Creeping Calamity

A great natural phenomenon, slow in pace but immensely damaging to the works of man, has begun to affect the Great Lakes to a calamitous degree. The level of this inland waterway, the world's biggest and most important, is steadily rising.

Last week, from Lake Superior to Lake Ontario, the water line stood as much as four feet above normal. Spring thaws may boost levels two feet higher. The creeping flood has done enormous property damage. For example, in the state of Michigan alone, the official estimate is $1 billion just for this year.

Day by Day. Like the rising water, the damage accumulates insidiously, seldom making headlines. The pattern is undermined foundations, fouled water mains, backed-up sewers, shoreline erosion at a rate of a few feet a year. Said a bitter Great Lakes homeowner last week: "If we were the victims of a flash flood, we would have sympathy from everyone throughout the country. Instead what we have here is a day-by-day eating away of land and homes, and nobody ever hears about it."

The U.S. Army base at Oscoda, Mich, is inundated, and the Air Force's Selfridge Field is threatened. Detroit is diking its famous Belle Isle amusement park. The Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad has spent $2,500,000 to save 1 1/2 miles of track along Lake Michigan. At Cleveland, Homeowner John Wirtz is moving his big stucco house; when he bought it eleven years ago, Lake Erie's edge was 250 ft. away. On the Canadian shore, at Toronto, the mayor has urged evacuation of the 4,500 residents of Toronto Island.

The problem is plainly too big for local, state or provincial solution. On both sides of the Great Lakes border, public pressure is mounting for a U.S.-Canadian conference on the situation.

Age by Age? The cause of the high water is far from clear. Undoubtedly, last year's heavy rains in the Great Lakes basin contributed. Some authorities think that logging in the watershed has increased the run-off into the lakes. Another theory is that geological changes may account for the phenomenon: across the northern half of the continent the earth's crust is rising, a process that began when the Ice Age glaciers melted away 25,000 years ago. This, runs the theory, has a tilting effect on the Great Lakes basin, spilling water toward the southern shores, and gradually raising water levels as much as 1.1 feet per century.

Whatever the cause, the water continues to rise. One effect of the higher level is to make Great Lakes storms ever more dangerous and destructive. Last week a northeast gale, whipping down Lake Erie, caused havoc in the Toledo-Detroit-Windsor area. Rough waters boiled over breakwaters and dikes, wrecked docks and boathouses, swept as far as a mile inland. More than 500 people were evacuated, and scores of homes were smashed by one of the worst floods in Great Lakes history.

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