Chuck Ofenloch enjoys his property, which fronts on the southeast shore of Big Glen Lake.

A SMALL sand island about 100 yards offshore
from the Suttons Bay beach appeared this year.

From his beach he has watched  breathtaking sunsets and enjoyed the many benefits of living on one of the most beautiful lakes in the word.

Ofenloch is also a member of the Glen Lake Association, the riparian group that monitors the water level and quality of Glen Lake, Fisher Lake and the Crystal River. And he admits that water levels are very much on the mind of many lakefront home owners.

A past president of the association, Ofenloch has noticed that over the last four or five years a lack of precipitation was slowly having an impact on the lake’s surrounding watershed.

The trend continued in 2007 as a lack of rain, and hotter than normal summer temperatures, brought drought conditions to a head for most lakefront property owners. As summer wore on, more people noticed the water in the old Mill Pond, which lies on the west side of Dune Highway, just north of the Sleeping Bear Dune Climb, slowly disappear and by early fall was completely gone.

According to a “question-answer” format paper written by association member Vik Theiss, a branch of Hatlem Creek also dried up by late summer.

“We had so many calls during the later part of summer from riparians about the water levels. We had close to a 100 calls; a lot of people are concerned about what is happening in front of their house,” Ofenloch said.

What Theiss and the other members of the water level committee’s science resource panel discovered is that the water levels in Glen Lake and the Crystal River are affected more by evaporation and underground filtration than how much water is allowed to flow over the Crystal River dam.

In his Q&A paper, Theiss said from mid-June through mid-September only 35 to 40 percent of the water that leaves Glen Lake goes over the dam.

“The remaining 60 to 65 percent leaves the lake due to evaporation, which is most severe as the lake warms during the summer, and through underground seepage to Lake Michigan,” he said.

The overall Great Lakes basin is experiencing a drop in water levels, a trend that has taken place over the last five years. For November 2007, the Lake Michigan-Huron basin water level was 576.7 feet, which is 25 inches below average and 10 inches below the chart datum of 577.5 feet. The Detroit District Office of the Army Corps of Engineers monitors and takes the water level readings for the Great Lakes. According to its records, Lake Michigan is five inches above the record low lake level set in March 1964 of 576.28 feet.

Water levels have gone so low in Suttons Bay this winter that at least two, tiny islands have appeared just offshore of the village marina.

“There are actually a couple of little sand islands just out in the bay,” said Suttons Bay village clerk Dorothy Petroskey, “and this is the first year I can ever recall seeing them.”

She added that when village maintenance workers removed navigation buoys marking the marina entrance this fall, they did so without the aid of a boat.

“They just waded out there on foot and pulled them out,” Petroskey said.

While the county’s largest inland bodies of water, Glen Lake and Lake Leelanau, as well as Cedar Lake in Elmwood Township, all have water levels maintained by dams, riparians on the uncontrolled lakes like Little Traverse, Lime, Bass, School, Moughey and Mud have noticed a drop in water levels.

Marshall Meyer is president of the Lime Lake Association. From his dock on the north end of the lake he can see clear down to the south shore. While Lime Lake riparians noticed the water was level was down in mid-summer this year, Meyer said that by the time fall rolled around the lake level had risen four or five inches.

“We noticed it starting to go back up in August. We though it might be because of beavers so two of our members walked Shetland Creek all the way back to Little Traverse Lake. They then walked Shalda Creek all the way to the little red school house, and found no beaver dams,” he said.

Meyer said the association doesn’t keep a log on lake levels, and relies on what members report.

Wayne Swallow is part of the Lake Leelanau Lake Association’s water level committee. He lives in Traverse City, but has a place on the south part of the lake. He said since Lake Leelanau’s level is controlled by the dam on the river in Leland, most lakefront property owners haven’t worried too much about the water level.

“It stays pretty much the same,” he said.

The lake association has tracked the flow rate of streams that connect to Lake Leelanau.

Beaudwin Creek starts on the east side of the Narrows and flows northeast past Horn Road. In 1996, Beaudwin had a flow rate of 2.62 cubic feet per second. In 2006, the plummeted to 2.32 cubic feet per second. So far in 2007, the rate is 2.22.

Mebert Creek, which starts just north of Cattail Point on the east side of South Lake Leelanau, had a flow rate in 1995 of 3.78 cubic feet per second. In 2001, the rate fell to 0.65 and has increased to 1.73 cubic feet per second for 2007.

Matt Heiman is a land protection specialist with the Leelanau Conservancy who has a bachelor’s degree from Albion College and a background in aquatic ecology. He said the property owners on Glen Lake, Lake Leelanau and Cedar Lake are fortunate that they don’t experience the vagaries of weather as much as owners on smaller lakes.

“It is astonishing what some of those riparians go through. Just look at Moughey Lake in Omena. The water has all but disappeared, and it’s fed underground from Lake Michigan,” he said.

Heiman said another sign that the Great Lakes water levels are down is the condition of wetlands along the east side of the county, especially in the Lee Point area. As the water level has receded in West Grand Traverse Bay, the existing wetland areas have dried up and are migrating toward the shoreline.

The problem, according to Heiman, is that many of the property owners like the beach the way it is and don’t want to see a wetland established in front of their homes.

The conservancy owns a 40-acre parcel in the Lee Point area with frontage on the bay. “It has some upland area and a good-sized pond we had there has almost completely dried up. As it has dried up we’ve noticed upland trees, like poplar, establishing themselves in what had been a wetland area,” he said.

Lower water levels in the Great Lakes and inland water bodies are expected to continue for the near future, Heiman opined. “Water levels in the Great Lakes start with Lake Superior. Lake Superior needs to have a good-sized snow and ice cap that replenishes any water lost to evaporation over the prior year. We haven’t had a good snow and ice cap on Superior in a long time,” he said.