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September 14, 2006 - Dr. Brian Jones, Gananoque, Ontario

Dear Commissioners:

For 22 years I have lived year long on the St. Lawrence River. I am an avian and exotic animal veterinarian by vocation. I am also a director of water levels for the Thousand Island Association (TIA) and have presented at various meetings of the IJC and SLBC particularly in Clayton in 1998 and Cornwall in 1999. I also write a column in the TIA newsletter called View from the Doc. I will limit my comments to the view from my dock.

It would appear to me that 1958D was a well conceived and thought out plan except for the issue of low water in the early fall. The 1993 and 1998 studies were in response to this issue. The complaints about this problem were directed at the governance of the plan and not really the plan itself. This became quite evident in 1998 when criterion K was initiated. This led to the large public meeting in Clayton that year and the meeting in Cornwall. It also was the trigger to the current study.

Enough has been said about the data related to Plan A and Plan B in other letters sent to you already. My view from the Doc is that any Plan that lowers water further than that in 1998 or 1999 will be unacceptable when implemented. The IWLC which favors Plan B was in fact formed because of the low water levels in 1998 which occurred within the mandate of 1958D. Plan A is the best for the boating community because it best answers the problem that generated all the studies beginning in 1993: low water at the end of the boating season.

Environmentally the issues are very complex and I am not arrogant enough to pretend to understand all the data of that section of the study. However I have watched the river in a biological way for 22 years and the seasonality of life on the river. What I did not see in any of the studies was much comment about biologic adaptability, something that I see in my practice on a daily. Although Plan B is the so called environmental Plan, it is quite amazing that nature has adapted to 1958D. The view from the dock in 1984 was that there was very little bird activity on the river. In 1989 I heard my first loon, 1990 saw our first loon and now loons are common on the river. From the dock we saw our first Osprey in 1991 and now we have 3 nesting pairs. In 1999 we saw our first eagle and now they are observed daily year long. I counted 4 bullfrogs in our river marsh by our house in 1984. This summer I counted 36. The significance of seeing loons, ospreys and eagles that they are at the top of the food chain and their success means the prey is proliferating as well.

Biology has adapted to 1958D and the water levels it set. Any change to greater swings in levels will force another adaptive change and create stress in many micro enviroments.

For instance dropping levels to the natural state will wipe out my bullfrog population. As a further comment Dalton Foster in his pitch for Plan B stated that they projected the affects of the various plans 50000 years into the future. If they had gone back 50000 years the view from then Doc would be from under ½ mile of ice with mammoths standing on it. Biology adapted then and I believe it will adapt to any plan and any small change in levels to the amount of 1-3 feet benefit some areas and be very detrimental to others. Plan A would least upset 50 years of adaptation to Plan 1958D.

Lastly and perhaps most significantly neither Plan A nor Plan B addresses the issue of conservation. Water levels can be contained or released will but the success of that approach is dependant on supply and the may be the issue in the future. As has been pointed out in other letters, global warming will affect this supply. Predictors are that the water supply will diminish leading to low water levels as has occurred in Georgian Bay.

I asked both our local members of parliament about government policy on selling or diverting water at the last annual meeting of the IWLC. Both said that their governments would not tolerate such activity. However as human population continues to rise and water supplies drop, the rest of the world will want our resource including the terrorists. All those plastic water bottles contain water taken out of a natural water cycle somewhere and that will diminish the supply at site of origin. We need to conserve water. Going back to a Plan that relies on natural cycles is very risky when those cycles are at risk from increasing human endeavors. We cannot rely on nature to make up for our mistakes as occurred in 1999. Plan A is the only plan that indirectly addresses the issue of conservation by its limitation on level swings and forcing the governing board to work within a restricted range. As I pointed out in the beginning the final selected plan will only be as good as how it is governed as has occurred with 1958D.

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