Door County's Mike Kahr operates a dredging business that has him scrambling up and down the rocky shores of Wisconsin's most coastal county tending to the low water epidemic with his barge and backhoe. WATCH VIDEO >>

There are 5,460 miles of shoreline along Lakes Michigan and Huron, every inch of which is directly affected by how much water tumbles through that 800-foot gap at the headwaters of the St. Clair.

Door County's Mike Kahr operates a dredging business that has him scrambling up and down the rocky shores of Wisconsin's most coastal county — a dock doctor tending to the low water epidemic with his barge, excavator and a hydraulic jackhammer, working to buy cottage owners a little more depth.

Today, some docks built for higher water tower nearly 7 feet off the water; others that once harbored sleek sailboats can now be used for only the tiniest of runabouts. And some cases are incurable — it no longer makes sense to try to chase the water downward, into the boulders and through the bedrock.

"Some docks are useless. Totally useless," Kahr said. "It's just not worth sinking the money into them."

Forcing the issue

Mary Muter is not the easiest person to deal with. Not when she is pressing for the U.S. and Canadian governments to do something about the low water levels in her Georgian Bay and across the rest of Lakes Michigan and Huron.

Muter's home on an eight-acre island was built by her father in the early 1960s, around the time the water level was at a record low following the Army Corps' last major dredging of the St. Clair.

When wet weather took hold and the water began to climb in the late '60s, Muter's father had to rebuild the dock. Then the water level surged to record highs in 1974, and the family built a ramp on top of the dock.

Cody Storm Cooper

Mary Muter (left), chair of the Great Lakes section of the Sierra Club Ontario, has fought for years for answers on low water levels. In this 2012 photo, she stands with cottage owner John Birgiolas and his wife, Rita, who demonstrates where the water level was compared to where it is today. They live near Waubaushene on the southeast side of Georgian Bay.

Despite the inconveniences, the family learned to live with what it considered natural fluctuations, the price paid for living on the world's largest expanse of fresh water.

But Muter doesn't think what is going on now is just nature at work.

She acknowledges that unprecedented evaporation has contributed to lower water levels, but she also blames the St. Clair dredging and what she sees as the government's "irresponsible" decision not to compensate for it.

Muter had been eyeing the river with some suspicion after the water's mysterious 3-foot plunge from 1998 to 1999. She had a vague understanding of the St. Clair dredging history and the critical role it plays in governing lake levels. This made her wonder if something more was at play than just quirky weather patterns, and she finally decided to travel to see the St. Clair's headwaters for herself.

She is not a hydrologist and she already viewed the river as a prime suspect. So, when Muter got out of her black Volvo that day back in 2001, it is probably no surprise that she was stunned at the pace of the current, against which small boats struggled upstream into Lake Huron.

She was also dismayed by the fortified wall that had become the riverbank on the U.S. side of the river, and was amazed that in places along the Canadian side the sandy-bottomed river was only a couple of feet deep. She looked up and saw a freighter gliding by impossibly close.

"I said to myself: how could it get that deep, from where I'm standing to where that ship was," Muter recalled. "The ship was only 100 to 150 feet from me."

Muter went back to Georgian Bay and started digging into the historical dredging records and never-finished plans to compensate for the lost water. Then she helped spearhead a $250,000 fundraising effort by a Georgian Bay group to hire an engineering firm to literally get to the bottom of what was going on in the river.

Mark Hoffman / Journal Sentinel

Homeowners on Canada's Georgian Bay, at the top of Lake Huron, have seen some of the most dramatic effects of lower levels on the Great Lakes. In Waubaushene, Ontario, a dock that once stood at water's edge has now been stranded in a field as the water has crept back 150 yards.

She got the answer she was looking for in 2004, when her group released an alarming study that said unexpected erosion since the dredging in the 1960s had sapped from the lakes far more than what the U.S. and Canadian governments had acknowledged.

The study claimed the total loss tied to riverbed mining, dredging and subsequent erosion was actually more than two feet — and getting worse by the day.

It theorized that the 1960s dredging scraped away a durable layer of cobble and rock, exposing soft material that began to erode in the considerable current, leading to further water loss.

It said the problem was compounded by development along southern Lake Huron's shore and along the St. Clair riverbank that blocked sand and other material from flowing down into the river channel and steadily filling in eroded zones.

The gist of the report: The rock-solid plug that had kept Lakes Michigan and Huron in place for thousands of years had been turned to mush.

The Army Corps acknowledged that something was amiss, pointing to the relative surface levels between Michigan-Huron and Lake Erie.

Because the two systems are connected, when Michigan-Huron drops, downstream Lake Erie historically dropped similarly. But in recent decades the approximately nine-foot difference in "head" between the two had been shrinking — by as much as a foot, according to the Georgian Bay study. This meant Michigan-Huron and Erie's levels were getting closer.

Other explanations for the shrinking difference between the two systems include shifting weather patterns that sent increased precipitation over Lake Erie, as well as the ongoing, uneven rebound of the earth's crust from the last ice age; the land under the Georgian Bay region is rising in relation to areas to the south.

The Georgian Bay group that funded the study maintained the big problem appeared to be an ever-expanding river channel on the St. Clair.

"We've got something alarming going on here," said Rob Nairn, the engineer who was the report's chief author. "We're certain it's Michigan-Huron dropping."

A battle over inches

Muter's group launched a ferocious public relations campaign to compel the U.S. and Canadian governments to do their own study on the St. Clair. The International Joint Commission, the board that oversees U.S. and Canadian boundary waters issues, agreed to hire a team of scientists referred to as a "study board" to look into the St. Clair question.

In 2009 the study board released a report that concluded erosion since the 1960s dredging had unexpectedly lowered the lakes by about 3 to 5 inches, though it said the erosion was not ongoing. The report also blamed changing weather patterns and the earth's crust rebounding as two other significant factors behind what it said was a loss of 9 inches in the difference between Michigan-Huron and Erie from 1962 to 2006.

Video

Scott Thieme, of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Detroit, talks about the work that has been done on the St. Clair River to provide access to the Great Lakes for commercial navigation. WATCH VIDEO >>

That meant the official acknowledged toll on Lakes Michigan and Huron tied to mining, dredging and unexpected erosion since the early '60s was up to 21 inches — nearly two feet.

Muter, a member of the study board's citizens advisory panel, refused to accept the study board's conclusion, sticking by her own group's reckoning that the water loss due to unexpected erosion was significantly greater than 3 to 5 inches, and that the erosion was ongoing.

Her refusal to acknowledge the study board's findings led some of its members to cast Muter and her supporters as a self-interested group bent on plugging the river at the expense of others.

Graphic

"Ultimately, the crisis-mongers will look foolish when the lakes return to normal levels, albeit at somewhat different relative levels than in the past," study board spokesman John Nevin said in an email to the Journal Sentinel in the days after the study board's draft report was released. "That's why they want action now before Mother Nature proves them wrong."

A few months later, Muter was not appointed to a second term on the study board's citizen advisory panel.

"They did not like having someone there who knew enough to ask questions they did not want to answer," Muter now says.

The study board leaders said because an ice jam in the mid-1980s likely caused the erosion, the board was prohibited by the Joint Commission from recommending a restoration because the water loss was caused by natural factors.

Under pressure from Muter and others, the study board members scrapped the ice jam theory, acknowledging they actually had no idea what triggered the erosion. Study board leaders also could never produce the directive they claimed prohibited them from recommending a remediation project in the river.

The study board maintained that the situation did not warrant a St. Clair river fix because it would be expensive, could exacerbate flooding if high water returns and have negative impacts on downstream Lake Erie.

But the overwhelming message the Joint Commission heard in public hearings across the Great Lakes basin last year and in thousands of written comments is that some sort of St. Clair remediation must be explored.

That included a group of 3,000 property owners called Save Our Shoreline, which represents cottage owners in places such as Saginaw Bay on Lake Huron and Grand Traverse Bay on Lake Michigan.

The Joint Commission also received a letter last summer from three of the biggest, most influential environmental groups on Great Lakes issues — the National Wildlife Federation, the Alliance for the Great Lakes and Great Lakes United — all urging action.

"We believe that it is essential for the (Joint Commission) to investigate ecological restoration of the St. Clair River bottom in more depth than the Study Board did; the objective of further study should be to make up for dredging activities, especially the major activities that took place in the years of 1958 to 1962."

The Joint Commission also heard from an organization of 90 mayors representing more than 15 million residents in cities across the Great Lakes region that said it was "dissatisfied" with the study board's recommendation to do nothing about the water loss.

In April, the Joint Commission announced it would ask the U.S. and Canadian governments to explore a fix on the St. Clair.

"Although future water levels are uncertain, we cannot ignore the damage from record low water levels," said Joe Comuzzi, Canadian chair of the Joint Commission. "From Georgian Bay to Door County, from shoreline property owners to the shipping industry, we heard calls for action, and we urge governments to act in response to our recommendation."

The Joint Commission is advising that the U.S. and Canadian governments send more scientists back to the river to further evaluate flows and determine how to raise levels enough to compensate for the erosion and the 1960s dredging, something the study board previously estimated could be accomplished for somewhere between $30 million and $170 million.

Some believe that when they do, they will find that the erosion problem is bigger than claimed.

Roger Gauthier, a retired senior hydrologist for the Army Corps, says there was loads of good science in the study board's report. But Gauthier, who wasn't a member of the study board, doesn't agree with the 3- to 5-inch loss due to erosion that the board took to the public.

"There is still considerable doubt about the conclusions they've reached," said Gauthier, who is now working with Muter to push for a St. Clair restoration. "That was their interpretation. If you look at some of the modeling results, you could come up with a significantly higher number."

Army Corps employees have not publicly endorsed the study board's figure.

John Allis

"I don't think I could say right now one way or the other if we agree or disagree if 3 to 5 inches is appropriate," said John Allis, chief of the Detroit district's office for hydraulics and hydrology.

Retired hydrologist Quinn, who worked on the original St. Clair restoration project for the Army Corps and was hired to do work for the St. Clair study board, is confident in the numbers the study board reached.

But he believes the government "has an obligation" to compensate for the water lost tied to the 1960s dredging.

The Army Corps is ready. Allis said his district this spring determined that the authorization for the 1960s St. Clair project is still valid, and his office has requested funding in its 2015 budget to begin dusting off those plans.

All this leaves Muter gratified, if a little worn out from a role of agitator she says she did not relish.

"As a public health nurse and grandmother of five kids? No," she said. "But as we collected more and more evidence, it just supported the need to stay on this. I could give up easily, and could have many times, but I feel this is a mainly finite resource and whatever I can do to protect and preserve it for future generations, I feel an obligation to do that."

A tough fix

As the executive director of the Great Lakes Commission, Tim Eder straddles two worlds. His job is to protect the ecological integrity of the lakes while squeezing as much out of them as is economically possible.

"I accept the fact that we are in a new era and the lakes are likely to continue to go lower," he said of increased evaporation on Michigan and Huron that scientists believe has been triggered by a bump in the region's air temperatures.

But he is conflicted on whether the answer is to restore St. Clair flows — and the lakes above them — to more closely match their historic levels. It could be good for navigation, for recreational boating, for property owners and for a region that has invested untold dollars in energy, sewage, drinking water and transportation systems that depend on the water levels not to move too far from their historic low — or high.

It could also be good for wetlands and the fish and birds and other life they sustain.

But he sees potential downsides, the most obvious of which is the lake levels could rise naturally. A river restoration could then exacerbate flooding and erosion in places such as Milwaukee and Chicago.

Holding back water might also harm downstream Lake Erie, and messing with the river bottom again could harm spawning beds for sturgeon in the St. Clair. Restoration advocates acknowledge both worries are real but insist that they could be addressed.

Eder also frets a control structure could lead to a dial being set on the lakes that would restrict them from their historic swing of about 3 feet above or below their long-term average, a flux critical for wetlands.

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