High water levels: Negotiating between Lake Michigan and Lake Leelanau

By Linda Alice Dewey

Sun contributor

“Although the water coming from over the (Leland Dam in Fishtown) is forceful, it’s not the real cause of the floods,” Leelanau County drain commissioner Steve Christensen told the Glen Arbor Sun. “When you look at the forces involved, the flooding is from Lake Michigan-Huron.”

Read related story: Rising water sets off alarm, forces cancellation of Shanty Aid benefit event

Lakes and dams, rain and floods

Yet, a great deal of water is coming over the Leland dam.

Christensen explained that the county regulates lake levels at two dams on two very different lakes in the county—Lake Leelanau at the Leland dam, and Glen Lake at the Crystal River. 

“On Glen Lake, a large percentage of the outflow in Glen Lake is true evaporation. When things warm up in the summer, and the lake gets to a certain temperature, and there’s a cooldown in the fall, it’s amazing, the amount of evaporation there is. At Glen Lake, 30% of the outflow is evaporation.” He says that the dam is responsible for “less than 30%. Glen Lake needs rain to keep its lake level.

“Lake Leelanau, on the other hand, has a lot of springs and rivers and gets a ton of water from a lot of sources,” said Christensen. “Our [task] is a trick to keep the south lake at the level of the north lake. Such a large portion of the watershed is in the south lake. The south lake goes up 5 inches very rapidly, while north goes up 3.

“At the dam, we have to respond rapidly to dump a lot of water to get to the court-ordered level. Now if Jerry (Coleman, head of maintenance at the county and manipulates the dam) sees one of these things coming, he will start cheating ahead of time.”

Water water everywhere

Christensen keeps a rain gauge outside, at work, mid-county. His gauge showed a 1.5-inch rainfall on June 3, and another inch a week later. The problem, he said, is “the ground hasn’t dried up yet. All of the spots that are wet have standing water, and it’s pretty full.”

Christensen likens the wetlands to a sponge. “Everything is full of water. Water tables are up. There’s water in basements, water in crawl spaces. Any place that ever had water in it, has it now.

“That pond that is Fishtown is full,” said Christiansen. “There’s water up to the edges everywhere. That flow coming over the dam is more difficult, plus they’re getting bounced, and that makes it more difficult for boats and for Fishtown itself. Docks could go under.

“We had flooding last October, a year ago in the spring.” He said the land just can’t take the 3.5 inches “in one shot … and we’ve had a half dozen or more of those in the last year and a half. 

“Within the last week in Suttons Bay, we had an inch of rain in 15 minutes. All the streams were full. We had water on the roads. They were scooping water off the parking lot area in Suttons Bay School with a tractor and front-end loader, side by side, shooshing the water across the parking lot.

“All the swamp land in Suttons Bay is full.” Christiansen said that “the interested parties in Suttons Bay” are going to map out what’s going on—which culverts are plugged and what’s happening at different basins.

“There’s water, water everywhere, but drainage is getting to be a paramount issue, and Fishtown is right at the top of the list. There’s a bunch of [questions like], what do you do now … What is the new high going to be?”

When will it stop? What do we do in the meantime? Or are we truly in what Fishtown Preservation Society’s Amanda Holmes calls “uncharted territory?”

Climate change

Although we in Leelanau might draw a modicum of comfort from looking back to a point in history when we believe this happened before, the vast majority of scientists say our current weather situation is part of a larger pattern that has never before been seen. 

The issue has to do with how fast we have swung from the record low water level in 2013 (from high evaporation due to drought and heat) to the present high levels (from low evaporation rates due to cooler temps and rain). That happened in just six years. Those figures in that short span of time say we definitely are in “uncharted” territory.

“If you have events that are not part of your historical record that represent a change in conditions, that’s the definition of climate change,” said Andrew Gronewold, associate professor of environment and sustainability at the University of Michigan. Previously, Gronewald was a hydrologist and physical scientist at the NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory.

Here in Leelanau, people are scrambling to shore up shanties at Fishtown, farmers are getting stuck in their fields, growers are faced with ungrowable climes, tourists can’t walk the beaches, and sump pumps are going nonstop in homes. Does this feel natural? 

“If we’re having changes that force people to change how they live and how close they are to the shoreline,” Gronewold told the Sun,“that’s important as well, and people need to pay attention to that.”

Look for more coverage of the links between Climate Change and our high water levels in the July 3 edition of the Sun.