Niagara River, USA - Jospeh Barrett | Great Lakes Guide
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Niagara River, USA

Joseph Barrett

My Watermark is the Niagara River, New York. I grew up on the Niagara River, I’m now 56 years old. I remember as a little kid starting at about 6 years old I knew exactly where everything was, how deep it was. Over the next 40 years I watched it change, and about 1997 I started asking questions as a policeman and a scientist.

I started asking the hard questions about was happening to our river, Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. Through a strange turn of events I wrote the Ice Boom Theory. It originally started off as Ice Boom Ideas, but a group of scientists got together and looked at all my supporting evidence and said it was far beyond a hypothesis, it was now theory.

So at that point I had a change of life and I went after the New York Power Authority at their re-licensing hearing in about 2007. They basically cheated the system and the people to continue with the destruction of our river systems.

Two notable things about the Ice Boom and its effect on the river is the extinction of the blue pike from the river due to the freezing and moving of minerals from the river to the lake causing one month of delay to the spawning period which was enough to wipe out the species.

Another thing to notice is the effect that the Ice Boom is having on smaller islands and shorelines and the recession of land vs the rising water levels caused by the Ice Boom which is practically eradicating these smaller islands and shorelines season by season.

One that holds meaning to me is Strawberry Island which used to be 42 acres of fields, where families would go and take the whole day to explore the island. Which has now been reduced to a measly 4 acres.

Location

Niagara River, USA

Watersheds

Lake Ontario

Collected by

Claire Lawson

Contributed by

Joseph Barrett

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