Eloika Lake Dam Idea Shelved Expense, Doubts About Success Doom Plan To Slow Lake’s Demise

Years of studies are for naught at Eloika Lake, where residents are giving up plans to build a dam they hoped would save the weed-choked lake.

Spokane County commissioners said Tuesday that they’re turning down a $400,000 state loan. That interest-free money sat unused for three years as engineers and lake residents discussed the dam proposal.

It would have been the responsibility of 325 landowners surrounding the lake to pay back the loan and raise an additional $300,000 that county engineers said was needed.

The cost of the project and skepticism about its chance for success overwhelmed the desire of lake residents to try just about anything to slow the lake’s demise.

Commissioner John Roskelley said residents next may stock the lake with weed-eating carp or buy a contraption to mow the weeds - efforts that have seen mixed results elsewhere. Engineers say dredging the lake would be more effective, but extremely expensive.

Eloika is one of several shallow lakes threaded along the West Branch of the Little Spokane River near the Pend Oreille County line. Development, farming and logging practices have greatly accelerated the aging process that is natural in all lakes.

Eloika is filling with silt, and by late summer has just a narrow channel of open water, about 15 feet deep. Elsewhere, the silt is deeper than the water, providing an environment in which aquatic weeds thrive.

The mats of weeds are loved by ducks, but not by fishermen, skiers and many of the people whose homes and cabins overlook the lake.

Water-quality experts suggested the low concrete dam as a partial solution. The plan called for lowering the water in winter so aquatic plants would be left exposed and freeze. The water would be kept artificially high in summer so less light would reach the lake bed, stifling photosynthesis.

County engineers who reviewed the plan doubted it would work, especially since the lake now hosts an underwater forest of Eurasian millfoil. The exotic weed is nearly impossible to eradicate.

Raising the lake would greatly increase evaporation of its water, meaning the Eloika Lake Community Association would need water rights before it could build the dam.

So many pipes suck water from the Little Spokane River that water rights are extremely difficult to obtain.

The state Department of Ecology “will fight tooth and nail in the courts if they need to,” to prevent any new rights, said Commissioner John Roskelley.

“The possibility of putting in a dam is pretty slim,” even if money weren’t an issue, Roskelley said.

Roskelley said he found overwhelming opposition to the plan and its costs during a Feb. 26 meeting of lake residents.

Longtime resident Vic Soules conceded the dam plan he championed appears doomed.

But, Soules said, he and others may ask a judge to establish the legal lake level. Soules believes the lake historically was higher than it now is, but was lowered by a farmer who knocked out a natural dam to extend his pasture.

If Soules is right, the proposed dam could be built without water rights to replace the natural dam.

“We’re talking about hiring a lawyer,” he said.

Based on other engineers’ estimates, Soules believes the county’s estimate of the total cost is off by as much as $400,000. As to the county’s warning that the dam won’t work, Soules notes that it was backed by more than $200,000 worth of state-funded studies.

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