IJC will add 2 new members to board
New commissioners will be from communities affected by flooding
The International Joint Commission has announced plans to add two new members to the International Lake Ontario-St. Lawrence River Board.
The board currently has six members, with three from the United States and three from Canada.
Jane Corwin, a former state assemblywoman from Clarence, is co-chair of the board along with Pierre Béland of Canada.
The IJC is tasked with regulating the water levels from Lake Ontario and has been under fire with flooding this year and also in 2017.
The IJC will add a new commissioner from both the U.S. and Canada. The new members will come from municipalities on the shores of Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River/
They will complement the existing work of the LOSLR board and assist “with efforts to document the human and social impacts of recent flooding at the local and municipal level in order to enrich the board’s discussions and decisions,” the IJC said in a news release today.
Additionally, should funding be secured from the Canadian and US governments, the IJC will be seeking to appoint two public members to a proposed advisory group under the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Adaptive Management Committee, the IJC said.
“These public members would be able to provide knowledge on the upstream and downstream impacts of high water levels on local citizens and local governments,” according to the statement.
