Page 17 - SLPOA Spring 2014 Newsletter

SPRING 2014 NEWSLETTER SHARBOT LAKE PROPERTY OWNERS’ ASSOCIATION

Water Level Concerns
Kevin Browne

When I arrived at my cottage for Easter weekend I was surprised by the water level of the lake. I tried to
remember if I had ever seen it this high before and even though we keep a journal, this seemed to be a new
record. This made me decide to investigate and thankfully, the MVCA provides a Water Gauge that is
automatically read on a daily basis for our lake. You can access the readings for this gauge on the MVCA site
at http://www.mvc.on.ca/water-levels/. Select the Daily Lake Levels option and choose Sharbot Lake and enter
in the date range that you would like to
know about.
The automatic lake gauge is located
where Sharbot Lake enters into Elbow
lake under Guige Rd. There is also a
manual gauge stick attached to the old
rail road bridge along Hwy 38 on the
West Basin side.
Sadly it only started in 2004 but in
discussing it with MVCA they have
manual records that go back to 1995.
Of course this produced a large amount
of data as it was daily readings and it
took some time to work my way
through it to determine when the
lowest level and highest level occurred.

These measurements are based on
meters above Sea Level (MASL).

Based on the MVCA records, the
lowest level occurred in September
2001 with a reading of 191.38 and the
highest level occurred April 17, 2014
at 192.46 MASL, so this is a variance
of 1.08 meters (3.54 feet). The second
highest level on record occurred in
April 1998 at 192.37 MASL.
Upon reviewing the historical readings
you can calculate the spring average of
192.23 MASL showing that this year’s
level is 0.23 meters (0.754 feet -
approximately 9 inches) over the
average spring level.
This leaves me to wonder when the
lake level will lower enough that we
can get our boats into the East Basin
and perhaps we should bring this to the
attention of our elected representatives
as we go back to the polls.

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