IS GREAT LAKES WATER DRAINING?
Friday, October 19th, 2007 -- 1:34 PM
Where is all the water going?The federal governments of Canada and the United States promised Thursday to work faster to get the bottom of the spooky loss of water from Lakes Michigan and Huron.
One of the leading theories is there may be a "drain hole" caused by a 1960s Army Corps of Engineers dredging project.
A private group commissioned a study that found an astonishing 2.5 billion gallons of water a day is lost due to ever-eroding river bottom.
The group blames the erosion for a loss of about 2.3 feet in the long-term average for both lakes, which are actually one body of water.
Theories behind the erosion include the idea that when the Army Corps dredged the river bottom to open the upper Great Lakes to oceangoing freighters, the agency removed a durable layer of stone and exposed a soft, erodible river bottom.
But erosion certainly isn't the only reason lake levels are down. Weather has always been a big factor.
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