Extent of recent Lake Champlain flooding. Map: Lake Champlain Basin Program

The Burlington Free Press is reporting this morning that Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin thinks that climate change may have already changed life in the Champlain Valley for good.

“We’re concerned about how we get the resources to solve the new reality of higher water levels,” Shumlin said. “Our assumptions about the places we live and recreate have to change. We need to think about how we plan for the next 50 years” of what is likely to be wetter weather.

Shumlin has already opened talks with Quebec’s Premier Jean Charest and plans to draw New York Governor Andrew Cuomo into the conversation.

His comments follow a Washington Post essay published by Vermont’s leading climate change activist Bill McKibben, who argued that global weather crises — from Midwestern tornadoes to “megafloods” — could be triggered by global warming.

“Do we have a bigger problem than $4-a-gallon gasoline?” McKibben asked.

So what do you think?  As hundreds of homeowners along the shore of Lake Champlain hunker down for another month underwater, are we already living in a world significantly altered by carbon pollution?

As always your comments welcome.

Conklingville Dam on Great Sacandaga Reservoir (Source: HRBRRD)

At the height of the spring floods earlier this month, officials with the Hudson River Black River Regulating District issued a warning that their massive dam on the Great Sacandaga Reservoir might be failing.

The announcement triggered a near panic among some residents.  This morning, the Glens Falls Post Star reports on a meeting between District officials and local emergency responders to talk about what happened.

Online and by phone, officials said, alarm about a breach at the dam spread rapidly among residents and was hard to quell.

“We certainly didn’t want to create panic in the street, but we did want to give some level of urgency to our message,” said Paul Lent, director of the Saratoga County Office of Emergency Services. “It’s a really delicate walk.”

Equally alarming, perhaps, was the fact that many residents apparently weren’t notified that there might be a significant problem with the structure, which holds back one of the largest waterbodies in the North Country.

Warren County officials have been criticized for not being more proactive in alerting residents, but they have defended their response by saying the information showed there was little reason for concern.

In fact, the alert was a false alarm, based on erroneous water-level readings.  Pressed to develop a better system for alerting the public about problems, the Regulating District said it lacked the cash to do so.

Read the Post Star’s full article here.

Lake Champlain rose again yesterday – as south winds pushed water back onto roads and waterfront.

Communities had been fearing a shift in the winds. The lake is LONG…and even in normal times, a persistent wind can shift volumes of water, sort of tilting the surface one way or the other.

The Plattsburgh Press Republican reports this morning that winds of 20 to 30 miles an hour brought the lake up to nearly 103 feet above sea level, higher than it was over the weekend.

Town and city crews from Plattsburgh to Rousses Point worked to shore up emergency berms protecting roads and properties.

Clinton County Emergency Services Director Eric Day told the Press republican damage was widespread to south-facing property on the lake.

“About a month ago, we had the same wind,” he told the paper, but then, “the lake was three feet lower.”

Yesterday, I stood in the living room of Charity Marlatt high on a hillside over Keene Valley.  Her home sits on a big slab of glacial soil and rock that’s slowly oozing downward.

Weeks of heavy rain have dislodged a section of the hillside roughly a mile in circumference.

Meanwhile, the 600-mile shoreline of Lake Champlain remains underwater, with banks eroded, homes and businesses flooded.

The Raquette River reached a level that Mike Lynch, at the Adirondack Daily Enterprise, described as a 500-year high.

The torrent devastated homes, damaged wastewater treatment plants, and stretched emergency responder crews to the limit.

Even when the rain stops (maybe Saturday) it could take weeks for hillsides to stabilize and lakes to return to normal levels.

With Memorial Day weekend drawing near, that means the brief, vitally important tourism season is imperiled for many communities.

It’s difficult sometimes to put events like this one in perspective. Is the flood a big enough disaster to really change things in the North Country?  I’m not sure.

But I do suspect that some towns and villages could feel the effects for a longer period than, say, after the massive ice storm of 1998.

How come?

First, because many communities, and their economies, are more fragile now than they were just a dozen years ago.

We’re grayer than we were back then, thanks to long-standing demographic trends.  And many of our businesses have been weakened by the recession.

It strikes me as symbolic that Port Henry — one of the hardest hit communities — no longer has an Aubuchon hardware stores downtown where you can buy the supplies needed in a disaster like this.

How will shops and markets in Willsboro, Essex and Westport get by if the crucial ferry to Vermont remains closed for several more weeks?

Farmers, too, are struggling with flooded, mud-choked fields at a time when they’re also faced with rising fuel costs, and unstable milk prices.

Meanwhile, a lot of local leaders I talk to are skeptical about the ability of New York state and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to offer much help.

New York state is basically broke.  And FEMA is busy wrestling with natural disasters in the South, the Midwest, and the Mississippi River valley that make our floods look downright tame.

Who knows how this will all play out? People here are resilient, creative, and they’ve weathered big storms before.

Maybe a year from now, the flood won’t look like such a big deal.

Still, for hundreds of families and business owners — from the Adirondacks to Great Sacandaga, the Hudson Valley and Lake Champlain to the St. Lawrence Valley — there are clearly some bitter weeks and months ahead.

We should all keep this in mind as the floods slip out of the headlines and the summer weather finally arrives.  For many of our neighbors, the effects of the high water will linger for a long time.

What do you think?  How has the Flood of 2011 affected you, your family, and your community?  Comments welcome below.

We were swallowed up by flood reporting this week, and that’s apparently what interested you the most as well. All five of our top reports and blog posts involved high water.

First was David Sommerstein’s report about fresh worries and some accusations in Colton on May 5th.

Then came Chris Knight’s report that Saranac Lake village could face damage topping $5 million.

We also had a lot of traffic for stories about Lake Champlain flooding, which you can check out here and here.

There was a good discussion on the In Box about the role of big government in responding to crises like this one.

We also got a lot of attention for our report looking at cooperation and teamwork between communities and state agencies.