The Town of Greece has started a petition drive in an effort to get changes to a plan that affects the level of water in Lake Ontario.
Town Supervisor Bill Reilich says the petition is an outgrowth of Thursday night’s meeting involving various lakeshore neighborhood associations, looking at ways to address the damage from the high levels on Lake Ontario.
Reilich says they need to collect 100,000 signatures in 30 days in order for the White House to consider the petition which focuses on Plan 2014, a lake level plan that went into effect earlier this year.
Even though that plan was designed by the International Joint Commission, which involves both the U.S. and Canada, Reilich is hopeful this petition can have an impact.
“I’m very optimistic that we can, because with the amount of destruction that’s been rendered, both in the United States and in Canada, I cannot see how this can be overlooked or ignored.”
Officials with the IJC have said that Plan 2014 is not responsible for all of the lake flooding this year; They say that condition is mainly due to the heavy amount of rain that fell in the last few months.
In any case, Reilich says the problems due to the high lake levels are likely to linger for a while.
“They’ll improve slowly but we’re looking at well past the 4th of July for us to be at a point where we’re looking back and saying this is over; and every time there’s a little bit of a wind, with the water as high as it is, we’re facing catastrophic damage, people being driven out of their homes and a multitude of dollars of damage.”
Reilich says that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the National Guard were out Friday helping to build a wall near Buck Pond in Greece in an effort to hold some of the recent floodwaters back so that that crews can pump out Edgemere Drive in an effort to get that road open again.
