WAR BY THE SHORE

SODUS — Lake Ontario is about 50 feet down a cliff from Howard and Cory Potter’s backyard. But if the water rises just a few inches, they say, their yard gradually might be swept away.

The Potters have seen the stormy lake eat away more than 6 feet of their property since 1975 as it undermines the bluff. But with the governments of the United States and Canada looking to update water level regulations, the Potters worry that the damage of the past will pale in comparison to what’s coming.

Officials might let the water rise too high, the Potters fear — and keep it that way for years.

“I shouldn’t be punished because I choose to live on the lake,” Mr. Potter said in an interview at his home this past summer.

Sodus, on the south shore of the lake between Oswego and Rochester, is the counterpoint of Northern New York in a persistent debate about how the government should control the flow of water from Lake Ontario to the St. Lawrence River and ultimately the Atlantic Ocean.

At stake are tens of millions of dollars worth of homes, restaurants and marinas that have been developed on Lake Ontario since the last regulation plan was written in the late 1950s, as well as invaluable wetlands and other natural environments on the St. Lawrence River that protect shoreline property and are home to federally protected wildlife.

Power production on the St. Lawrence depends on the predictable flow of the river, and commercial shipping on the St. Lawrence Seaway relies on water deep enough to accommodate ocean vessels.

Generally, people along the south shore of Lake Ontario want the water to remain at a stable 247 feet above sea level, while St. Lawrence River residents are increasingly calling for more seasonal variation to mimic what nature would provide if not for the Moses-Saunders Power Dam in Massena — the neck of the bottle that determines how much water heads out of the Great Lakes. Variable water levels are essential for wetlands and the life they support.

The debate came to a head earlier this year when the U.S.-Canadian International Joint Commission discarded the recommendations of a $20 million binational study of water level regulations and proposed a plan that would leave the current plan largely in place — only to retreat after an outcry from St. Lawrence River environmentalists, New York officials and the state’s congressional delegation.

The commission is awaiting a report from a new study group before making recommendations, possibly in mid-2009.

The IJC study spelled out the impact of water levels on New York and Ontario.

The governments of the United States and Canada estimate that 25,000 properties line the shores of Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River upstream of the Moses-Saunders Power Dam and that 2,700 have no shoreline protection. The study group estimated that the unprotected buildings are worth about $300 million.

On Lake Ontario, about 2,400 developed properties are no more than two meters above the lake’s current level and are at risk of flooding in heavy storms, the IJC found. Buildings and contents on those properties were estimated to be worth $500 million.

Jefferson and St. Lawrence counties have 600 shoreline properties at risk of flooding, worth about $75 million in property and contents, the report found. Returning the lake and river to conditions that existed before the dam was built would cause more than $30 million annually in coastal damage, by some estimates.

And protecting the shoreline is more expensive in Jefferson County — $759 per foot — than in any other U.S. or Canadian locations noted in the study. Shoreline protection in Wayne and Monroe counties was estimated at $589 per foot, cheaper than in most places.

Overly stable water levels take their own toll. The rise and fall of the water determines the health of Northern New York’s sport fishing industry, scientists say, as northern pike and other popular species thrive or suffer based on food that grows in wetlands dependent on cycles of high and low water.

“What we’re talking about is the health of one of the world’s biggest freshwater systems,” said John M. Farrell, a wildlife biologist at the State University of New York’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry who studies the effect of water levels on Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence. “This isn’t just about a couple of muskrats.”

At the center of the debate is the IJC, a binational agency that sets water polices along the U.S.-Canadian border, and its International St. Lawrence River Board of Control, which determines water flows at the Moses-Saunders dam.

The commission and the Board of Control have long been accused of ignoring Northern New York and favoring the more heavily developed area on the south shore of the lake.

Critics say the Bush administration, which appoints members of the IJC, heavily favors property rights over the environment. And the north country’s sole representative on the Board of Control, James T. Bernier, has said it’s not his responsibility to stand up for Northern New York interests.

Regulators are trying to fight nature, too, as water flows from the rest of the Great Lakes to Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence at rates that vary depending on the weather and the season. Climate change adds another wrinkle; experts predict the system could become drier, but they don’t know for sure.

The IJC’s structure doesn’t always help. The commission operates by consensus, an elusive goal that discourages bold shifts in policy and slows reaction to changing conditions on the lake.

So when officials in Quebec suddenly announced in summer that they opposed any change in the regulations without more consultation, the IJC’s hands were tied; for that and other reasons, the commission put any decision on hold until a study group could be formed to reach a solution acceptable to Quebec, Ontario and New York.

The yet-to-be formed study group, in turn, faces skepticism because it will consist entirely of government officials and will operate more secretively than the IJC, which has a mixed record of openness.

Rep. John M. McHugh, R-Pierrepont Manor, has tussled repeatedly with the IJC, complaining that it operates secretively and to the disadvantage of St. Lawrence River interests. The commission’s deliberations and decision on water level regulations last summer was one example.

“We were operating under rumor and innuendo,” Mr. McHugh said recently. “There just seems to be an attempt to shelter themselves from that openness.”

The Potters see the IJC tilting toward Northern New York’s environmental interests at the expense of the south shore, despite what they view as the federal government’s promise 50 years ago to use the Moses-Saunders dam to protect the Lake Ontario shoreline from flooding and erosion.

Even the south shore’s own representatives in Congress have bought into the environmental argument, the Potters said. Reps. James T. Walsh, R-Syracuse, and Louise M. Slaughter, D-Fairport, sided with those who want more natural flows on the St. Lawrence, disappointing the Potters and others who believe protection of property should come first.

Those lawmakers' support follows years of persuasion by environmental groups such as Save the River, in Clayton, which has worked for years to persuade member of Congress that environmental concerns need greater consideration along the lakes and the St. Lawrence.

Save the River has also joined with other groups to enlist more support in the Rochester area, with some success. It has focused, also, on New York's Democratic U.S. senators, Hillary Rodham Clinton, – who took a St. Lawrence boat ride with Save the River officials early in her first term – and Charles E. Schumer, who, after taking minimal interest in recent years, joined the group's call for a more open process in the water level deliberations in 2008.

Save the River's executive director, Jennifer Caddick, contends the IJC still puts the environment second even after learning more about the damage caused by five decades of regulation.

“Since the IJC's own Lake Ontario-St. Lawrence Study has now quantified the enormous losses to the environment over the last 50 years, it is time that the environment is indemnified for these losses,” she said in public comments submitted to the commission last summer.

The Potters see the environmental talk as something of a fad that has caught on politically.

“Right now it’s cool to be green,” Mrs. Potter said. “But when you really look at it, they have no facts to back up their claims.”

Water levels on Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence are neither up to nature nor to human beings — at least not entirely.

Rainfall and the melting of snow in spring throughout the Great Lakes affect how much water comes into Lake Ontario, both from its own watershed and from lakes Erie, Huron, Michigan and Superior. But the extent of any flooding or drying of the shoreline is largely up to the people who decide how much water to let out through the Moses-Saunders Power Dam at Massena: the IJC’s International St. Lawrence River Board of Control.

The board’s guide is a regulation called 1958-D, named for the year it was recommended by the board. It took effect in 1960 and remains in effect despite occasional adjustments.

Before 1960, the St. Lawrence essentially ran as fast or high as nature decided — and the Lake Ontario shoreline flooded from time to time.

Sodus flooded deeply in 1908, 1943, 1947 and 1952. But in 1934, the water sank so low that people could stand on dry land in the harbor, where their heads normally would have been under water.

The IJC reported that the maximum and minimum levels of Lake Ontario, measured monthly, differed by as much as 6 feet. The regulations that took effect in the late 1950s would limit the range to 4 feet — a standard that south shore residents insist be maintained.

The Potters keep copies of photographs from the period before the dam was built, showing homeowners’ yards and driveways under water when the lake reached 248 feet above sea level, or about one foot higher than it is now.

One of their favorite clips is from the Sodus Bay Historical Society’s newsletter, which chronicled the highs and lows of the lake over the years.

In 1943, the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle described flooding that inundated a village park: “Residents discovered schools of carp and bullheads swimming where once the horsehide rolled. They speared fish over home plate, caught them with bare hands at shortstop and hooked them on worms out in center field.”

The governments of Canada and the United States promised that the construction of the St. Lawrence Power Project would finally bring water levels under control, as well as provide low-cost electricity and aid commercial navigation on the St. Lawrence Seaway.

In Canada, officials promised that low-lying areas in Montreal would be spared frequent flooding. The agreement capped some 50 years of wishful thinking, negotiations and political wrangling between the two countries.

“When the Seaway was sold to us, one of the selling points was to guarantee us a stable water level on Lake Ontario,” said John Love, a marina owner in Sodus who has watched water rise over his docks from time to time, even with the regulations in place.

There was little discussion of the environment.

The project was built in three parts. Water levels are controlled mostly at the Moses-Saunders dam near Massena, half of which lies in Canada and half in the United States. In addition, the Long Sault Dam in Canada functions as a spillway when the flow exceeds Moses-Saunders’s capacity.

The Iroquois Dam, also in Canada, helps control the level of Lake St. Lawrence, just west of the dam, and create a more stable ice cover in winter, which aids power production. The Board of Control sets the flow every week based on water flows into Lake Ontario, the time of year, St. Lawrence River levels and navigation concerns, among other factors.

The board can deviate from the plan temporarily in unusual circumstances, such as when water levels are historically high or low. When the water is too high, the interests of shoreline property owners are to be paramount; when the water is too low, “all possible relief” is to go to navigation and power interests, according to the regulations.

In keeping with the deal that created the system, environmental interests are hardly mentioned.

The power project worked. Water levels are more stable than before it was built. Marinas have flourished. Summer homes have multiplied, and property values have soared on the shores. But to Northern New Yorkers like Heather White, on Wellesley Island, comfort comes at a cost.

On a summer afternoon, Ms. White walked down the yard behind her cottage to a wet area she calls a frog patch — a little piece of the South Bay of the St. Lawrence that is home to cattails, some rocks and, as the name suggests, a frog here and there.

It’s shaded by a big black willow tree, making the patch a retreat within the retreat that is Thousand Island Park. Her family has visited or lived in their Victorian cottage for generations, enjoying from their screened-in porch the view of neighboring islands and passing boats.

But the frog patch Ms. White knew a generation ago is disappearing. She used to catch frogs by the dozen as a child, but now days go by without a frog in sight. Even the fish, the main diet of osprey and other shore birds, seem to be in decline, she said.

“Just in one lifetime, I’ve seen lots of changes in aquatic life,” Ms. White said. “You’d barely put your hook in and fish would come out.”

Ms. White is not imagining the changes along the river, scientists say. The IJC’s own environmental study, conducted in preparation for the change in water level regulations, found that half of two critical types of wetlands have disappeared in Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence since the 1950s.

Northern New York may be affected more than other regions by the loss of wetlands, and it may have more at stake as well; Eastern Lake Ontario and the Thousand Islands are home to more than 80 percent of the 64,250 acres of coastal wetlands in the entire lake and river, the study group reported.

Experts found 50 percent reductions in meadow-marsh and emergent-floating vegetation wetlands around Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence. They found an increase in cattail wetlands, but many of these consist of an invasive form that crowds out the species used by wildlife.

Meadow-marsh wetlands contain vegetation that requires occasional flooding to keep trees from expanding in, but occasional drying out is also necessary to prevent other types of competition. Because it lies at the border of high-water and low-water areas, meadow marsh is home to a great variety of life along Lake Ontario, including a plant called awned sedge that is an endangered species in New York.

Wetlands do more than harbor wildlife. While breakwalls shield property along Sodus Bay, wetlands protect St. Lawrence River property. Marshy areas act like sponges, soaking up great amounts of water that otherwise would tear away at the shoreline, scientists say.

Fifty years ago, the team that designed the power project included just one zoologist. More than 30 people were on the IJC’s environmental working group to study the project’s environmental effect since then.

One of the members was Mr. Farrell, the SUNY wildlife biologist, who has focused lately on the effects of water regulation on the St. Lawrence. His challenge was to break a wetland into two pieces — one that mimics what conditions would be like if water levels were not controlled by the dam, and the other based on the dam’s influence.

To do that, he went to French Creek, a cattail-covered area in Clayton, a mile or so from the river.

The wetland is split by a straight dirt road that provides a perfect division for Mr. Farrell’s experiment; water flows from one side to the other under a small bridge, where he used culverts and a modified fish ladder to capture runoff that otherwise would make its way to the river. That way, he said, the water level on one side of the road is higher in winter and free of the effects of the IJC’s water regulations.

Mr. Farrell stood in the middle of the road one afternoon. To his left, the regulated section was choked with acres and acres of cattails — so many that the water was hard to see. To his right, the cattails were breaking down enough to clear paths in the water, a good habitat for muskrats, waterfowl and other animals.

“In spring, you’ll hear this cacophony of life on this side,” Mr. Farrell said. “And on this side,” he said, motioning back to the regulated section, “nothing.”

The Potters may have a bird’s-eye view of Lake Ontario from atop their cliff, but their friend John Love sees it right up close. At Mr. Love’s marina in Sodus, the water already looks ready to wash over the docks.

He has seen that happen. In 1973, the water rose to 248.5 feet.

“That effectively closed down the village,” Mr. Love said. “The whole downtown was wet. It put us out of business for the year.”

Business owners in Sodus say their livelihoods rises and fall with the level of Lake Ontario. And while that is true throughout the lake and the St. Lawrence — marinas in the north country were left high and dry by low water a few years ago — it seems especially the case in Sodus, with its low-lying business district and history of flooding.

Recreational boating was a pastime in the 1940s and 1950s. Today it is one of the biggest businesses along the lake and river and adds another dimension to the water levels debate.

Researchers at Cornell University and New York State Sea Grant found that boaters on Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence spent an estimated $178 million in the New York counties bordering those waters in 2002. In 2003, per-boat expenditures reached $2,133 in eastern Lake Ontario even as the economy softened.

The number of boat registrations in counties along the lake and river skyrocketed from 19,022 in 1976 to more than 95,000 in 1997, before leveling off at 93,419 in 2005, reported the state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation.

Boats are getting bigger, too. A 28-foot boat would have been rare in the mid-1950s but is more common now, and it requires fairly deep water. The Potters said they believe the economics of big pleasure boats on the St. Lawrence, as much as environmental concerns, may be driving the water levels outcry in Northern New York.

The economics of big houses, as well as marinas, are at play along Lake Ontario.

In 1954, Sodus was just a backwater, Mr. Love said. Property owners did not invest much, he said, because they knew the lake would rise again before long.

That is no longer the case. In just the past decade, the IJC study group found, the average size of homes along the south shore of Lake Ontario has doubled, as has their assessed value for property taxes. Development increased 6 percent along the Lake Ontario shore between 1990 and 2000.

And the south shore of Lake Ontario may be more sensitive to property concerns. The study found that while 60 percent of the shoreline on the lake and river up to Massena is residential, the rate is closer to 90 percent for Monroe County.

It may be no surprise, then, that a former U.S. section chairman of the IJC, Dennis Schornack, said property rights reigned supreme as the commission turned away from a regulation plan called B+, which promised a greater range of water levels throughout the year.

“I have heard from more than one person that the commissioners on the U.S. are being intimidated by the Bush administration, which favors private property rights over environmental protection, into doing anything but approving plan B+,” Mr. Schornack said last summer.

Mr. Schornack said the administration’s leanings toward property rights became clear when President George W. Bush ousted him from the U.S.-Canadian International Boundary Commission in 2007, after Mr. Schornack threatened to tear down a cement wall built by a couple who lived along the border; they had built the wall within a 10-foot buffer zone maintained by the IBC.

The current U.S. chairwoman of the IJC, Irene B. Brooks, responded that Mr. Schornack played a role in the water levels review, as well, before his departure. If the IJC had recommended plan B+, she said in an interview, “we’d have had just as many on the other side come out.”

The IJC may look for ways to compensate property owners for damage from high water, one of the concerns that stopped the IJC from recommending wider fluctuations. But those concerns are overdone, Ms. Caddick said. Save the River told the IJC that property owners only need such compensation if water levels rise above natural levels, and even the plan with the widest variations would not do that.

Unable to reach a solution on its own, the IJC announced in September that it would refer the issue to a new task force composed of government officials from the United States and Canada, including New York, Ontario and Quebec.

Although the task force will not have much new information to work with — the IJC’s study group produced hundreds of pages of data and evaluations — it should give the IJC a number of choices and offer advice on compensating property owners for the cost of bigger breakwalls and other shore protection, Mrs. Brooks said.

That may be an indication that the commission envisions a plan more to St. Lawrence River interests’ liking.

“There has to be some mitigation. There has to be some kind of coastal restoration plan,” Mrs. Brooks said. And the commission has to do that within the confines of the 1908 Boundary Waters Treaty that created the IJC, she said, avoiding any changes that provide too much benefit to some interests while sacrificing others.

But the new task force faced criticism before its members were even named.

“What they’re trying to do is get the government units together,” said Frank Sciremammano Jr., a member of the International St. Lawrence River Board of Control who also served on the water levels study group. “Now it looks like a secret government working group. I think they’re going backward.”

Mr. Sciremammano said the earlier study group was careful not to work in secret, mindful of the interests at stake and the need to build public trust on a complex issue. Public hearings in Alexandria Bay, Rochester and other locations drew hundreds of people, and hundreds of public comments were submitted on the IJC’s Web site.

Even with plenty of public participation, Mr. Sciremammano said, the water levels issue defies a solution that satisfies everyone.

Mr. Sciremammano has been on the Control Board since 1995, and south shore property owners describe him as an ally. He resists the label, saying residents of both regions fail to accept certain realities — the south shore must live with erosion, he said, and St. Lawrence residents fail to recognize the need for a four-foot limit on Lake Ontario water levels to prevent serious destruction.

Even critics of the IJC, or of its current members, say the biggest culprit in the water levels fight eludes control: nature itself.

Mr. Schornack, the former IJC commissioner, compares the system to a bathtub with a pinhole in the bottom and a faucet on top: the amount of water coming in sometimes outpaces the amount leaving, even though humans control the latter. That’s the main reason the IJC and its Board of Control cannot respond quickly enough to changing water levels on the lake, Mr. Schornack said.

Lake Ontario’s sheer size means that increasing the outflow at Moses-Saunders by 12 percent of its average takes a full week to lower Lake Ontario by one inch. But that same increase raises the water by 11 inches at Montreal.

Climate change also is an important, if hard to predict, piece of the puzzle, said Thomas L. Baldini, a U.S. chairman of the IJC during the Bill Clinton presidency. When the Great Lakes do not freeze over, as is becoming more common, more water is lost to evaporation, he said. Officials reduced flows out of Lake Superior this year to conserve water, he said, sacrificing some hydropower production.

At his marina, John Love sees people, not the planet, as the final authority.

“We’re not asking you to control Mother Nature, we’re just asking you do to the job that was intended,” Mr. Love said, standing on the docks. “You can’t just let the lake fluctuate naturally and think everything’s going to be rosy, because it’s not.”