CBC News - What one region's water level woes reveal about climate change and the St. Lawrence River
On Ault Island just West of Cornwall, Ontario, residents are seeing the impact of climate change on the St. Lawrence seaway water levels. The seaway is an important passage for commercial shipping between Ontario and Quebec; it drains from Lake Ontario into Montreal, controlled by the Moses Saunders power dam. Locals from the area are calling for the release of water to be more consistent as the large fluctuations are impacting their daily lives.
This past Fall water levels reached a record low in Lake St. Lawrence. Consequently, residents could not launch their boats as entire bays dried up, greatly impacting the community's tourism industry. John Sliter, the president of The Friends of Hoople Creek Society, said that he is concerned about the impact of dropping water levels on fish populations. This is a spawning route for the fish and this summer nothing more than dead fish could be seen in these dried-up sections. Local governments are investing in infrastructure to make the area more accessible if water levels continue to reach these unprecedented levels.
This article demonstrates how citizens are impacted by water level changes and how crucial it is to understand how climate change will impact water levels in the future. Residents are looking for solutions to continue to promote tourism in the area and without an idea of how this situation is going to turn out, that will become increasingly difficult. Canadians should also be concerned about the potential impacts that changing water levels can have on shipping through the St. Lawrence-Great Lakes seaway, which benefits our economy by approximately $45 billion dollars (and nearly 250,000 jobs) every year.
The Canada1Water project will support residents and watershed managers with the goal of securing the health of the St. Lawrence seaway system for the years and decades to come by helping them to address the longstanding problem of understanding the sustainability of Canadian water resources.
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“It’s going to have a major effect on tourism. It’s going to have a major effect on all of us living here.”
“According to public data from the International Lake Ontario-St. Lawrence River Board, the Lake St. Lawrence dropped below the lowest minimums ever recorded multiple times over the last few years, in May 2020, May 2021, and July, August, September and October 2022.”
“In a recent analysis, Seglenieks found that if the global average temperature increased by more than 2.5 C, the range between the average monthly minimum and maximum levels in Lake Ontario could grow by as much as a metre — from about two metres to three. Those fluctuations would trickle down to the St. Lawrence River as well.
”We have about 100 years of water level data in the Great Lakes and over the past 10 years, some of the lakes have seen both their lowest levels and their highest level just within the last 10 years,” he said.”
“This is the reality that we have to accept … at the end communities will have to adapt.”
Drone footage shot in April of 2021 shows low water levels in Hoople Bay, near Ingleside, Ont. John Sliter said he has found frogs, turtles, mussels, and fish left behind in the muddy fields after water levels drop and the bay recedes. (Submitted by Jack Sliter) – CBC News