A Lake Ontario water level topping 248 feet, according to the Army Corps of Engineers, combined with strong northwest winds to send the lake flooding into the ponds, bays and creeks along the shoreline Tuesday morning.
Edgemere drive flooded between Dewey Avenue and Island Cottage Road in Greece as water poured down the driveways of lakeshore homes. The town had to close the road in two different locations.
At Charlotte, the water was over the sidewalk along the Genesee River, and Slater Creek was flooding the field by the fishing access. Water was touching the bottom of the bridge over the creek. Old Edgemere Drive flooded rapidly, appearing to be a river by late afternoon. Flooding took place all along the lakeshore including Hamlin and Parma.
Members of the International Joint Commission that regulates the Great Lakes says there's little they could have done to prevent flooding this year along Lake Ontario...this year, or two years ago.
This happened the same day that commissioners of the International Joint Commission, the body that regulates the Great Lakes, came to Greece for a meeting with local government officials from the Lakeshore. They got an earful, with many pushing them to reverse Plan 2014, the formula that governs the lakes.
U.S. Commission Co-Chair Jane Corwin says they let out as much water from Lake Ontario as they could in the fall trying to avoid this situation...but there have been record rainfalls and snowmelt. She says they are outstripping the regulators’ ability to move water out by the Saint Lawrence River.
One of the officials at that meeting was State Senator Joe Robach of Greece. He doesn’t buy it. Robach says it’s no coincidence that there’s been flooding two out of three years since Plan 2014 took effect. He said if the commission wants to study what’s going on, they should roll back to the former plan for a couple of years and see how that goes.
Robach says he wants the primary concern now to be the home and business owners along the southern shore of Lake Ontario whose properties are at risk.