IJC plan damaging to shoreline properties

The recent International Joint Commission/Save the River conference in Clayton and Jaegun Lee’s article should be ringing very loud alarm bells throughout the north country, and the eastern shore of Lake Ontario.

The IJC and the environmentalists are in effect, if not purposely, separating all the stakeholders into smaller, self-interest groups. The common, disingenuous buzzwords “a balanced approach,” which I expect to hear often, come down to a pure case of disinformation and misinformation.

Lake Ontario shoreline property owners are a large taxpaying, stakeholder group that has been callously minimized by the IJC. In its bum’s rush to get the new Articles of Agreement with Canada ratified, the IJC is quite literally sacrificing hundreds of vulnerable properties — business and private — along the lake shore to regular storm surges. Current storm walls were built for 1958DD.

The new Articles of Agreement, BV7, will increase the lake’s permitted level, within the range of 242-248 feet above sea level (formerly 243-247.3). It should be noted that the IJC itself established the danger level for the lake at 246.7 feet after the eastern shore destruction by storms in 1973. Heavy precipitation in the lake’s watershed, and maintaining high end of lake-level range when added to the one inch that can be safely released from Lake Ontario each week, will cause much pain when spring storms/gales come roaring in. That one inch/week equals 10 feet at Montreal, thus the need to “gradually” release water. The IJC is oblivious, or in denial, in regard to storm surge effects, especially when new range levels go into effect.

When the two-to-three day blows come in from the west and northwest, the four-to-six-foot waves already cause damage to storm walls and steady erosion to property. Add another foot to the top of the lake level range and any storm can be catastrophic to the southern and our eastern shores. The IJC is “guesstimating” an average of $4 million to $5 million per year in damage to shoreline properties, i.e. $200-$250 million (front- end loaded) over the course of the expected 50-year agreement. The $250-plus million losses will not leave too much standing on the existing shoreline or the new one.

The alarm bells should be ringing for the lost assessments, lost tax revenues, lost spending in local economies, inevitable costs of dredging outlets to the lake and lost tourism dollars as new marinas, boat launches, campgrounds, beaches and parks have to readapt. The towns, counties and property owners bordering the lake are not in the “balanced approach” or the “fair sharing” of pain and will end up footing a big bill. The IJC certainly hasn’t got it right yet.

Richard Henry

Pulaski