eview of the R Lake Ontario–St. Lawrence River Studies Committee to Review the Lake Ontario-St. Lawrence River Studies Water Science and Technology Board Division on Earth and Life Studies in collaboration with The Royal Society of Canada THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS Washington, D.C. www.nap.edu THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS 500 Fifth Street, N.W. Washington, DC 20001 NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The members of the committee responsible for the report were chosen for their special competences and with regard for appropriate balance. Support for this project was provided by the Department of State under award number SAQMPD05C1133. 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Dr. Gilles Paquet is president of the Royal Society of Canada. v vi COMMITTEE TO REVIEW THE LAKE ONTARIO-ST. * LAWRENCE RIVER STUDIES JAMES L. WESCOAT, Chair, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign PATRICIA CHOW-FRASER, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada DESMOND N.D. HARTFORD, British Columbia Hydropower Authority, Burnaby, Canada JANET R. KEOUGH, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Duluth, Minnesota LYNN ALISON MAGUIRE, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina JOSEPH C. MAKAREWICZ, State University of New York at Brockport, New York DAENE C. MCKINNEY, University of Texas, Austin DAVID H. MOREAU, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill SLOBODAN P. SIMONOVIC, University of Western Ontario, London, Canada P. ANDY ZIELINSKI, Ontario Power Generation, Toronto, Canada National Research Council Staff LAUREN E. ALEXANDER, Study Director ELLEN A. DE GUZMAN, Research Associate *The activities of this committee were overseen and supported by the U.S. National Research Council’s Water Science and Technology Board (WSTB) in collaboration with the Royal Society of Canada (RSC). The WSTB members are listed in Appendix D. Dr. Jeremy N. McNeil, chair of the RSC committee on expert panels, served as liaison from the Royal Society. Biographical information on committee members is contained in Appendix E. vii vi Preface This report reviews selected works of the Lake Ontario-St. Lawrence River Study for the International Joint Commission (IJC). The IJC is a bi-national or- ganization created in 1909 to consider water and related issues along the U.S.- Canada boundary. In 1999, the IJC prepared a plan of study on the effects of water level and flow regulation on various stakeholder interests in the basin, and it estab- lished the Lake Ontario-St. Lawrence River Study Board to implement that plan. As in its own mandate, the IJC directed the Study Board and its committees to, “assure that all significant issues are adequately addressed,” serve in “their personal and professional capacities, and not as representatives of their countries, agencies, organizations, or other affiliations,” and “endeavour to conduct all of their work by consensus” (IJC, 2000, pp. 2-3). This charge extended to the IJC’s nearly century- long deliberations on water supply, navigation, and hydropower into the broader domains of environmental, coastal, recreational, and participatory dimensions of Great Lakes water regulation. The Study Board adopted a “shared vision” planning approach to its five-year program of research on the effects of water level and flow regulation. Shared vi- sion planning involves a collaborative process of water resources inquiry, systems modeling, and stakeholder participation that strives to converge on water regulation plans worthy of consideration by the IJC. The study board commissioned scores of studies involving over 150 specialists on topics that included wetlands, species at risk, coastal erosion, and flooding, selected summaries of which are reviewed in this report. Toward the end of the five-year study period, the IJC arranged with the U.S. National Research Council (NRC) and Royal Society of Canada (RSC) to carry out this independent review of studies, reports, and models prepared for the study board, including its shared vision model. A special committee was formed for the assignment and to prepare this report. The committee worked intensively and on a fast-track between June and August 2005 and held two meetings. The first meeting was on June 13-15, 2005 at Niag- ara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada in a workshop setting, which allowed the com- mittee to extensively interact with IJC and the Lake Ontario-St Lawrence River Study scientists. The workshop setting also provided a venue for the committee to receive explanations on study questions and points of clarification. After various experts (study leads) made presentations, the committee made exhaustive efforts to gain clarity on review topics. The committee wishes to thank the following presenters: Joseph Atkinson, University at Buffalo; Lisa Bourget, IJC; Joe De Pinto, LimnoTech, Inc. ; Jana Lantry, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation; Wendy Leger, Environment Canada; Todd Redder, LimnoTech, Inc.; Albert Schiavone, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation; Eugene Stakhiv, ix