In the summer of 2019, Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River rose about three feet above their normal levels—breaking records. That flooding carried into the St. Lawrence River. Docks were submerged. Waves lapped against homes and buildings. People said they’d never seen anything like it.
"Water went halfway across our property," said Barbara O’Keefe, the president of the Fort La Presentation Association.
O'Keefe is looking out over the St. Lawrence River from Van Rensselaer Point. She's at the Fort La Presentation Historic Park in Ogdensburg.
"To stand here we watch the wind just throw the water over, it was so frustrating. You couldn't do anything about it," she said.
When the water finally receded, it took about a quarter acre of land with it, O'Keefe said.
She said the experience inspired the association to prioritize shoreline resiliency.
After more than a million dollars in construction, this stretch of shoreline is now reinforced with giant rock slabs designed to retain the land that’s left. Hearty plants, trees and grasses line the edge.
This shoreline is the backdrop for a park, with walking trails, picnic benches and historic sites.
It has all the components to be a thriving community spot, Timothy Cryderman said. He's also on the association's board and was the clerk of works for the shoreline project.
"We have steps down to the water where you can kayak, canoe, fish, walk, bike, jog," he said. "In the future, we're planning to have more things on the historic level—building a historic fort, and a visitor center."
That’s why it’s critical to make sure it can withstand the flooding that’s bound to come, Cryderman said.
This is the approach experts are hoping property owners and communities along the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River will take moving forward because of climate change.
The changing climate drives more extreme storms
"There's more extreme events, and those extreme events are where the shoreline change happens," said Roy Widrig, a Great Lakes coastal processes and hazard specialist with New York Sea Grant. That's an organization that helps to educate the public. It's like Cornell Extension, but for shorelines instead of agriculture.
Erosion along the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River happens in different ways, Widrig said.
On Lake Ontario, more extreme storms are making bigger waves. Those waves churn up more sediment and pull it deeper into the lake.
"The waves can no longer kick that back up and bring it back to the shoreline on calmer days," he said. "So a lot of the sediment that used to be in the shoreline is actually moving out to the lake [and] isn't as accessible by the waves anymore. It's not rebuilding the shoreline as much as it used to."
On the St. Lawrence River, that doesn’t happen as much because dams control water levels. Shoreline erosion happens when the river and its tributaries flood, like in 2019.
How warmer winters will impact shoreline erosion
Warmer winters make the coastline particularly vulnerable, Widrig said.
According to New York's Climate Assessment, the Great Lakes region can expect some of the highest temperature increases, along with more precipitation.
"The lakes are staying warmer later, and that is one of the driving forces behind big lake effect events," Widrig said. "You need to have the warm water."
While there may be adequate ice some years to protect the shores from big waves, during other winters, there won't be enough. That could wreak havoc on the shores.
"That's when the waves start pushing the ice onto the shoreline. They scour into the shoreline. They gouge the shoreline," he said.
Widrig said the damage is compounded because people have been building bigger along the shore than they did 40 years ago.
"When you say like, 'In 1984, we had a little bit of erosion at our cottage. We lost a foot of shoreline.' But now, in 2024, it's like, 'We had a foot of erosion, and we lost an $80,000 boat house, and now we have to put in a $60,000 seawall to replace what we lost."'
Finding solutions—and the money
That's what Widrig wants to help people avoid. While he mostly works with private property owners on natural shoreline stabilization, Sea Grant also supports communities.
Local governments face their own sets of challenges as they try to address shoreline erosion. A major hurdle is outdated land regulations and building codes.
"We want to be designing with the environment the way it is, instead of a way we decided to that really isn't serving us," said Lauren Darcy with New York Sea Grant. Darcy is a Great Lakes coastal resilience specialist.
She said the other big issue is finding the money.
New York State has been leaning in to help.
After the flooding in 2019, the state allocated $300 million to help tackle coastal resiliency along Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River.
There are more opportunities for grants, too, like through the Department of Environmental Conservation and the Department of State, Darcy said.
She said getting communities to focus on and invest in shoreline resilience can be a tough sell when flooding is out of sight and out of mind.
"It is not hard to communicate that this is something they should be thinking about, " Darcy said. "It can be difficult to get to a point where we can act on these ideas, given all the competing priorities and sets of urgencies of other things that they need to be worried about."
Shorelines continue to erode in Ogdensburg
Back at the Fort la Presentation Park in Ogdensburg, there’s still more that needs to be done.
"If you want to get an idea how the erosion got real bad, look at this," Timothy Cryderman said while giving a tour of the Fort la Presentation Park.
Since the association tackled the original shoreline stabilization project, they’ve acquired more land.
Cryderman stands a ways back from the water’s edge. He points to the half-buried remnants of old train tracks hanging over the river. They were once firmly on shore.
"It also tells you, at one time, it was strong enough and secure enough where they ran trains over here. Now, I like to say I wouldn't even walk over there," he said.
Cryderman said the association has applied for more funding and hasn’t gotten it. But it’s still trying. He said it’s essential to make our communities more resilient for the storms to come.