Good afternoon, honourable members of the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development. Thank you for taking the time today to look into the issues facing the Great Lakes. I know you've had previous speakers here, so we appreciate that.
By way of background, I will tell you that I am a full-time volunteer and have been working on Great Lakes water quality, water quantity, and wetlands for over 25 years. My background is in public health, so that when I first volunteered to sample recreational waters in Georgian Bay for bacteria such as E. coli and fecal streptococci, I carried out that work long before the tragedy of Walkerton happened. I knew then what high levels of these bacteria in the water meant, especially for young children learning to swim. The lesson I learned from that experience is that Environment Canada needs to strengthen the bacteria standards for safe recreational use of fresh water.
Today I wish to follow on the comments made last week by Dr. Pat Chow-Fraser of McMaster University. We have been working with Dr. Chow-Fraser for over 10 years now. Her work with us to identify and assess the wetlands on the east and north shores of Georgian Bay is groundbreaking, as no government agency had previously carried out that work.
At binational meetings around the Great Lakes that I attended, I would often see mapping not showing the extensive wetlands on Georgian Bay. The Great Lakes community, including government agencies, now knows that the most extensive, highest quality, most diverse but also sensitive wetlands in all of the Great Lakes are found in Georgian Bay.
As you know, wetlands provide important fish and wildlife habitat, but also play an important role in removing nutrients and chemicals found in the water. As the previous speaker noted, 70% of wetland habitat has been lost from Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, so there is an elevated need to protect what good wetland habitat we have left in the Great Lakes.
On Georgian Bay, after 14 years of sustained low water levels, Dr. Chow-Fraser has found we have lost an average of 24% of wetland fish habitat. There is a close link to degradation of water quality in a now shallow base that, because of the sustained low water levels, has lost the necessary exchange of water with open Georgian Bay water.
Over the past three summers, in the south shores of the bay, including Wasaga Beach Provincial Park, there have been significant die-offs, with dead waterfowl and fish washing up on the beaches. The cause is not certain but appears to be related to the low water levels, concentrating nutrients in shallow or warmer waters, resulting in algal blooms allowing for the growth of bacteria.
For some reason, the endangered, like sturgeon, have been targeted with dead three- to five-foot fish washing up on the shores. These die-offs would hit front-page news if this was happening on Lake Ontario shorelines, but because we are removed from easy reporting distance, it simply does not get covered.
This summer we will be setting up a citizen's botulism watch program and we'll have folks collect freshly dead birds and fish. We will freeze them and then send them to a lab at the new university in Oshawa that has a secure lab to test for botulism, so we can finally determine the cause of this.
Today, I do not have time to go into all of the Great Lakes issues there are, so I will focus on Asian carp and water levels.
I am sure you are all aware of the significant threat posed by the very large invasive carp species that are at the doorstep to the Great Lakes at Chicago. The silver carp feed by filtering out the tiny organisms that are at the bottom of the food chain for our native fish thereby disrupting the food chain. They can eat up to the equivalent of their weight in food daily, and grow up to over 100 pounds and four to five feet in length.
They spawn three times a year and adults can lay up to a million eggs each time. We have nothing like that right now in the Great Lakes. Other invasive carp species feed on wetland plants and tear the plants apart in doing so. These very invasive fish have the potential to decimate the $8 billion plus recreational Great Lakes fishery.
Early in January of this year, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released its report on options to prevent these fish from getting into the Great Lakes. The public comment period ended yesterday, but let me highlight two of our concerns.
First, the report made no mention of the risk these fish pose to Canadian waters. Our Department of Fisheries and Oceans completed an excellent risk assessment in 2005 that showed all four species now present in the Mississippi River posed a high risk to infiltrate into Canadian waters. The silver carp is the most aggressive. DFO determined that it would take over our lakes and rivers all the way up to James Bay and west to Alberta. But in 2009 a joint risk assessment was carried out by DFO with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. That risk assessment showed that once in Lake Michigan, the silver carp would infiltrate all of Lake Huron, Georgian Bay, and Lake Erie within five years.
This is an unacceptable risk and Canada needs to let American authorities know more clearly that under the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement the U.S. has obligations to prevent these fish from getting into the Great Lakes. The cost of prevention is much less than the millions we spend annually just to keep the numbers of one invasive species down, the sea lamprey. Scientists now know we will never be able to eradicate just this one invasive.
Second, the army corps listed eight options for preventing Asian carp from getting into Lake Michigan. The fish are now 60 miles away from entering the Great Lakes at Chicago. The army corps have listed the status quo, the electric barriers, as an option. Last summer the corps revealed that video footage taken at the electric barriers showed schools of four-inch fish swimming right through the barriers. In other words, the barriers should not be listed as an option. The only responsible option is total separation of connections between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River.
Let me now turn back to water levels. We have an opportunity here to correct a 50-year-old failure to act. In the 1950s and early 1960s the last formal deepening dredging took place in the navigation channels in the Great Lakes. A Canada-U.S. agreement was signed at that time that said that a condition of the dredging to deepen the channels to 27 feet was that the U.S. army corps would install compensation measures in the upper St. Clair River.
St. Clair River connects Lake Huron down through Lake St. Clair and the Detroit River to Lake Erie. But Environment Canada could not agree with the U.S. army corps on how many submerged sills or speed bumps should be placed on the riverbed. The project was being funded entirely by the Americans, but after 10 years the U.S. Congress withdrew the funding but not the authorization. Our governments agreed that there was a permanent lowering of Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, and Georgian Bay as a result of the deepened channel, but they thought it was a one-time drop and no further lowering would take place.
However, when water levels plummeted four feet beginning in 1999, we began working with a team of engineers as we suspected something had happened in the St. Clair River that contributed to the sudden drop that went beyond the decline related to decreased precipitation. Now 15 years later, erosion in the upper St. Clair River has been confirmed by the International Joint Commission as a contributing factor to the low water levels. The IJC has now advised our governments—almost a year ago—that Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, and Georgian Bay levels be restored via flexible measures in the St. Clair River.
After over 100 years of human alterations, including dredging, Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, and Georgian Bay have been lowered by 50 centimetres, or 20 inches. This has not happened to any of the other Great Lakes. They have control boards and the ability to maintain their lake levels. This is an uncompensated loss. As a result, today there is a significant imbalance of water levels in the Great Lakes. Lake Superior, Lake Erie, and Lake Ontario are all at or above their long-term average; but Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, and Georgian Bay are 34 centimetres, or 13 inches below their long-term average.
The U.S. government has now gone ahead and provided some funding to the U.S. army corps to begin their general re-evaluation report of the St. Clair River compensation design. In Canada, I have been assured that three senior cabinet ministers plus several MPs are seeking a coordinated Government of Canada response. We await that response. Canada, unfortunately, does not have any government agency like the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that is capable of undertaking a project like this. We need to be at the table and announcing support for the IJC's advice and some funding so that we can then become a partner to resolving this.
This past winter's cold and snow across the Great Lakes has brought some temporary raising of all water levels, but the imbalance remains. In addition, virtually all of the experts are advising us that this truly is just a blip in the weather, not a change in the climate. The Great Lakes water is only 1% renewable; 99% is a glacial-age deposit. The time to act is now to restore the balance of water levels in the Great Lakes by compensating for the human-induced loss of water from Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, and Georgian Bay down the deepened St. Clair River.
I have some graphs to illustrate my point, and I think you should have a copy of this graph showing the increased conveyance over the past 100 years through the St. Clair River. This is basically the capacity of the channel.