record highs in January and February of this year.
But numbers don’t tell the whole story because they measure water when it’s mostly calm and still.
Western Lake Erie can be fickle because of its geography, relative shallowness, and vulnerability to wind. Strong, sustained winds from the northeast can raise western Lake Erie’s water level significantly within hours.
Retired Ohio Sea Grant and Ohio State University director Jeff Reutter has said the region is like milk in a cereal bowl.
Tip it to the left, as what happens when northeast winds blow water toward Toledo, and suddenly the level is much higher. Tip it to the right, as what happens when wind from the northwest is prevalent, and the level drops as the water gets pushed faster toward Buffalo.
“Two things you don’t have control over: What direction the wind is going to come in and how hard it blows,” Joyce Edwards said, explaining how sump pumps are no match for northeast winds. “It’s like a bathtub overflowing. It just keeps coming up and coming up.”
Few businessmen follow the strength and direction of wind as closely as Billy Market, part of the family-owned Miller Boat Line that shuttles thousands of passengers between the mainland and touristy South Bass Island/ Put-in-Bay each summer. The other ferry service is the Jet Express.
Lake Erie’s 2020 peak is expected this month. The peak for the Upper Great Lakes is usually later in the summer, Ms. Apps said.
“There’s no doubt there are a lot of issues going on, at least when we get a northeast wind,” Market said.
Miller Boat Line spent about $500,000 to have a portion of its Catawba Island dock raised over the winter. Last summer water levels were so high that many passengers had to slog through shin-high water to get on and off the ferry.
Water was so high then it temporarily bisected the village of Put-in-Bay, and flooded streets of Port Clinton. Much of that was because of northeast winds, which are more common in the fall.
“We’ve been fortunate we’ve avoided a lot of them this year,” Market said.
Five-acre Gibraltar Island, which OSU owns and uses for much of its lake-based research out of Stone Lab, is experiencing erosion on its north side and once again has docks submerged beneath water.
This is the third consecutive summer it is limiting access to Gibraltar because of high water, Chris Winslow, Ohio Sea Grant and OSU Stone Lab director said.
“We’ve lost a lot of shoreline and are at risk of losing more if the water doesn’t recede soon,” he said. “All of our captains are always on high alert for nor’easters.”
The current high-water era shows no signs of letting up, in large part because of heavy precipitation the region has experienced in recent years, Ms. Apps said.
Drew Gronewold, a University of Michigan researcher who specializes in lake levels, said much of the eastern United States is in the 90th percentile for soil moisture now, a situation he called “extraordinary.”
“It’s very likely water levels will stay high because they’re high now and because the basin is saturated,” he said.
Even for the shipping industry — which often has concerns over whether there’s enough water at any given time in shallow western Lake Erie — there can be too much of a good thing when it comes to high water levels.
“When you have very high water levels, you have very strong currents. It’s more complicated for us than when it’s lower,” Nicole Trepanier, director of external relations for Montreal-based FedNav, Canada’s largest dry cargo shipping group, said.
Joe Cappel, Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority vice president of business development, said 2020’s been fine but local port operations “were temporarily impacted last spring during heavy rainfall when water came over the sills at the Toledo Shipyard dry docks, rendering them unusable for a short period of time until the Maumee River subsided.”
“In general, ports must understand that high water levels could become the new norm, and we must plan construction projects accordingly to ensure that our facilities are resilient moving forward,” he said. “The bottom line is we must be aware of these fluctuations and prepare accordingly to the best of our ability.”
Hardening shorelines with more rocks, riprap, and walllike structures can be controversial because of the potential for beach loss and habitat destruction.
And it’s expensive. In South Haven, Mich., a tourist destination along Lake Michigan, a public street was immersed beneath water for the better part of a year recently, South Haven City Manager Brian Dissette said.
“Our focus right now is on triage,” he said, explaining how the city is trying to keep its sewage-treatment and water-treatment plants from being overwhelmed and, thus, experiencing more flooding in that shoreline community.
Officials have said they can offer little help to people who build too close to the water’s edge.
In some parts of Michigan, homeowners — at great expense — have moved large homes back dozens of feet from the water.
“We do have too many homes built close to the shoreline, but they were built there legally,” Jerrod Sanders, an assistant division director in the Michigan Department of Energy, Great Lakes, and the Environment, said.
He said the alternative to moving homes or issuing permits to harden shorelines is “having the home fall into the water.”
The Edwards couple along Ohio’s Marblehead Peninsula hasn’t done anything like that. But they have learned to adapt in an unconventional way to keep enjoying shoreline living.
“It’s not for everybody, but the good days outweigh the bad,” Joyce Edwards said.