Save Pend Oreille! campaign takes root

SANDPOINT — A grassroots effort is sprouting to protect Lake Pend Oreille’s water from being co-opted by downstream interests.

 The formation of the Lake Pend Oreille Alliance and its Save Pend Oreille! campaign comes as demands for the lake’s water increase.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers granted a Bonneville Power Administration request in 2012 to manipulate the lake’s winter pool to meet the ebb and flow of power demands.

The two agencies would go on strike a deal with the Kalispel Tribe of Indians to study the possibility of earlier summer drawdowns of the lake to aid bull trout below the Albeni Falls Dam on the Pend Oreille River. That accord was put into place behind the back of Idaho’s Lakes Commission, which advises the state on water quantity and quality issues in the Pend Oreille and Priest basins.

Chum salmon managers on the Columbia River have also coveted Pend Oreille’s water and a review of Columbia River Treaty is raising concerns that Idaho’s water rights on Pend Oreille could be diluted under a revised treaty.

“Our mission statement is to defend those rights,” said Ralph Sletager, a Sandpoint businessman and landowner who kick-started the Lake Pend Oreille Alliance.

The goal is to develop a broad-based organization of business owners, landowners, municipalities, chambers of commerce, anglers and other sportsmen and women to push back against the growing demands for the lifeblood of Bonner County, which helps sustain the local economy.

There are a number of groups which passionately advocate for protecting interests on the Pend Oreille, including the Idaho Conservation League, Lake Pend Oreille Waterkeeper and the Lakes Commission. But Ford Elsaesser, chairman of the commission, coalition representing wide swaths of a community can sometimes have better resonance with politicians.

“It’s not just a few dozen squeaky wheels,” Elsaesser said.

The alliance has put up a website (www.savependoreille.org) to sign up members, disseminate information and collect donations. Sletager said a direct-mail campaign to waterfront landowners in Bonner County is also being planned.

“The public really needs to know what’s really at stake here,” Sletager said.