Record Snowpack Could Bring Floods This Spring Clark Fork, Lake Pend Oreille Homeowners Could Be In For Trouble

Forget year 2000 worries.

The people of Clark Fork, Idaho, and Lake Pend Oreille waterfront homeowners had better concentrate on spring 1999.

That’s when a record snowpack in the Selkirk and Cabinet mountains is expected to melt, swelling streams, rivers and lakes.

Federal, state and local officials met Thursday to discuss a long-term fix for the flooding Lightning Creek drainage but also listened to some words of caution.

Ron Abramovich, a hydrologist with the Natural Resource Conservation Service, presented the latest information on the area’s snowpack.

The mountains to the north of Lake Pend Oreille have record levels of snow and water content. The snowpack that feeds the Coeur d’Alene and St. Joe rivers is nearing 1997 levels.

“You have another month and a half of winter to go in the higher elevations,” Abramovich said. The snow-melt season runs from April to July. The forecast for above-normal precipitation and temperatures in April and May adds an ominous ingredient to an already risky mix.

A recording site above Priest River shows snowpack at 178 percent of normal and shows the highest water content since a record was set in 1936, Abramovich said.

Priest River is forecast to run 118 to 140 percent of normal this spring.

The Lightning Creek drainage near Clark Fork, Idaho, has the most precipitation in the state and a record 86 inches of water in the snowpack.

“We may not be out of the woods up there,” said John Coyle of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Coyle recently oversaw the $150,000 dredging of Lightning Creek to make room for spring floodwaters. The federal agency funded the project after Clark Fork and Bonner County officials declared a state of emergency for Lightning Creek.

Local officials were worried that the gravel and debris filling the creek bed would cause problems for the downstream Highway 200 bridge and railroad bridge.

On Thursday, the Idaho Bureau of Disaster Services led a discussion of how the various agencies could come together to fix the problems in Lightning Creek so it won’t have to be dredged every year.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said it can fund a $20,000 study to explore what the long-term fix can be. Any other studies or work after that will require local matching funds.

Every year more gravel moves out into the Clark Fork River from Lightning Creek, changing the flow of the river, Coyle said. During high water, the river is starting to undermine the banks that carry Highway 200, he said.

“There are some real serious dynamics going on there,” he said.

Flooding this spring will depend on how quickly the snow melts.

“It’s loaded pretty good up there,” Bonner County Commissioner Dale Van Stone said.

“If it gets late and all comes out at once, we’ll have some problems … If the lake goes 4 or 5 feet above the summer pool, it could cause a lot of damage to waterfront homes.”

The summer pool elevation is 2,062.5 feet. In 1997, the lake rose 3 feet above that level.