General studies : November, 1967 / by John C. Ayers, Joseph C. K. Huang.

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between Michigan City and Benton Harbor.
The directions and speeds of the local water currents in the
area of.the plant site will control the movement and dispersal of
the plant effluent. In other alongshore environments that we have
studied in the Great Lakes, the currents alongshore are usually
established by and controlled by interactions between local winds
and any significant regional current pattern. In the alongshore
areas previously studied, the local winds have been the dominant
factor in the control of the local currents. We have no reason
to expect that this will not be true at the present site, but we
have not yet collected sufficient evidence to determine whether
the effect of the regional current pattern will be as minor here
as it has been at other sites.
Spot-sampling of simultaneous wind and current conditions has
been carried on in connection with other portions of the work done
off the plant site, but such sampling cannot readily accumulate
the very large numbers of observations needed to understand the
mechanism controlling the local currents. Especially spot-sampling
cannot supply the large series of time-sequence data needed to
determine whether present currents are influenced by past winds.
Continuously recorded simultaneous wind and current conditions are
in progress to obtain the needed data.
Although the recording and analysis of these data have been
a matter of dominant interest since the beginning of the contract,
we have been prevented from getting at it by simple inability to
obtain the necessary instruments. Winter storms and winter shoreice are almost certain to destroy underwater installations that
are anything other than massive; installation of the underwater