Four months after an international body approved a new plan for regulating Lake Ontario’s water level, property owners who had claimed the rules favoured muskrat lodges over lakeside homes are piling sandbags against just the kind of floodwaters they had feared.
Lake Ontario has been artificially controlled by the Moses-Saunders Dam since 1960 for the benefit of St. Lawrence Seaway shipping, recreational boating, hydroelectric power generation and protection of millions of dollars’ worth of coastal property. Plan 2014, which is designed to more closely mimic the lake’s natural ups and downs, adds muskrats, fish and other wildlife to the list of interests regulators must consider when they decide how much water to release.
It is a bit heartening to note that the flooded communities on both sides of the Ottawa River voted for governments that believe spring thaw waters must be retained to arrest the scourge of climate change.
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