Climate change | Lower water levels on the Great Lakes may demand lighter loads on freight vessels
The biggest grain shipper on the Great Lakes wants water to be dammed up and pushed back into the upper lakes.
Kirk Jones, director of government and industry affairs with Canada Steamship Lines, said ships will eventually carry less grain if something isn’t done to keep water levels where they are on Lake Superior and Lake Huron because the bottom is too close.
“We really need to do something,” he said.
“We first have to convince the government that doing nothing is not an option.”
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Water levels on crucial parts of the upper Great Lakes shipping channel have fallen about 23 centimetres in the last decade, especially in the last four years, Jones said.
Vessels that haul freight from Thunder Bay to the St. Lawrence Seaway float close to the bottom, which means any drop in water levels will force shipping companies to reduce the amount of freight they’re carrying.
On average, ships must carry one tonne less if the bottom is one cm closer to the surface.
“Take 23 of them, times every ship, figure out your freight rate and that’s about a buck a tonne for every one of you wheat guys in the room,” Jones told the recent Fields on Wheels conference in Winnipeg.
It equals a nine percent efficiency loss for the fleet, which Jones said isn’t sustainable, especially if water levels keep dropping as climate change continues.
He said water levels are higher and back to normal levels this crop year, but that’s probably a “false positive” based on excessive flooding.
Just getting back to the old normal is likely the result of an extremely wet year in the watershed.
Jones said the International Joint Commission’s approach is to adapt to the dropping water levels in coming decades.
Jones thinks that doesn’t make sense because it will have a significant impact on the economy of a vast area of the United States and Canada.
Instead of accepting ever-lowering water levels, he said, the people, governments and industries that are affected should find alternatives to keeping the Great Lakes at historical water levels.
He supports the idea of damming water before it flows out of Lake Erie and backing it up all the way to Thunder Bay, which would keep the system fully viable.
“We don’t need pre-1972 monolithic structures,” said Jones, suggesting “flexible structures” could hold back water at certain times but still allow enough water through to keep downstream needs fully met.
Jones said the drop in water levels is mostly a product of climate change.
Almost all the lakes froze over in the winter a few decades ago, but that doesn’t happen now. Some haven’t frozen over for more than a decade.
As well, less water is flowing into the lakes. It means the date on which the full-efficiency shipping season begins with traditional water levels, from June onward after spring runoff, is “getting longer and longer to take and sometimes does not even happen.”
Jones said it is time for governments to begin to work on permanent actions to protect the viability of the Great Lakes system because the existing system and the industries involved are already doing everything they can to deal with lowering water levels.
“We have no more of those tools,” said Jones.
“We have to get to the root of the problem and have a tool that stops the water going over Niagara Falls.”
