Utilities Block Experiment To Raise Lake Levels

An experiment designed to save Lake Pend Oreille’s kokanee population has been scuttled by five utilities that own dams downstream.

Among them is the Pend Oreille County Public Utility District, whose manager suggested last week that marina profits and property values, not science, are behind the proposed test.

Idaho state biologists wanted the experiment to begin this fall.

“It would definitely cost Pend Oreille PUD a lot of money,” said Larry Weis, general manager of the Newport-based utility, which owns Washington’s Box Canyon Dam.

“In my opinion this is not driven by fish, but by marina and lakeshore issues,” he added.

Idaho Fish and Game Commissioner Dick Hansen, who owns a marina on Lake Pend Oreille, said there’s nothing wrong with lakeshore property owners wanting the water kept a few feet higher like it used to be.

But he blasted the suggestion that the experiment is anything but a desperately needed move to save the kokanee.

“I’m sick,” he said about the utility company objections.

“We just got blindsided by the PUDs. I can’t imagine the degree of corporate greed that drives this system.”

The proposed experiment would keep the lake level higher for three winters, to provide more shoreline spawning areas for the kokanee.

That means less water would be available to turn turbines at downstream dams at the time of year when it’s most valuable.

, DataTimes