Rising Water Reveals Need For Spillway Sewer, Gas Lines In Jeopardy If Hayden Lake Dike Fails

A heavy snowpack, ready to cut loose any day, has county officials worried enough to call for emergency action.

If temperatures rise considerably and rain pummels the mountains, the rising water in Hayden Lake could overwhelm the dike near Honeysuckle Beach, said Kootenai County Disaster Services coordinator Bill Schwartz.

“If this dike were to fail on us, flooding is very possible,” he said. “We want people to be prepared and take precautionary measures.”

Not only could homes downstream flood if the dike failed, but a flood could breach both a sewer line and a natural gas line that run through the dike.

Schwartz and Kootenai County Commissioner Dick Panabaker called a press conference on the dike Wednesday to draw attention to the problem.

Today, they plan to send an emergency declaration to the state Bureau of Disaster Services.

“It informs them we have potential for serious concern,” Schwartz explained.

And, he said, it could prompt the Federal Emergency Management Agency to hurry up and release money for dike improvements.

FEMA has agreed to give the county $35,000 to $45,000 to build a spillway in the dike to allow another means for high water to escape the lake. Now the only outlet is a culvert, which has been open all winter.

The federal agency was waiting for engineering information to confirm that building a spillway wouldn’t weaken the dam. They got the information a week or two ago, Panabaker said.

The commissioners plan to go ahead with the spillway work in the hopes that the FEMA money will come through and reimburse the county, Panabaker said.

“Last year, we were three inches from the top of the dike,” Panabaker said. “This year we expect a foot more. We don’t have a lot of choice. We need to get after this thing.”

The weather Wednesday was more wintry than spring-like. The National Weather Service has not issued any warning of an imminent flood threat.

However, the snowpack is double what it usually is for this time of year. A snow course station on Corner Creek above the lake shows that the water content of the snow is 214 percent of normal.

“The amount of snow that’s up there is at or near record amounts,” said Bob Haynes of the state Department of Water Resources. “Unless we have a really dry two months, the weather isn’t going to help us any.”

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