Harbor Island Sandbag Wall Gets Elevated Still Might Not Hold Off Rising Spokane River

Walls of sandbags erected two weeks ago on Harbor Island might not be tall enough to hold back the rising waters of the Spokane River.

“This hot weather sort of caught us off guard,” said Gordon Anderson, president of the Harbor Island Property Owners Association.

The higher than normal temperatures have spurred the mountain snowmelt, causing rivers and lakes to shoot toward their highest levels yet this year.

Anderson spent part of Tuesday supervising a sandbagging operation on the north side of the island. Men and women with the Sheriff’s Community Labor Program were rebuilding a sandbag wall, making it wider and longer.

“We’ve come up 10 inches just since yesterday,” Anderson said, peering through his surveying equipment to a point where the wall should eventually reach.

“We’re actually going to get a little higher than it was last year,” he said of the river.

As he spoke, the river was lapping over a retaining wall and a large log sailed past. Piles of sand waited in strategic locations around the island in the event Lake Coeur d’Alene surges toward 2,136 feet.

Washington Water Power predicts that the lake will crest at 2,135.5 feet - 7.5 feet above summer level - next week or by Memorial Day weekend, said Pat Lynch, WWP spokesman.

The overnight temperatures “didn’t cool things off, it just accelerated the snowpack melt,” Lynch said.

On Tuesday, the lake was above 2,133.5 feet and rising.

The rising lake is backing up into the St. Joe and Coeur d’Alene rivers. While the rivers were pouring water into the lake at a rate of 45,000 cubic feet per second, the Spokane River was taking it away at just 32,000 cfs.

The National Weather Service continued its flood warning for the St. Joe River and predicted the river would reach 2,138 feet by today in St. Maries - rising 2 feet in one day.

, DataTimes