Lake Pend Oreille Drawdown Halted Army Corps Suspends Draining One Day After Lawsuit Was Filed

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers quit draining Lake Pend Oreille on Wednesday, one day after a Sandpoint group filed a lawsuit to block the annual winter drawdown.

The gates at Albeni Falls Dam were closed just as the lake level reached the 2,055-foot elevation the Idaho Fish and Game Department says is essential for completion of a fish study.

A hearing is scheduled Nov. 1 in U.S. District Court in Coeur d’Alene to determine whether the drawdown should resume. A corps spokeswoman said engineering calculations show the drawdown must resume on that date if the old 2,051-foot winter level is to be reached this year.

The drawdown must stop permanently by Nov. 15 to keep fish eggs from being stranded above the waterline and destroyed.

Corps spokeswoman Patricia Graesser said Wednesday’s “pause” was made in response to a request from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. But Sandpoint attorney Bruce Anderson believes the corps was responding more to the lawsuit his firm filed on behalf of the Lake Pend Oreille Idaho Club.

Anderson said the nonprofit organization is renewing a lawsuit it filed in 1996, contending the corps’ steep winter drawdowns of the lake were illegal and harmful to property values and the North Idaho economy.

He said the original lawsuit ended in an agreement that the corps would keep the lake at 2,055 feet - 4 feet higher than usual - for three winters.

The purpose of the agreement was to allow the Idaho Department of Fish and Game to find out whether higher water levels would restore the lake’s dwindling kokanee population by providing more spawning gravel.

The five-year study, paid for by the Bonneville Power Administration, was supposed to compare three years of higher water and two years at the traditional winter level.

The three years of high water were supposed to end last winter, but researchers said they needed another year because 1997 flooding invalidated one year’s data by flushing eggs and fish out of the lake.

The Army Corps denied that request earlier this month, after the evenly split Northwest Power Planning Council failed to endorse an extension.

Then, last Thursday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service asked the Army Corps to reconsider on grounds that the kokanee study might reveal the “most expeditious” way to protect threatened bull trout. Robert Hallock, acting Columbia Basin field supervisor for the Fish and Wildlife Service, said in a letter to the corps that kokanee comprise 66 percent of the diet of bull trout.

Army Corps spokeswoman Graesser said her agency will discuss the issue with Fish and Wildlife before deciding whether to resume the drawdown.

The possibility of another winter of high water is bad news for Cusick, Wash.-area farmers and downstream electric utilities. The practice robs hydroelectric dams of generating capacity during the winter demand peak. It also contributes to flooding in the Cusick area by increasing springtime flows in the Pend Oreille River.

But the Lake Pend Oreille Idaho Club, which claims about 1,000 members, says in its lawsuit that the traditional winter drawdowns have created “unsightly mud flats” for lakefront property owners. The club also blames the Army Corps for millions of dollars in economic damage because of low lake levels throughout much of the year.

The club accuses the Army Corps of violating its agreement for construction of Albeni Falls Dam in 1951 by failing to keep the lake level at 2,056 feet at least six months a year. That level is based on an old agreement not related to the fish study, according to the club’s lawsuit. However, Assistant U.S. Attorney Deborah Ferguson says the Army Corps has followed congressional regulations for the dam.