The Great Lakes are disappearing because of evaporation, higher than usual seasonal temperatures, and because the US keeps diverting billions of tonnes a day to feed Chicago.

We Lake Ontarians are actually more affected by the need to keep Montreal afloat. Erie is far less affected than Ontario.

Let's hope my captcha is correct: "assistance increases".

Our cottage is on the Lake-side of Simcoe Island and we gauge water levels by a particular boulder out from the shore. In early April this year, the water was covering is completely and it only poked out in the trough of large waves. This has been the norm for Spring water levels since we bought the place six years ago.

Right now, 3/4 of the boulder is exposed. As is a large rock beside it that we've never seen uncovered. Our neighbours have a similar large boulder sitting in the sun that we never knew existed until this year. We're talking a vertical drop of about 45cm.

It's nice to have a bit of a beach area, but doubling it because of droppign water levels is alarming to say the least.

Hoo hoo, Renee! I guess all the H2O goes to the US and none to TO or Windsor or Kingston or....

Yeah, Canada's a big consumer too, but diversions from areas not in the watershed have increased about a million-fold in the past twenty years, and can increase more so now that new regulations are in place that make Canada not at all even remotely involved in the decision-making process to approve diversions - it used to be the IJC that did it. Now it's a council of state governors and some guy in a suit from Canada who sits there and agrees with them... I believe, when I looked into this last a few years ago, that the States, with a much bigger population, actually ask for more water more in diversions than Canada uses altogether. (And actually, Lake Erie is the only lake with less volume than Ontario, so it is affected, but it has more inflows, so it doesn't see the problem as much as we do.)

Yes: "The Great Lakes basin is home to 25 million people in the United States and 8.5 million in Canada." http://www.epa.gov/glnpo/factsheet.html

(But Al's right - Canada takes more from Ontario than the US does, which is the reverse of all the other lakes. About fifteen years ago the IJC released a report that concluded that diversions are such a small amount that they can't matter as much as environmental factors such as evaporation. Now they're not so sure).

Thanks for the Renee. I do not know that our local issue is so directly related to "the take" as the St.Lawrence Seaway's authority to lower the levels at the dams. If they did not lower them, the Port of Montreal would look like Elevator Bay in Kingston right now where the ducks are doing an impersonation of the Lord, walking upon the waters. I understand that Lake Ontario could have had the water a foot or two higher now but the Upper St. Lawerence would become difficult for navigation.

I'll bet it'd make the fish happy, though. Currently, some of them can't get from one side of the waterway to the other because of the swift current caused by the dredging, which was done for ease of navigation.

People, man, we just cause all sorts of problems.

Maybe a fishy highway crossing is in order temporarily? And a simultaneous raising the level of Ontario at the same time? We can call it Fish Freedom Day, And Also So The Ducks Have Something to Swim In Day. Hmm. I'll get my engineers on it.

Whoa, Renee...impressive look. I suppose it could be argued that there are simply more people over here, therefore of course! More water use. Lake Ontario, of course, has a very small US population compared to your side. We are generally favored here in upstate NY with a HUGE quantity of rain and snow and lakes and rivers all over, but the idea of that going down almost seems like a joke. But then again, it was in the 80s and 90s for many days in September into October, never seen it this hot and dry.

I lost two Saturdays this year apply epoxy to the keel and fairing. The water is _low_.

NPR mentions that Lake Superior is 2 feet lower than usual. Yow!