There has been continued criticism of Plan 2014, the system that changes the way the level of Lake Ontario is regulated.
A number of local officials feel the plan helped increase the recent flooding problems, although Frank Bevacqua of the International Joint Commission says the plan had little effect on this recent flooding, he says it was mainly all the rain over the last couple of months that caused the lakeshore flooding.
He tells WXXI News the IJC is carefully monitoring the situation, and is allowing more water to move into the Saint Lawrence Seaway; but that is a balancing act.
“Plan 2014 is releasing as much water as possible from Lake Ontario consistent with not creating more severe flooding around Montreal; so as conditions improve downstream, the flow out of the lake is being increased.”
Bevacqua does say that Lake Ontario may rise even higher over the next month.
“For about the next four weeks, that’s what we would expect for Lake Ontario although the rise will not be near as rapid as it has been in the past month.”
Bevacqua says even without Plan 2014, there likely would have been a similar amount of flooding along the lakeshore due to all of the rain we’ve had over the last couple of months.
Bevacqua says weather conditions will help dictate just how much water can be released from Lake Ontario into the Seaway.
