Here’s the skinny on Lake Michigan’s water levels: Everybody knows they're falling, nobody knows if the trend will continue beyond this year, and nobody knows exactly what to do about it.
“We don’t know whether we’re on the downside of an up-cycle, or the upside of a down-cycle,” says Leonard Tabaka, who owns a house on the lake near Holland, Mich. All Tabaka really knows is that where he and his wife, Sharon, used to climb up into his boat from the dock, they now shimmy down a ladder. And he’s spent $1,500 dredging out his Macatawa Bay boat slip, and his sailboat’s keel still only clears by an inch and a half.
What would Tabaka do if the water kept dropping? “I’d go from a sailboat to a power boat, or no boat,” he says.
For now, his lake view is undiminished and his property value isn’t a concern.
Tabaka is reacting to the falling water levels the same way many homeowners around the lake are. From scientists to real estate agents, homeowners to marina owners, people are closely watchful, and determinedly optimistic.
There’s no shortage of data on trends in lake levels. In fact, to the layman’s ear, it sounds like there’s an overabundance of numbers and interpretations. Here are the highlights: The highest recorded median lake level was nearly 583 feet in June of 1886. The lowest was 576 feet in March, 1964. Despite many fluctuations in the intervening years, including high levels in the 1980s and 1990s, the lake level hovered around 576 at the end of March 2008 – just above that 1964 low mark, according to Cynthia Sellinger, deputy director of the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory.
Most immediately important: Lake levels will likely drop or remain the same this year, according to Sellinger’s forecast.
The only other issue scientists seem to agree on is that there are many reasons behind dropping lake levels. Rain and snow shortfalls have parched aquifers and streams flowing into the lake. Higher temperatures and increased wind have created more evaporation. Dredging on the St. Clair River has caused lakes Huron and Michigan to drain faster into Lake Erie – just to name a few. And how’s this for out of the box: The land surrounding the Great Lakes is still rising after the withdrawal, 8,000 years ago, of the last glaciers.
Most of these facts we can’t change – and actually, we shouldn’t want to, says Great Lakes Commission hydrologist Roger Gauthier. He points to opposing GCMs (global circulation models) that argue with equal power for big lake-level drops and rises. And for coastal landowners, property security is a distant dream.
The Great Lakes “have such majesty because they’re dynamic,” he says, adding ominously: “If you’re living on a shoreline, there’s no guarantee your property will last forever.”
The forecast isn’t all bad. Many homeowners, especially on the east side of the lake, have actually gained a beach of pristine sand revealed by the receding water. And while others have seen the lake retreat from their beach, leaving an expanse of muck between the sand and the water, Rubloff realtor Chuck Heaver says business is good in southwest Michigan. (He's also a meteorologist for the public TV show “Lakeshore News Tonight” and studies the lake from a scientific point of view.)
From a real estate perspective, it’s better to have low lake levels, Heaver says. “It improves property value, there’s less erosion.” And there are beaches where there were none when lake levels were higher 10 to 20 years ago.
But low lake levels aren’t better for Jim Oselka, who runs the Oselka Marina and the Marina Grand Resort in New Buffalo, Mich. The condo business at the resort is OK, he says, as long as the harbor is operational; but he’s getting concerned.
Since lake levels have been dropping, the mouth of the New Buffalo Harbor needs dredging every other year. This year it looked as if the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers didn’t have the federal funds to do the job, which would have meant that the city of New Buffalo would have had to spend most of its own $100,000 emergency dredging fund, leaving the coffers empty. Luckily, in January, the corps got the necessary $93,000, leaving New Buffalo’s fund untouched, for now.
“But there’s no ongoing guarantee,” says Oselka, who lobbies New Buffalo officials to take the issue more seriously. “The viability of the whole town depends on the harbor staying open.”
Oselka also has a lot riding on the lake: He owns and rents out 140 boat slips. If water levels drop to the point where he has to dredge out the slips, the cost could be crippling.
Does he worry about his livelihood? You bet. “You have to have water to make boats float,” he says.
His wry sentiment resonates with everyone from the shipping companies who can only load their iron-ore ships at 80% capacity, to property owners on West Grand Traverse Bay who have been extending their docks annually, seemingly infinitely, “seeking depths that will support their boats,” according to Leelanau County's Leelanau Enterprise.
Ultimately, the question for people whose property value, livelihood and pleasure is tied to the lake, is a simple one: What can I do about the falling lake levels? (See "Words to the Wise," pg. 99, for tips for lakefront homeowners.) Their decisions would be made much easier if scientists were sure that falling lake levels were a long-term trend. But they’re not. Sellinger says one snowy, consistently cold winter could return lake levels close to normal.
“I don’t buy that one bit,” counters Cameron Davis, president and ceo of the Alliance for the Great Lakes. He acknowledges the inevitability of cycles, but he believes that “over time, we’re going to see lake levels go down.”
One thing’s for sure – in an already volatile real estate market, homeowners need mother nature on their side.
Words to the wise
Experts Cameron Davis, president and ceo of the Alliance for the Great Lakes, and Great Lakes Commission hydrologist Roger Gauthier offer suggestions to potential coastal property owners:
• Don’t be tempted to build closer to the lake. Even though Davis believes the overall trend is for lake levels to fall, he urges caution to anyone who’s banking on lower levels to build. “You’re setting yourself up for trouble,” he says.
• Write your senator. Davis recommends that Michiganders lobby their state to join the Great Lakes Basin Compact, a series of standards that would, if ratified, regulate new or increased water usage. Four of the eight Great Lakes states have joined the compact, including Illinois and Indiana.
• Keep your knees loose. Ultimately, says Gauthier, we have “extremely limited levels of control. We need to be able to adapt to changing water levels.”
The Upside
Marina owners worry about harbor inlets, shipping companies trim their loads to keep from scraping bottom and boat owners dredge their slips as a result of lower Lake Michigan water levels. But the homeowners LAKE spoke with mostly just watch their beaches grow and hope for the best.
Dropping lake levels haven’t been a problem for Tamara Samuels, whose lakefront lot in Union Pier, Mich., has actually gotten bigger (and its value has risen) as the lake has receded to reveal pristine sand and a wider beach. But Samuels worries about the Great Lakes as a source of fresh water and as part of the Midwest’s ecosystem. “I’m more concerned on that level,” she says, adding that she’s been looking into joining the Great Lakes Commission.
One resident in Lakeside, Mich., who has owned lakefront property for more than 50 years says the water levels are only one of many factors affecting the beaches. Currents are another. “To be honest, it’s more of a concern when the water’s higher,” she says.
When his kids were growing up in the 1970s, Louis Price remembers regaling them with stories of water levels so low during summers in New Buffalo, Mich., during his own youth, that “your feet would burn” running down to the lake. Now those big beaches are back, and from a homeowner’s standpoint, Price has nothing to complain about; he’s a realtor too, and that business has also been helped by the bigger beaches. His experience tells him that the sea walls built during the high-water era will be necessary again. –D.M.
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