News from around the lake..
http://www.niagara-gazette.com/news...cle_ed4a0fb3-5c3c-5529-8392-cc5016eff64c.html
Damage persists along Lake Ontario
Water levels are down from 2017, but still high enough to erode property
Throughout last winter and fall, landowners along Lake Ontario worried about a return of last year’s devastating spring flooding.
So far that hasn’t happened — in recent months, the lake mostly has remained about 2 feet below last year’s record levels — yet shoreline residents are seeing much of the same damage to their shorelines.
Low-lying piers are underwater. Feet of coast has been washed away. Trees have collapsed into the water, their base destabilized from high water and erosion.
One Orleans County resident, Sharon Lochman, had boulders laid down to reinforce her shoreline — only to lose several stones during a storm earlier this year. Having already used the relief funding approved last summer by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, she and others are left with few options to protect their land.
“I just have to ride it out. I can’t afford it out of my own pocket,” Lochman said.
For most of this year, the lake’s water level has fluctuated between 1 foot and 5 inches above its long-term average. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reported Friday the water level was 5 inches above its long-term average.
That may not seem high compared to last spring, when the water peaked at nearly 3 feet above average. But shoreline residents say it’s still enough to cause significant damage, and worry that these levels could be the new norm.
“If this water is going to stay this high, we need something more,” Lochman said.
Residents say the high water is particularly damaging this year because shoreline sediment was significantly loosened by the flooding and intense wave action that characterized 2017 along the lake.
Legislator David Godfrey said that, despite this year’s lower levels, many of his friends and neighbors along the lake have seen trees collapse into the lake. And the loss of those trees and root networks, he said, leaves many shoreline areas even more susceptible to erosion.
“We’re continuing to get eroded because the level of the lake is eroding the bank, which has been weakened to the point where there’s nothing to hold the bank anymore,” said Godfrey, who lives on the lake in Burt. “There’s nothing to hold the lake bank when it gets saturated by the high water.”
Meanwhile, thousands of landowners have yet to repair their breakwalls and other shoreline infrastructure, leaving their coastlines open to pounding waves and destabilizing stormwater.
“People that haven’t had a contractor come in have the same issues that they had last year,” said Linda White, of Youngstown. “They’re still losing shoreline.”
Because the water level remained so high throughout most of last summer, many were unable to even access their shoreline infrastructure in time to finish repairs. Others found most area contractors were already inundated with requests for jobs, and ended up on long waiting lists. Some are still waiting.
“Some of us were able get some repairs in; most of us have not. ... There’s a lot of factors in this scenario, but the availability of contractors is definitely one of them,” said Frank Panczyszyn, of Kent.
“I think the contractors are probably maxed out because everybody needs a contractor right now,” White said.
The greatest barrier to repairing shorelines, however, is lack of funds.
It was nearly a year ago that Cuomo, against the backdrop of a flooded Wilson Harbor, signed a bill authorizing $45 million in Lake Ontario relief, evenly split three ways between landowners, business owners and municipalities. That amount proved far too little, especially for homeowners, and the state has responded by incrementally increasing the relief pot to a total of $95 million. The state also changed the law to allow funds to be moved from the underutilized municipal and business-owner pots to homeowners. But the relief money has only trickled in, and thousands of homeowners are still waiting.
“Most of us that did get some work done paid out of our own pockets. They’re waiting to get reimbursed,” Panczyszyn said.
Pathstone, a non-profit community development organization which processes relief fund application for Orleans County, is sending out funds as soon as they become available, said Raymond Christopher, the agency’s deputy for housing rehabilitation programs.
Their problem, Christopher said, is that the funds are only trickling in to their agency. It’s the same case at the New York State Affordable Housing Corporation, which provides funding to the non-profit agencies which process landowner relief applications in the lakeshore counties.
“As soon as they get the money, they get it to us and we get it to homeowners,” Christopher said. “No one wants to sit on money.”
Meanwhile, he expects many homeowners won’t get their awards even after the entirety of the relief funds are doled out. He said their applications have far outpaced the amount of relief funds that he expects Pathstone will receive.
“We’ve got more than enough people to take all the money we’ve got,” he said.
And there is no relief funding currently available for residents like Lochman, who spent their relief awards on breakwalls that have become compromised.
“There’s some break-walls that were put in late last year — people had gone ahead and tried to protect (their property) — that have been literally washed away since late last fall,” Godfrey said. “The work they had done is gone.”
Newfane Supervisor Tim Horanburg said the high water levels, when combined with occasional strong winds from the north, can even threaten properties with intact breakwalls.
“A lot of people spent a lot of money, but there’s still a lot of properties that are susceptible to damage,” Horanburg said.
Many residents and elected officials along the lake blame Plan 2014, and worry that the past year and a half portend a new norm for Lake Ontario’s water levels. The International Joint Commission, a bi-national treaty organization which manages boundary waters between the U.S. and Canada, recently released a report finding that record-high rain caused nearly the entirety of last year’s high water. The report placed none of the blame on Plan 2014, the water regulation plan implemented in January 2017.
But residents balk at that conclusion. Some, like Lochman and White, plan to continue grassroots efforts to end Plan 2014, saying it disregards damage to their lakeshore.
“Personal property owners right now are left high and dry, but it’s really low and wet,” Godfrey said.