ROCHESTER, N.Y. — ​Lake Ontario's shoreline is where Chris Bain and the girls she grew up with still call home.

"Since school we've been together. Then we all moved up here. It's been great," said Bain, who, with her husband, has lived along Edgemere Drive in Greece for 17 years. "It is truly a dream living here. But it's getting to be more a nightmare."

And few have lived both like Bain. She raised her children here and loved the long views down Edgemere's shoreline. Yet, even in this summer when Ontario's levels are actually lower than usual, she still sees the reflection of two recent watershed springs that nearly washed all the good times away.

"We had the water come up, splash up all the way down here to the and matted out at the street," said Bain, whose home rises early 10 feet above the lake's resting level.

Historically high lake levels in 2017 and 2019 bashed Ontario's southern shoreline.

"Yeah, it didn't kill us here. Like I said, it just ruined a lot of stuff," Bain said. “We got it worse at our garage on the on the inland side of the street. That's where the water backed up from the channel and swamped us."

And like so many, Bain watched the lake batter her view across this inland sea.

It already seems like ancient history, water levels raised for shipping by the International Joint Commission under the controversial Plan 2014 flooded scars across New York's Ontario shoreline.

State and federally funded projects like a new break wall along the Goodwin Park inlet, are meant to prevent high water horrors. But with what feels like progress comes the crash of a new wave of lakeshore burden, courtesy of FEMA.

"They're remapping the floodplains," said Scott Copey, Greece's head of economic development. "Establishing floodplain designations, some different designations to accommodate different flood impacts. In the past, regulations and the flood insurance programs accommodated still water flooding."

FEMA requires all properties with federally-guaranteed mortgages within its designated floodplains to have flood insurance, but not the man-made lake levels raised by the IJC during those disastrous springs. FEMA wants to change that. In return, it will propose regulating all landowners who fall into those high water's path get flood insurance.

Most in Greece near the lake and its floodplain as designed currently do not.

"They're more than doubling the number of homes that will be in our floodplains," Copey said. "From more than 200 to likely, more than 500. So a lot of people would have to have flood insurance."

Bain's not buying it. As she looks at the concrete splash wall that now stands between her house and the next lake event, she remembers the flood insurance that would not cover flood damage caused by "man-made" lake levels, such as those installed by the IJC.

"Why get it if it won't cover it?  If they change it, that's one thing. Even if that happens, we may dip into our 401K to pay off our mortgage so that we won't have to get it," Bain said.

Government aid had helped to partially cover plenty of disaster rebuilds across Lake Ontario's southern shoreline across New York State. So the idea of expecting everyone to have flood insurance in floodplains is okay with some here, including Rick Albright. His home is 100 yards down Edgemere from the Bains' house, and sustained its share of flood damage.

"It probably makes more sense to have insurance, flood insurance, because it will provide the monies for those kinds of disasters," said Albright. "If you take the risk and don't get flood insurance, that's on you, it's not on the taxpayers."

Some communities along the lake planned to cushion the blow, including Greece.

"People who have flood insurance in the town of Greece get a 20% discount because we have such a good floodplain management program," Copey said.

Still, for-sale signs are popping up in lakeshore neighborhoods like Edgemere, bracing for what could be, on average, a $2,500 a year addition to the dream of lake living.

For homeowners like the Bains, the ever-changing waters of the shore may not be in the plans.

"Friends always say, 'aren't you afraid to stay on the lake?' ” she said. “And I say, 'I don't know.' You never know. Are they going to raise it, or it's going to be like this year and it's lower than it should be?"

FEMA starts introducing its floodplain insurance plan later this summer.