The Honorable Lana Pollack, Chair
International Joint Commission
U. S. Section
2000 L Street, NW
Suite 615
Washington, DC 20440
Dear Commissioner Pollack,
The Goose Bay Reclamation Corporation is a nonprofit organization of property owners and
others dedicated to the preservation and restoration of Goose Bay on the New York shoreline of
the St Lawrence River. This organization strongly supports the implementation of plan 2014. A
water level management plan that favors the environment by allowing occasional extreme high
and low levels is vital to the restoration of the river’s ecosystem and the very existence of Goose
Bay.
In the area of the Thousand Islands at the head of the St Lawrence River the Frontenac Arch, an
isthmus of ancient rock, extends from the Laurentian Shield in Ontario to the Adirondacks in
New York. This bedrock is cut by a network of deep, narrow gouges oriented southwest to
northeast. Where the river now flows these gouges manifest as deep water channels separated by
chains of islands and reefs. On land they have been filled by alluvium and appear as long flat
valleys separated by rocky ridges. Goose Bay is one of these gouges. It is finely balanced
between a river channel and a dry land valley, having largely filled with alluvium, yet retaining a
layer of fairly shallow water. In this respect it is similar to many such bays along both sides of
the river and among the islands. These features have existed in equilibrium since the last
glaciers retreated from this area some twelve thousand years ago.
However, Goose Bay is unique in one way: unlike any other body of water in the Thousand
Islands, this thousand acre bay has only one narrow channel connecting it with the main flow of
the river. It is evident from aerial photography, on site observation, and the testimony of elderly
residents that there used to be an outflow from the north end of the bay leading to Chippewa Bay
downstream. In the middle of the last century two human engineering projects were
completed. The construction of Kring Point Road and later NYS Route 12 effectively dammed
the outflow, and the control of water levels on the upper St Lawrence under plan 1958DD
eliminated the extreme natural high and low levels. Before these two environmental insults the
natural spring flooding could flush the bay of the annual accumulation of alluvium and plant
detritus, thus maintaining its precarious existence over millennia.
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Since that time, within living memory, the bay has begun to die. A channel down the axis of the
bay has filled in; the entire bay has become noticeably shallower; an extensive cattail
monoculture is filling in the bay from both ends, and has filled several tributary bays; the
population of fish, ducks and geese and fishing birds, has greatly diminished; and the shallow,
stagnant conditions have fostered a crippling growth of invasive species, especially Eurasian
watermilfoil.
If these conditions are allowed to continue Goose Bay will soon cease to exist as a geographic
feature. A thousand acre bay, a significant component of the St Lawrence ecosystem, a
spawning ground for fish and habitat for birds and other animals, will have been destroyed by
our deliberate, if inadvertent, actions. It is imperative that both an outflow from the bay be
opened and that the natural highly variable, ecologically friendly river levels are restored. We
have tried to bend nature to our own short-sighted wants, and in our ignorance have wrought
destruction of our own home. Now that we know our mistakes it is unconscionable not to correct
them.
Last year the Goose Bay Reclamation Corporation strongly endorsed plan Bv7. That is still our
position, but if we must accommodate to the foolish and unheeding commitments of others in the
Lake Ontario basin and accept the watered down version that is plan 2014, then we do so. Adopt
2014 and do it now.
Sincerely,
Robert Lamoureux
President,
Goose Bay Reclamation Corporation
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