Around Lake Ontario, Neighbors Debate Dam, Property Values and Muskrats

Regulation of Lake Ontario water levels has many complex impacts on people, property, and ecosystems. Now a plan might return the lake to the rhythms of nature.

"OFF GRINDSTONE ISLAND, N.Y. — When Jeff Garnsey, a third-generation fishing guide along the St. Lawrence River, looks at the water off Grindstone Island, he notices that it does not move the way it used to.

'The current isn’t running through,' Mr. Garnsey said, standing on a river-borne skiff and pointing out at a silt-filled channel. 'It’s been choked off.'

The culprit, he says, is clear: the decades-old controls at the Moses-Saunders hydroelectric dam that regulate the height of Lake Ontario and, by extension, the water level for more than 700 miles of property, from New York’s Thousand Islands to beaches outside Toronto."

Jesse Mckinley reports for the New York Times March 11, 2015.