Avista deal includes new rec site

Avista has pledged $200,000 to build a new recreation site on Lake Coeur d’Alene as part of a deal that wins the support of the Bureau of Land Management for the company’s attempt to relicense its Post Falls dam.

The settlement announced Wednesday also requires Avista to pay $33,000 a year to the BLM for upkeep of the agency’s 10 existing recreation sites, including boat launches and picnic areas on Wolf Lodge Bay, Blackwell Island, Windy Bay and Mica Bay. Both Avista and the BLM declined to say where the new site will be located.

At 10 megawatts, the Post Falls dam is not a major power producer for the Spokane-based utility. Rather, its main purpose is maintaining the water level of Lake Coeur d’Alene and regulating the flow of the Spokane River.

Though it’s of less financial importance than Avista’s larger dams, perhaps no other dam in the company’s system affects so many people.

If Avista wants to keep operating the dam for electricity, it needs to renew its license from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission by July 2007. Next week, other government agencies, including the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Coeur d’ Alene Tribe, are due to submit to FERC lists of their demands on Avista.

The BLM agreement is the first Avista has struck on the Post Falls dam relicensing project.

Scott Forssell of the BLM said budgets are tight and reaching a deal was the surest way keep up with maintenance needs and at the same time add more services on a lake where recreational use is rising rapidly.

Avista spokesman Hugh Imhof said the company wants further settlements, but is concerned that conditions sought by other parties in the relicensing project might be too onerous.

If the company considers their demands – to offset erosion, for example, or the loss of wetlands – too costly, Avista may appeal, Imhof said. The company is simultaneously attempting to relicense its other Spokane River dams.