Tourism Goes Down The Drain At Lake Lake Roosevelt Drawdowns May Helped Portland, Not Other Towns

After several years of rapid growth, the number of visitors to Lake Roosevelt fell sharply this spring, hurting tourist-based businesses and communities.

Speakers at a forum here Friday blamed flood control drawdowns for the 32 percent drop in visitors during the first six months of this year compared to 1995.

The lake, formed by water backing up behind Grand Coulee Dam, was well below summer levels until the end of June, leaving most boat launches high and dry.

One fishing guide said the reservoir’s popular kokanee salmon were nearly wiped out by the drawdown, meant to make room for snowmelt that might otherwise have flooded Portland and other downstream cities.

“I thought we were trying to restore salmon species,” fishing guide Greg Doering told the Lake Roosevelt Forum, a coalition of government and business leaders from communities surrounding the 150-mile-long reservoir.

Doering also believes the drawdown killed the plankton that makes Lake Roosevelt a fish factory. Kokanee eat the plankton, as do small fish that feed walleye and other sport fish.

Rentals for houseboats operated by the Colville Confederated Tribes were down about 85 percent in April, May and June, said Susie Marchant of tribal-run Roosevelt Recreation Enterprises. In Kettle Falls, near the north end of the reservoir, “we didn’t have a Memorial Day weekend,” said Chris Sanders, director of the town’s chamber of commerce.

Although the water had risen in time for the town’s walleye tournament in late June, the spring drawdown scared many contenders out of risking the $260 entry fee, said Sanders.

Competitors still caught about 3,000 walleye, but the fish were skinnier than in the past, said Sanders.

“The drawdown plays real havoc with a community that’s desperately looking for a way to end that 60 percent timber dependency,” she said.

Officials for Grand Coulee National Recreation Area said the drawdowns were the most obvious cause of the decline in tourism, which had climbed about 25 percent in recent years.

High gasoline prices and lousy weather may also be responsible, said assistant superintendent George Phillips. However, the spring of 1995 also was wet and cold.

There are no easy solutions, said Grand Coulee Dam manager Steve Clark.

If not for the threat of floods, the drawdowns may have been required to help flush migrating salmon from the lower Columbia River into the Pacific Ocean, Clark said.

And the dam must be drawn down occasionally for maintenance, said another worker.

While Lake Roosevelt recreation is a $150 million industry, Clark noted that the dam also provides electricity for 7 million people, irrigates $300 million worth of crops and prevents hundreds of millions of dollars in flood damage.

“If you begin to maximize one of those interests it’s at the expense of others,” he said.

Locals at the forum were joined by representatives for U.S. Reps. George Nethercutt and Doc Hastings, and Sen. Slade Gorton.

The drawdown is one of the most common topics when people call Nethercutt’s Colville office, said congressional aide Cathy LeBret.

Some callers want Nethercutt to find an endangered species in Lake Roosevelt that must be protected. That, they reason, is the only way to prevent the Bureau of Reclamation from spilling large amounts of water over Grand Coulee.

, DataTimes