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John Flesher / AP file
In this Nov. 16, 2012 photo, a sand bar is exposed on Portage Lake in Onekama, Mich., due to low water levels. The waterway is connected by a channel to nearby Lake Michigan where water levels have reached record lows.
Two of the Great Lakes have hit their lowest water levels ever recorded, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Tuesday, capping more than a decade of below-normal rain and snowfall and higher temperatures that boost evaporation.
Measurements taken last month show Lake Huron and Lake Michigan have reached their lowest ebb since record keeping began in 1918, and the lakes could set additional records over the next few months, the corps said. The lakes were 29 inches below their long-term average and had declined 17 inches since January 2012.
The other Great Lakes — Superior, Erie and Ontario — were also well below average.
"We're in an extreme situation," said Keith Kompoltowicz, watershed hydrology chief for the corps district office in Detroit.
The low water has caused heavy economic losses by forcing cargo ships to carry lighter loads, leaving boat docks high and dry, and damaging fish-spawning areas. And vegetation has sprung up in newly exposed shoreline bottomlands, a turnoff for hotel customers who prefer sandy beaches.
The corps' report came as shippers pleaded with Congress for more money to dredge ever-shallower harbors and channels. Shippers are taxed to support a harbor maintenance fund, but only about half of the revenue is spent on dredging. The remainder is diverted to the treasury for other purposes. Legislation to change that policy is pending before Congress.
"Plunging water levels are beyond anyone's control, but the dredging crisis is man-made," said James Weakley, president of the Cleveland-based Lake Carriers' Association.
Kompoltowicz said the Army corps might reconsider a long-debated proposal to place structures in a river to reduce the flow of water away from Lakes Huron and Lake Michigan, which are connected.
Scientists say lake levels are cyclical and controlled mostly by nature. They began a steep decline in the late 1990s and have usually lagged well below their historical averages since then.
But studies have shown that Huron and Michigan fell by 10 to 16 inches because of dredging over the years to deepen the navigational channel in the St. Clair River, most recently in the 1960s. Dredging of the river, which is on the south end of Lake Huron, accelerated the flow of water southward from the two lakes toward Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, and eventually into the Atlantic Ocean.
Groups representing shoreline property owners, primarily in Lake Huron's Georgian Bay, have demanded action to slow the Lake Huron and Michigan outflow to make up for losses that resulted from dredging, which they contend are even greater than officials have acknowledged.
Although the Army corps produced a list of water-slowing options in 1972, including miniature dams and sills that resemble speed bumps along the river bottom, nothing was done because the lakes were in a period of above-average levels that lasted nearly three decades, Kompoltowicz said.
The corps has congressional authorization to take action but would need money for an updated study as a first step, he said. The Detroit office is considering a funding request, but it would have to compete with other projects nationwide and couldn't get into the budget before 2015.
"It's no guarantee that we're going to get it, especially in this budget climate," Kompoltowicz said. "But there are serious impacts to navigation and shoreline property owners from this extreme event. It's time to revisit this."
Scientists and engineers convened by the International Joint Commission, a U.S.-Canadian agency that deals with shared waterways, issued reports in 2009 and last year that opposed trying to regulate the Great Lakes by placing structures at choke points such as the St. Clair River. The commission has conducted public hearings and will issue a statement in about a month, spokesman John Nevin said.
Roger Gauthier, a retired staff hydrologist with the Army corps, said a series of "speed bumps" could be put in the river at a reasonable cost within a few years. Without such measures, he warned, "it would take years of consistent rain" to return Lake Michigan and Lake Huron to normal.
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I saw a great program on the science channel on just this topic. They said that the natural heaving of the earth's crust makes the lakes shallower and in time that they could go dry, a large contrast to when the glaciers pushed down the crust and created them a long time ago. So it's not "climate change" or anything like that, it's "nature". They had a great example of how the lakes once were much larger (shown in silt/wear lines in the foothills miles from today's shores) and how this is just a matter of geologic time and natural movements.
But the record high average temperatures that cause evaporation and less rain/snow play a role as well. Climate change is a direct cause of global warming, the science is clear on that. Today where I live it was 61 degrees... unheard of in early February. We are in deep chim chi if we don't do something about limiting the world's use of fossil fuels for energy
There are all sprts of geological things going on at the earths crust. But you can't tell the Global Warming religion worshippers anything because their mind is made up and they have been fully duped.
I also notice the story makes no mention of the fact ever-increasing demands are being placed on the lakes to meet public water utility pumping demands to utilities in states surrounding the Great Lakes ... but they are Johnny on the spot to blame MAN-MADE global warming and climate change to continue to push the agenda, no matter.
God's punishment for dredging
So you want to make the case that it is the heaving of the earth that has caused the drop of 17 inches since last January? I don't think so. Believing such stuff is called denial. Especially since the Midwest experienced a drought last year. You might just think outside the climate deniers box and give it a try that just maybe the drought might have had something to do with it.
Uh, STexan, where does the article mention climate change. It mentioned years of below normal precip and high temperatures, but I don't think it actually used the term "climate change". Although increased temperature is, in fact, climate change.
It states "higher temperatures to boost evaporation" to imply global warming, but then explains that the change is cyclical, natural, and also due to dredging. But once again, the media can't help but to try to introduce an assumptive global warming aspect to the article.
The elastic rebound from glaciation works in the opposite direction. The ground beneath the lakes is rising, which makes the lakes shallower but does not decrease the surface level. In fact it acts to keep the surface level the same, as the lakes themselves get shallower.
Interestingly, the "experts" are really still in the dark.
Jacques Cousteau visited Northern Michigan University in the early 80s when I was there. He claimed that Superior was a "dying lake" in "desperate condition." He also stated that Erie "would never be able to support life as we know it."
Was he wrong! Superior is so COLD it looks lifeless. Erie.......... well look at her now! I was amazed that we were allowed to swim in her. Last time I was there (30 yrs ago) the signs said "No Swiming. Bio Hazard."
The moral here is.................... experts see what they want to.... just like politicians.............
The climate is naturally changing. Maybe for the worse... maybe for the better..........only God, Allah, Buddah...... whatever you call them............ knows.......
Navigation OK....."shoreline property owners".....forget it.
NO Federal dollars for these shoreline home owners. They can figure a way to get to the water instead of just going out their back door.
First Climate change is still nature even if you are talking about anthropogenic climate change unless humans aren't natural. What humans are doing is not magical. Human contribution to the climate model is just that a contribution. Our activity is nothing more than an input into the climate cycle. The cycle occurs if we are live or dead but the inputs vary based upon what is out there. We are out there so naturally we are having an impact as we always have now we are just having a greater impact than we ever have, its that simple.
Second, I saw the same show or similar show and I believe that it pointed out that the earths crust is rising very slowly and as it does it will encourage the lake to drain. I don't believe that the Earths crust under the lakes has risen by sever feet in just less than 30 years. Someone might have noticed.
All of us who use science as a guide should just give up on trying to do anything about climate change. A brilliant man once said that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. We will not get through to the deniers. Those who don't use science as a guide and just go with their gut can't be rationalized with. I was once taught by another brilliant man that you should never go into a battle of whits with an unarmed man, you will lose every time. It took time to understand this, but now that I do I understand the impossibility in winning the the climate debate. The witless are numerous, well supported and very well funded.
My advice is to just enjoy life for as long as it is possible, don't reproduce, though I'm all for practicing(just in case) and let the correction occur. Currently we have no means to escape the consequences of our actions. This means sooner or later a natural correction will occur even if it is by "unnatural means".
There is already a control structure on the Niagara River sending less water over the Falls (especially at night) and MORE to the hydro-electric stations on the New York and Ontario sides. How about the power companies taking a little LESS than what they believe is their fair share? I can hear them bleating already.
And that's why politicans can not be trusted to manage our money. Time and again the government taxes people for a specific purpose (i.e. Social Security or brige tolls) only to take the money and spend it on things which have nothing to do with the origional program or project.
And do what? Burn more coal instead? If we do that the tree huggers will start whining.
joe mota
I mentioned glacial rebound here once and the idiots treated me like I had made it up right there on the spot even though I provided links to articles and reviewed scientific literature on the topic. What bothered them was that I was talking about the land rising in Britain and without even thinking about climate change I mentioned this. And the deniers latched on to me thinking I was trying to make an excuse for what seemed to them to be contradictory evidence of global warming. Very funny that they say we've been duped when they can't produce one single peer-reviewed paper that concludes global climate change is not occurring or not tied to human activity.
...and how much did show say the Earth had uplifted in the last 20 years, JoeNY? A dramatic downward shift in the water levels of these lakes cannot be explained by such a long term factor as rises in the earth's crust.
If the lakes are growing shallower, how exactly is that causing the remaining water to contract withing existing shorelines?
men so smart, destruction of some sort with every move
makes me wonder...good point as the core to science is a hypothesis. However, I'd beg to differ with some who counter this is not related to climate change. I live in the Midwest and these lakes provide drinking water to a very large segment of the population. If anyone doubts climate change is an issue consider the debth and expanse of this past year drought. You might call it relative but aside from natural cycles when you have so many areas experiencing severe weather issues it's hard to ignore the possibility. Do the research past droughts caused great hardship and economic loss nationally. This issue is not relative to the areas impacted alone it is a much bigger problem. When food costs spike because hydration is an issue than for all those who dismiss the possibility it will have become relative. This is not about beach front vacation property alone it's about the economic engine that drives a larger area that feeds this nation.
Paul L. respectfully your post referencing Lake Erie...perhaps you failed to research steps and initiatives taken after the Cousteau visit to improve Lake Erie. Seems one scientist did get it right it you can now swim in the lake.
At the risk of a repeat of what happened before, I will say that for thousands of years the Great Lakes region, my home region, was under thousands of feet of ice. The very ice that formed the lakes. This compressed the land and made lower than it had been before the ice. Once the ice went away, the land began to decompress very slowly making it rise, or rebounding from the glacial compression. This process is still happening today. Yes, after all this time, this rebound is still happening. If you take measurements of the level of the land over the course of several years, you can measure the effect. Try it yourself over the course of say five years if you live in the area and have access to GPS with an altitude readout.
here in AR, it's in the 60's all week. where normally it's 20 degrees and snowing in February. The ponds around here are almost dry and some on the golf course are dry. the last three summers have been 115 heat index for a couple months setting records.
Hey Ji, don't tell STexan. His head is so far up his anus, he won't hear you. Better not let Hal know either. Apparently, they let Rush Limbaugh, their science guru influence their scope of knowledge. To them, most scientists, are just quacks and Rush is leading the way to exposing these men and women. The years they spent studying in colleges and universities were a waste of time. All they had to do was turn on the radio and listen to Rush.
Ralph, I don't know why you are are including me. 1.) I think 98% of the scientists are correct about AGW. No doubt in my mind. 2.) Rush is numb skull. 3.) And while local observations of the climate do not necessarily reflect global trends, there has indeed been a global warming trend. 4.) While I am onboard with global warming and its human causes and that it is happening rapidly, I still think the main reason water levels appear to be falling in the Great Lakes is glacial rebound. This is not fringe science, it's completely mainstream.
One thing is for sure, you better take this into account before you going diving off into your favorite swimming hole.
The Great Lakes do naturally vary in depth, but I think it is due to changes in waterways, rainfall patterns, and other factors not "Earths crust heaving". I also saw a program, apparently not too long ago a widespread effort was mostly completed to topographically map the great lakes (called Bathometry when done below water). The features suggest that while the current level of the Great Lakes is pretty average, it has been MUCH lower at some points in the past. There are even a few archeological expeditions taking place hundreds of feet below one of the lakes surface looking along what is believed to have been the shoreline 7,000 years ago. As to what is causing the current levels humans are probably responsible for at least part of it. Climate change may be a factor but personally I'd be more concerned with the rivers & man-made channels, I've heard that a river around Chicago has been growing exponentially due to erosion & boat traffic. Resulting in what was once a trickle, becoming a torrent escaping to the Mississippi river. And I doubt that is the only place where this is happening.
Blame it on whatever you want, but the bottom line is we are losing our potable water sources.
There better be some serious discussion on the construction of desalination plants in this country. Cutting back on fossil fuels in our country isn't going to stop it in the rest of the world.
70% of Americans today,according to a Gallup Poll,now believe in Climate Control, which group includes our top military leaders in the Pentagon.
......and 30% of Americans believe in "Creationism".
I like how the article fails to mention how we are allowing China to steal "buy" a half a million gallons of great lakes water PER DAY. Thats who the shippers are that are griping about lighter loads- Nestle, who is selling the water pre bottled to sell to China.
LMAO at this not-so-subtle global warming article. Give me a break. Global warming is this generations "Reefer madness".
Ridiculous.
No, but some of you are this generation's "little demons cause illness" cult.
Reefers DO cause communism.
Pass that over here. Now what were we talking about?
OMG! Climate change. We're all going to die.
Stick a dam at the soo locks and let Lake Michigan fill up again. Screw shipping from the East. Detroit could use the business.
the soo locks are at the top of michigan. This might hold Supreior in place, but would assit in the draining of Michigan through all it's outflows - Is Chi town still sucking?
Chi Town still sucks. The Chicago River has run backwards for years. I think that the idea was to dilute the pollution in the Ohio River (?) It is time that the International Joint Commission got SERIOUS about the Great Lakes - and NO, there should NOT be a pipeline taking Lake Michigan or Lake Superior water down to California.
Screw the "shoreline property owners". Let them pony up the bucks.
Warrren, while I'm sure that the property owners would like to have the water level up a bit it is causing problems with shipping in the entire region.
Did you even bother to read the story or is it that you are a "it doesn't concern me so F&#% 'em" type of person?
Jessiegrrl
Stories do have many facets. It's foolish to think the World should not change in a way that interferes with peoples desire to make money.
China's getting billions of tons of water every year or more ,that must stop
That is true. Funny how that wasn't mentioned. Large tankers are constantly being filled with millions upon millions of gallons of freshwater from our great lakes and transported daily over seas to CHINA. In addition, there was some controversy over U.S. companies that sell the billions of gallons of bottled water for ridiculous profits (you see those cases upon cases in the store for ~$4/case for about a bucket's worth of water!). These companies have setup on the far north shores in rural areas and are surrounded by razor wire and surveillance and are pumping more for their corporate profits than what's going to China. Add it up and you have those in power and position to exploit our natural resources - then add the drought that we are in and that only exasperbates the problem.
If bottled water was not being sold, people would still be drinking the water from our resources. What's your point, other than companies making profit off of said resources?
It wasn't mentioned because it isn't true.
Funny how people make stuff like that up....
That would be a direct violation of both US and Canadian laws which prohibit the bulk sale of water from the great lakes.
The only way that water from the great lakes can be sold is if it is bottled at the source, but then it wouldn't be tankers, it would be container ships.
Ess,
I can't find any reference to Chinese Great Lakes exportation of water. Do you have a link?
Edit: sheesh - I get a phone call, wait too long to post, and see the 'usual suspects' got there first ;-)
...I think that EI & I are pretty unusual, actually....
Well who knows what will happen about us all crossing paths when the new vine is introduced.
Point and match.
I'm not looking forward to it, EI. I've no idea what will happen when I fire this up tomorrow. It was fun, though.
I heard of the Chinese planning to take water from the Great Lakes, but not that it actually happened.
Apparently there is a law against it?
Excerpt from: The Great Lakes
"Lakes states and approved by Congress under the "state compact clause" of the U.S. Constitution. The purpose of the Compact grew out of threats from private and public schemes to divert or export water to the West or China. The Compact prohibits all new or increased diversions of water out of the Basin with a few narrow exceptions for communities that straddle Basin boundaries. The Compact also requires review and approval by a regional body, standards to assure withdrawals do not cause significant harm, and encourages conservation. Unfortunately, the Compact does not address the prohibition on water "exports" under the WRDA. In fact, as will be explained below, it may well authorize exports of water."
http://www.schoolofcommoning.com/sites/default/files/Great%20Lakes%20Overview.pdf
hs321
There is a treaty between Canada and the US that prohibits either nation from bulk extraction of water from the lakes for commercial sale. That would basically make it illegal for any entity to just take water in bulk from the great lakes and ship it elsewhere.
It does NOT prohibit extraction of water for what is deemed use local to the lakes, so taking the water and bottling it locally would be allowed, but that isn't what the accusation is.
Shut off Niagara Falls. Import more Missouri beer to Flint and St. Joe. Ask the folks in Baltimore to pray for rain in the upper midwest. Frack for water instead of oil. Listen this time to the Odawa shaman when they say that we have to take care of our precious water resources or God will take them back from everybody next time, Canadians included.
Canada can afford to fix the problem. They have all that oil money! (They are the largest supplier of oil to the US).
They need to cut the U.S. Corps of Engineers budget since they are the ones that caused this disaster.
Oh, and the fact that all of that water being sent overseas has nothing to do with it. It's pathetic!
One hundred years of record in a 4.5 billion year old earth is called junk science at its best. How stupid can news journalists be to not point out the profound grasp of the obvious. A mile high glacier covered the Great Lakes just 10,000 years ago. Of course the water will recede after 10K years!
Global warming news getting worse every day.
And you ain't seen nothing yet!
Lake Michigan has a very rocky lake bottom, which is now exposed in many places. The dry exposed lake has become a big playground for adults (the rocks would be heavy for kids), who rearrange them to spell out words and to make rock art works--think acres of rock snowmen. In the summer, the former lake bed is like concrete, and if no one messes with your art, it will be there for a long time. Off Old Mission Point, north of Traverse City, we even found a marriage proposal spelled out in rocks. Very strange to walk out on Lake Michigan, then look back at a lighthouse that will probably never sit on the water again.
Wonder how many crimes can be solved as the water level drops; finding skeletons, cars with bodies, stolen cars, etc.
essie - what a f*cking useless post that was...
So, Yellowstone Lake in Yellowstone Park has tipped over two feet onto it's side. What about that ?
True. That's due to a building magma chamber underneath the park. Yellowstone sits on a hot spot that regularly erupts as a supervolcano.
The last time was 640,000 years ago. Time before that was ~1.6 million years ago. Hardly what I call "regularly." If it DOES blow during our lifetimes, however, our lifetime's will soon be ending!
Ess - It erupts every 600,000-700,000 years. Your info in incorrect. Go to the USGS website for information...
Ok... a few inches.. a few years below normal..... live with it. Conserve. Create more reserves. Get on with developing new sources.........
Check out Lake Austin........ been down for almost a decade!
http://travis.uslakes.info/Level.asp
Did someone say Hippie Hollow? I'm down.
Paul L.-1923570, the worlds resources are FINITE, but we are using them like they are INFINITE. It's amazing how people will stick their head in the sand and say everything's fine. How exactly are we going to come up with creating new new resources or new reserves, when we can't divvy out what we have already in a sustainable manner. And go ahead and tell me how to develop new sources of water that will be as inexpensive and potable as rivers, lakes, or aquifers? And do not say desalination as that has a slew of problems being swept under the rug. The worst being how energy intensive it is to separate the chloride compounds from the dihydrogen oxide, or to get the salt out o' the water. This way leads to madness as power is expensive: you end up with the rich being allocated the tech and the benefits from, because they can afford it. That will cause societal pressures which will really be calamitous.
And just so ppl kno- Every now and again, I hear about the ULTIMATE argument against the possibility we are to blame for increased CO2 levels and thus increasing temps: "there is no way; we breathe out CO2, so if i breathe it out and so does everyone i kno. Climate scientists therefore are wrong since they OBVIOUSLY overlooked 7,000,000,000 people breathing, and the temperatures haven't changed much since I can remember". When that comes out, someone needs to remind them that for a long time now; plants, trees, the oceans and the tundras, hell even insects, have been helping to lock up CO2 released from NATURAL CO2 emissions. Since when is a car, ocean liner, train, or a coal-buning power plant considered natural? Our breathing is natural, however, we have been expanding our living areas and decreasing land left to nature's devices. Or IOW, we had low emissions and excellent ability to abate, lock up, or the correct term, Sequester. That was b4 urbanization, and 7 billion inhabitants. Now we have high emissions and an accelerating inability to even handle the old emission level, let alone what we've created now. 196,900,000 sq. mi. divided by only the people alive now = 0.0251285 sq. mi., and that's including the water area our planet is 75% covered by. Do you know of anyone who could pollute an ares of 65082.5 sq. ft. over a lifetime? Don't worry, even if you can't, corporations will take up the slack.
Some of you posters didn't bother to read the whole article. The biggest problem is the deep channels they have dredged between the lakes, causing the water between them to flow more rapidly. It says so at the bottom of the story, but many nbcnews posters are too quick to rant about their particular cause to finish reading the whole damn thing.
The Corps of Engineers has caused so many problems across this country it is amazing. Coastal erosion in LA and TX (which removes natural barriers to hurricanes), the Great Flood of 1993 thanks to their levee systems (as well as many other floods), the Great Lakes issues mentioned above, the death of the Colorado River, the current low levels on the Missouri River because they are damming more water upstream....on and on and on.
In the long run it won't matter. When Niagara Falls reaches Lake Erie in thousands of years, the Great Lakes are going to empty anyway...
It wasn't that many years ago the Great Lakes States signed a pact preventing shipment of their abundant fresh water supply to other States. What a difference a few years make, particularly with their prolonged drought.
I love to hear the climate change deniers struggle with the obvious and recurring facts that our climate is changing and it is due to warming and that comes from people not being able to be cured of stupid.
your missing something William. I'll let you in on the secret.
Most "climate change deniers" don't deny that the climate is changing at all.
Most "climate change deniers" do wish to do their part.
However
Most "climate change deniers" continue to "Deny climate change" for two reasons...
1. They don't believe the "fire and brimstone" stories of what the planet will be 100 years from now. They consider the people who back these stories as "extremists"
2. They don't believe anything that will make a serious impact on the problem will occur until EVERYONE is on board (third world countries, China, etc)
3. Even if we can get everyone on board, they don't believe the so called "experts" who "know better" are acting in anyone's best interest but their own. It should also be mentioned that alot of "fixes" from environmentalists past, has caused just as many problems as been solved.
By the way, calling people stupid, doesnt advance the conversation any.
Yet on the other side of the world....there are floods, cold weather, etc. It's all about cycles. We will get our turn.
Stop Spraying Chemtrails and trying to manipulate the weather and this would stop. We are being sprayed with aluminum, barium and strontium just to name a few of the nasty heavy metals spewing out the back of jets. Those Big lines you see unmarked jets leaving are NOT contrails,, and alot of you know this in your gut. Contrails disappear in seconds, minutes at most. What you see laid out in those X and grid patterns is not normal, and didnt exist before the 1990's. These mad scientists are infact creating weather disasters and we get to all breathe the toxic fallout. This is not a conspiracy theary, its conspiracy fact. Anyone who doubts this, just look up. What happened to our blue skies? Stop Chemtrails.
It doesn't matter whether this particular crisis was caused (in part) by global warming, because Obama has done little about climate change and will continue to do so. Even he realizes that this can't be one of the 1,3985,766 things "solved" by taxing the rich. Everyone will have to pay higher energy costs, and Obama Claus is not about to lose his moniker by taxing the poor and middle class over that. Sorry greenies; maybe in another 4 years.
anyone living on those shores is wealthy, they can suck it up. boo hoo
all those cities on its shores, use millions of gallons a day.
corps fix your deep channel dredging debacle.
taxes paid for harbor maintenance, dredging need to be 100% used and not pad some political pocket.
Who would want to drink from that toxic cesspool? Zebra mussels are the best thing to come along to the Great Waste Dumps.(Great Lakes).
Zebra mussels & Asian Carp.
I assume you either don't live near the Lakes or have simply grown to overlook them as so many Americans have. Though you're mistaken in calling the Lakes a cesspool, they are facing challenges. By no small coincidence, all of the Areas of Concern identified by the Great Lakes Commission are either completely on the United States side or along a narrow river shared with the U.S. Not to dismiss Canada's shared responsibility at all, but many Americans need to wake up (some have) and recognize the critical importance of these Lakes, and that any challenge faced (pollution, mussels, carp, dredging, drawdown...) must be addressed with conviction. These Lakes are a critically important part of the life in the Northeast, and dismissing them as something to be tossed aside, which is effectively what you've said, is irresponsible and reckless.
I must correct myself. As I said "Not to dismiss Canada's shared responsibility" - 12 of the 43 Areas of Concern are in Canada, 26 in the United States. But I stand by my main point, the Great Lakes are critically important (and beautiful, by the way) and cannot be ignored or dismissed.
glc.org/rap/
It's clear you've never seen Lake Michigan or Lake Huron (they're actually one big lake), or have only experienced the lakes from a city like Chicago or Sarnia, Ontario. Look for bumper stickers on cars that read "M-22". Take a drive up that road sometime.
Haev you seen Lake Michigan, Essie? I live 30 minutes from Lake Michigan in Grand Rapids. I've been driving the M22 tour for years, every year. The water level is very receded, but not to the extreme you speak of. I was just there last weekend at Sleeping Bear Dunes.
No mention of Nestle sucking water out of the Lakes to bottle as "Ice Mountain" those pumps hidden out in the woods work non-stop.
Most of which is sold in Michigan and Chicagoland, and after being consumed is "returned" to the Great Lakes.
Oh, and the wee fact that Nestle is pumping up well water, not "sucking water out of the Lakes".
Well water that is near Lake Michigan is still Lake Michigan water. Ice Mountain water is sold all over including China.
Ice Mountain water is sold all over because it is BOTTLED all over.