Low water levels mean Erieau needs dredging and fast, advoc­ates say

By Trevor Terfloth

With lower water levels impact­ing com­mer­cial and recre­ational boat­ers, advoc­ates say Erieau’s chan­nel and har­bour need dredging sooner rather than later.

Water levels have dropped from pre­vi­ous years, when Lake Erie shoreline com­munit­ies exper­i­enced prob­lems from high water, includ­ing erosion and prop­erty dam­age.

South Kent Coun. Anthony Cec­cacci, who raised the mat­ter at Monday’s Chathsm-Kent coun­cil meet­ing, said it’s an issue that mer­its atten­tion.

“We’re not just talk­ing about the com­mer­cial aspect of things, we’re talk­ing about the recre­ational com­pon­ent,” he said in an inter­view Wed­nes­day.

“Chatham-Kent, and par­tic­u­larly Erieau, is revital­ized every sum­mer by the (num­ber) of boats . . . If you’re restrict­ing what boats can get through the chan­nel, that’s going to be a sig­ni­fic­ant chal­lenge.”

Cec­cacci said some fish­ing boats need to dock at other har­bours.

“Now, for them to get to cer­tain points of the lake, they’re going to be hav­ing to spend thou­sands of extra dol­lars to travel there,” he said. “It’s get­ting to the point where some of the boats won’t be able to even util­ize Erieau as a com­mer­cial har­bour.”

Earlier in Janu­ary, busi­ness own­ers and industry rep­res­ent­at­ives dis­cussed the har­bour at a meet­ing also atten­ded by MP Dave Epp (C-Chatham-Kent–Leam­ing­ton).

Cec­cacci said mov­ing ahead with a solu­tion is cru­cial, not­ing Erieau busi­nesses thrive off of each other and feel any neg­at­ive impacts.

“Whether it be the com­mer­cial fish­ing, or whether it be the bars, the res­taur­ants,” he said. “Those are essen­tial to the health of the vil­lage.”

Dredging last took place at Erieau in 2006.

Ryan Demeur­ichy, har­bour­mas­ter for the Erieau Har­bour Author­ity Corp., said the con­di­tions have seen boat­ers move to Wheat­ley or Leam­ing­ton, which he noticed more of last sum­mer.

Some fish­ers are find­ing the travel dis­tance “almost not feas­ible,” he said, since their quotas are for cer­tain areas of the lake.

“It’s going to have a huge impact on the com­mer­cial side,” Demeur­ichy said Thursday. “For sport fish­ing, a lot of these lar­ger ves­sels, they could be see­ing issues com­ing into the chan­nel. Sail­boats, they were already get­ting stuck last year.”

In some spots, the water is only 60 cen­ti­metres (two feet) deep, he added.

The chan­nel, nor­mally about 4.5 metres (15 feet) deep, is now between 1.8 and 2.4 m (six and eight feet) deep.

“On calm days, it’s not too bad of an issue, but we’ve got lots of wind down here,” he said. “When waves start going, those boats . . . they’re hit­ting bot­tom.”

Demeur­ichy called the stake­holder meet­ing a pro­duct­ive way to get the word out, but believes the push needs to con­tinue.

“All these small-craft har­bours are hav­ing issues,” he said. “It’s nice that (aware­ness) is get­ting out and opened up people’s eyes.”

His­tor­ic­ally, the area was “self-scour­ing” because of wind and wave action, but the deteri­or­a­tion of the bar­rier beach has dimin­ished the flow, MP Epp said Thursday.

“The call for dredging has been escal­at­ing for awhile,” he said. “I’ve lent my voice, my sup­port.”

Epp said the mat­ter is of heightened import­ance and he plans to con­tinue to raise the urgency with the fed­eral gov­ern­ment.

“It needs to be elev­ated . . . for the Erieau situ­ation in the shortterm,” he said. “It needs an emer­gency dredge now . . . Then there needs to be the struc­tural issue regard­ing the bar­rier beach.

“If that gets addressed, I think we would . . . poten­tially remove the ongo­ing need for con­stant dredging in Erieau.

“It has been stud­ied. We need to move bey­ond stud­ies to action.”

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