Fighting a bitter wind, speaker after speaker — some wearing life jackets or sandbag togas — told stories of financial hardship, property damage, mental stress and ever-present uncertainty about whether hundred-year floods would become commonplace on the Ottawa and St. Lawrence rivers.
Several said water regulators were trying to keep the water high on the St. Lawrence system to please shipping companies, while holding back flow on the discharging Ottawa to keep Montreal safe.
Indeed, Plan 2014 was intended to return Lake Ontario to a more natural state by allowing water levels to rise and fall to the betterment of about 64,000 acres of coastal wetlands. It went into effect in 2016, and its main control point is the Moses-Saunders Dam at Cornwall.
The commission says that a combination of massive snow melt, record rainfall and climate change contributed to the historic floods in 2017 and 2019 and that no regulation plan could have prevented them. Because the two floods were so close together, however, residents and politicians are beginning to question Plan 2014.
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