Lake Ontario LEVELER 112

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LEVELER

E-Newsletter from the Lake Ontario Riparian Alliance

Issue 112 June 19, 2019

Grassroots Public Advocacy for the Protection, Restoration and Conservation of Lake Ontario Beaches and Riparian Property

 

 

 

In this issue:

 

• How we got Plan 2014

Dr Frank Sciremammano's 10, Oct, 2107 testimony before the New York State Senate.

 

From Brighton Resident, John Martinello:

I just received the following excerpt (bolded, italicized, in quotes) of Dr Frank Sciremammano's 10 Oct 2107 testimony before the New York State Senate. At the time that he presented his testimony, Dr Sciremammano was a retired Professor of Engineering at Rochester Institute of Technology & had been a member of the International Lake Ontario St Lawrence River Board (ILOSLRB) for 22 yrs. The ILOSLRB is the arm of the International Joint Commission that regulates Lake Ontario water levels. Dr Sciremammano's testimony of 2017 may - partly - explain why we are currently experiencing a second round of flooding in the less than 2 1/2 yrs since the implementation Plan 2014. I encourage anybody who is concerned with the devastating flooding of Lake Ontario & the impacts of Plan 2014 to take the time to read Dr Sciremammano's testimony.

"Let me start by stating very clearly, that Plan 2014 did not cause the flooding experienced this year on Lake Ontario. However, it's also just as clear that Plan 2014 did not protect against extreme water levels on the lake, as was stated by the IJC, while promoting Plan 2014. Further, I would argue that Plan 2014 is not capable of protecting against extreme levels on Lake Ontario, because the entire plan is purposely biased to protecting the downstream areas of the St. Lawrence River at the expense of the shoreline communities of Lake Ontario, and especially those along the south shore of the lake in Western New York.

Further, Plan 2014 does tie the hands of the board in dealing with taking preventive measures and dealing with lake levels, until it's too late to avoid them. I want to be very clear on that. As opposed to Plan '58D, the board is prohibited from taking -- making deviations that will benefit the lake, although we're allowed to take deviations that will benefit others. The only time we're allowed to do it is after we hit the trigger levels, and at that point, I would argue it's much too late.

To illustrate how this bias was created in Plan 2014, I want to give you a short summary of how Plan 2014 came about. In 1999, the IJC appointed a study board, of which I was a member, and Dr. Dan Barletta who's in the audience, to examine the whole issue of outflow control on the St. Lawrence. The study acted in a transparent, open, and public way to develop guidelines, and to come up with recommendations to the IJC, which were contained in a report delivered in March of 2006.

The study recommended consideration of three plans:

Plan A+, the economic plan, maximized economic benefits.

Plan B+, the environmental plan, maximized the environmental benefits.

Plan D+, the balanced plan, which as the name implies, balanced these things.

Plan 2014, and I want to be very clear about this, Plan 2014 is not one of the recommended plans from the IJC study, and, in fact, it violates three of the principal guidelines of that study. Those guidelines stated that, if damages result from any plan, they should not fall disproportionately on any one geographic area or interest group.

Well, almost all the damages from Plan 2014 fall to the Lake Ontario shoreline, with a smaller damage to boating in the Thousand Islands area. But it's, basically, all to Lake Ontario and the Thousand Islands. All other geographic areas and interests are held harmless or benefit.

The guidelines also state, that if damages are anticipated, mitigation and compensation measures should be in place prior to implementation.

Plan 2014 has none.

Finally, the guidelines state, that any plan should be developed in an open process with wide public participation. Plan 2014 was developed in secret by a group that only consulted with environmental advocates. So how did this all happen?

Well, after the study was completed, the IJC announced the proposed new order and plan that consisted of a revised Plan D+ from the study. That was the balanced plan. They renamed it Plan 2007, and then 2008, and they stated at that time, quote, Plan 2008 is an improvement with respect to the environmental and overall economic benefits, and takes a more balanced approach to all interests. They further stated that: The environment benefits of Plan B+, the environmental plan, are desirable, but implementation of Plan B+ is not possible, quote, without unduly reducing the benefits and protections currently accorded to other interests, so that the environmental plan would cause too much damage.

After holding public hearings, and facing demands from environmental groups and the New York State DEC -- I see the assistant, or, whatever, commissioner, has left. -- but they demanded that the environment plan would be the only thing acceptable to them. So the IJC withdrew its proposal, and formed a new secret working group of representatives only. They worked in secret. Nobody knew who was on the committee. Nobody knew when they met. No minutes. No freedom of information. After a while they came out with a new version of Plan B+, which they recommended, which was termed "Bv7" for Plan B, Version 7. After some further secret negotiations, the working group came up with Plan 2014, which is just Plan Bv7, but with a slight modification to add trigger levels.

When I examined Plan Bv7 and Plan 2014, I found that the environmental benefits were almost the same as the original Plan B+. And I'll direct you to the graphs I have -- I would have put them up here. I wasn't sure you had a projector available -- on the back of my -- the last page of my testimony. I have the environmental benefits of the plans: B+ from the study, Bv7, and 2014 from the secret negotiations. They're almost identical, the environmental benefits. However, if you look at the damages to the coastal areas, both downstream on Lake Ontario -- or, upstream on Lake Ontario, and downstream on the lower river, Plan B+, because of the guidelines from the study, distributed the damages between the two, and they were almost equal.

However, Bv7 and Plan 2014, all the damages are to Lake Ontario and the downstream areas have none. So why did that happen?

I believe this was the result of the fact that the Province of Quebec stood up for its -- by commitments -- stood by its commitment that its citizens in downstream areas of the St. Lawrence should receive no less protection under any new plan than they did under the previous plan of operation, 1958D. As a result, all the damages were shifted to the lake. And, apparently, the New York State government representatives, and in particular, the New York State DEC, that were on the secret working group were fine with this shift. The shift is clearly illustrated in the graphs that I have attached.

The environmental benefits again remain the same, yet the damages to Lake Ontario were increased dramatically, and those to the lower St. Lawrence River were eliminated. I'll give you just one example in which the way Plan 2014 achieved this shift. The F limit that Mr. Durrett talked about, that we worked under during April and May, seeks to balance flooding between downstream and upstream. True. However, the downstream level has a not-to-exceed maximum. We can't go over that. Lake Ontario has no maximum. So this spring, while we held their levels steady, by either maintaining low flows or reducing flows dramatically, Lake Ontario jumped 28 centimeters, almost a foot. And this was done to hold the downstream level to its maximum; thus, downstream is protected while Lake Ontario is not. There are other ways, both subtle and not-so subtle, in Plan 2014, that show its imbalance, with a bias against protection for the shoreline communities of the lake.”

2. The complete transcript of Dr Sciremammano's 10 Oct 2017 testimony is at pages 154 -178 of

https://www.nysenate.gov/…/public-hearing-10-10-17-nys-sena…

3. There is nothing confidential in this e-mail. Please ensure its widest distribution.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Lake Ontario United mobile app

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Sent from my iPhone using Lake Ontario United mobile app

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[Gill-T]

What were the names of the DEC representatives working on this?