International Study on Great Lakes Makes Stop in Grosse Pointe

On Tuesday night, the International Upper Great Lakes Study held a public meeting at the with about 20 people in attendance to discuss a plan that would address a variety of issues facing the Great Lakes. 

The study lasted nearly 5 years, costing $20 million, involving about 200 scientists and, when published, comprising more than 200 pages. It was commissioned by the International Joint Commission — a coalition group from the United States and Canada that address issues that face bodies of water that touch both the U.S. and Canada — but still has to be approved by the IJC and then recommended to the respective governments.

In addition to a meeting in Grosse Pointe, members of the study and IJC have held and will hold meetings in Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota as well as Ontario, Canada.

The local meeting that discussed international issues was even simulcast in Vancouver and Ottawa, where other members of the study and IJC joined in the discussion.

Jeff Kart, a communications adviser to the IJC, said the IJC stopped in Grosse Pointe because opinions can easily vary throughout the Great Lakes.

“The Great Lakes is a very large system and people throughout the system have very different concerns,” Kart said. “People in different geographic regions have different interests and we should try to have an approach that's balanced — that tries to balance all those interests out.”

Lana Pollack, the U.S. chair of the IJC attended the meeting and explained to the group assembled that the proposed plan would be a “tweaking” of the 1977 plan it would replace.

“When (the IJC) went through all of (the research), they didn't find that the current plan was grossly flawed,” she said. “They found that they could recommend a plan that they believe would work better in extremes.”

Dr. Jonathon Bulkley, a former professor at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, worked on the study and attended the Tuesday night meeting. He said a benefit of the plan has been the research collected, citing two weather stations specifically that now exist because of the study.

Bulkley added that addressing possible extremities in the lakes, such as water depth, is necessary.

“Extreme event analysis is really important,” he said. “The ways we've had to do it always depended on stationarity and stationarity is out the window.”

Stationarity — the idea that events tend to repeat themselves — used to be tenet in this field of research, Bulkley said, but climate change “changes the game.”

Dan Smale, a Grosse Pointe resident, attended because of an interest in boating and the shoreline.

Smale said it's important to him to “(maintain) the water levels because they have been so low for the past 15, 20 years.” 

He added that he has followed the IJC and previous plans better than a prior plan that wasn't implemented.

Comments on the study are still being welcomed by the IJC on their website until Aug. 31.