Ione gets money to fix aging dam

The town of Ione in northern Pend Oreille County will soon repair a small dam that used to provide the town’s water supply and now threatens to flood several homes.

The work, expected to take about a week, will begin early next month with a $3,500 grant from the Washington Department of Ecology and $875 of in-kind contributions from the town.

Councilwoman Leanna Powers said the financial help is particularly welcome because the town was facing an Oct. 30 deadline to fix the dam or start paying $100 a day in fines.

The 53-year-old concrete dam on Cedar Creek, about a mile from the creek’s confluence with the Pend Oreille River, provided Ione’s domestic water supply until the town switched to well water in 1996 to satisfy state regulators’ health concerns.

The dam continues to impound more than 10 million gallons of water, and it is in danger of collapse because of erosion where it abuts a limestone cliff, according to Department of Ecology dam safety experts.

Powers, who also is the town’s sewer and water commissioner, said she has been working for two years to resolve the problem. It boils down to money: The dwindling town of 425 people had no spare cash and, until the town recently declared an emergency, neither did the Department of Ecology.

The emergency declaration allowed state officials to tap money reserved for flood control.

Ecology spokeswoman Jani Gilbert described the $3,500 emergency grant as “a temporary fix until they figure out what they’re going to do over the long haul.” The eroded area is to be shored up and capped with concrete.

Powers said a more elaborate plan to solve the problem has now been rejected twice by the state Salmon Recovery Funding Board.

With the assistance of the state Department of Fish and Wildlife and other agencies, the town sought about $750,000 to remove the dam and restore Cedar Creek as habitat for threatened bull trout.

“It was a win-win situation for everyone involved,” Powers said of the dam-removal proposal.

A state Fish and Wildlife official said the department is still interested in pursuing the removal project.

With the dam gone, Cedar Creek would provide 13 miles of habitat for bull trout, which migrate from rivers and lakes into small creeks to spawn.

State and federal biologists have said Cedar Creek is in better condition than LeClerc Creek, 20 miles south, which otherwise is considered the best hope for restoring populations of native bull trout.