The Bluewater Ferry service that runs between Sombra and Marine City, Mich., has been shut down since Jan. 3 due to Great Lakes ice cover.
The ferry has been stuck at the Canada Customs dock and there will be no passage any time soon for the commuter carrier.
"It's hurting us," says Bluewater Ferry owner Rob Dalgety. "There's deck hands and people aren't working. It definitely hurts us and we have a lot of workers that cross. They have to go up and cross the bridge now and it's just inconvenient, I guess."
According to Environment Canada, about 86 per cent of the Great Lakes are covered in ice and that’s well above the normal level of 35 per cent coverage for this time of year.
The ferry normally runs 30 trips per day and over the course of two months that's about 1,800 lost trips so far. Last winter there were no shutdowns due to ice.
But it's not all the fault of Mother Nature. The nearby Lambton Generating Station, which closed last fall, used to pump warm water into the river, causing ice melt in some places.
On the other side of the river, you can see open water from a pair of Michigan power plants.
However, not everyone is complaining about the ice cover.
Some ice fisherman say this is the first time they've been able to fish past the bridge over the Sombra cut line.
"This is a bit unusual and we can attribute some of it to the fact that Lambton (Generating Station) is shut down and we don't get that warm water coming in and we've had more ice fast to the shore than we have in the past," says Lars Bowman.
Ferry service is not expected to resume until at least next month, when winter starts to loosen its grip and the river starts to flow again.
Last April, extremely low water caused the closure of the ferry service and for the first time ever, the owners of the service were forced to rebuild their docks so their vessels could cross the St. Clair River.
