Home owners and associations want lake ontario lower

[GAMBLER]

This was sent to me by one of the home owners in Grand View Beach in Greece. They want Lake Ontario lowered. This may effect all of us that keep our boats in shallow harbors. Here is some of the info and emails I recieved.

Dear Elected Official,

We are writing to you in regards to your constituents who own property or businesses along the Lake Ontario shore, including its bays, ponds and embayments that are part of your legislative district. In the upcoming months, you will be hearing from them in regard to a new proposed regulation plan for the Lake Ontario-St. Lawrence River system.

The International Joint Commission (IJC) has proposed a radical plan that would replace the current regulation plan, 58D. The Commission’s stated purpose is to potentially provide more environmental benefits to the system.

This letter is intended to provide you with the true purpose of the proposed plan. This plan removes the current range of operation that private and public property owners and businesses have relied on for the last 50 years for the sake of untested environmental effects, using research proven faulty by peer review by the National Academy of Sciences.

Unelected and unaccountable officials in the New York State Dept. of Environmental Conservation and the NYS Environmental Facilities Corporation are the major proponents pushing for this change.

The Lake Ontario Riparian Alliance (LORA), whose members include property owners in your lakefront communities, has met with the IJC’s Lake Ontario Working Group, which has formulated this new plan. The above mentioned NYS agencies are members of this working group. What we have found is that this group is proposing a plan that has been in the public view a number of times and in a number of other variations over the last 5+ years.

This new plan, BV7, is a slight variation of a highly controversial plan put forth by the Lake Ontario-St. Lawrence River Study (LOSL) that ended in 2005. At that time, the IJC found that plan would cause so much damage to Lake Ontario shoreline property owners and recreational boaters that it could not be implemented. This new plan is much the same beast in another guise!

The new plan would remove all protections that exist in the current plan and would replace them with a plan that basically transfers wealth from the Lake Ontario waterfront property owners, recreational boaters, fishermen and businesses to billion-dollar hydropower (NYPA) and commercial navigation entities. The average amount per year of damages to the Lake Ontario shoreline and recreational boaters would be in the order of $2-3 million per year, while the power and navigation interests would see a benefit of approximately $6+ million per year on average. Interestingly, the hydropower and commercial navigation lobbies have not been asking for any additional benefit. They are happy with the current plan!

If you would like more information to help protect your constituents, please visit the LORA web site and read its newsletter, THE LEVELER.

http://www.loranet.org/enews/leveler1.htm

http://www.loranet.org/

[jimski2]

Sounds like a land grab to me. I wonder if their property tax assessments will go up with the increased size of their property?