Crosswinds Marsh is shrinking.

I'm used to winter water levels on dammed ponds.  Those who operate dams lower the water levels in a containment area to sudden inflows of precipitation expected during the colder months of the year.  It protects the structure from suffering a breach and helps control the water levels in flows downstream from a containment area.

Crosswinds Marsh had all the indications that its water level was lowered when I visited Monday.  Reeds abutted mud flats, and the posts on walkways which traverse the ponds showed at least at two foot gap between the dark high water mark and the existing level.

Sometimes normal for a Michigan November 19 on a controlled containment pond, except Crosswinds doesn't have a mechanism for lowering water levels installed in its dam.

It's meant to be a permanent wetland which replaced wetlands consumed by nearby airport runway expansion more than 10 years ago.  The rule at that time was every acre of virgin wetland which is filled in for construction purposes had to be replaced with two acres of "new" wetland.

Crosswinds features a horse trail which winds around the outside of the marsh for more than five miles.  The trail at the outer reaches is dry because it runs along the dam created to contain the water in the wetland.  The outlet is closed with a structure which allows water to flow over the edge to maintain the levels within the confines of the outer dams.

Usually, water trickles over the top into a marl bed which filters out silt and allows relatively clean water to flow toward Lake Erie to  the southeast.  Monday the top looked like a narrow walkway, water far below the top level.