Lake management needs to consider all impacts

Bonner County is blessed with an abundance of natural wonders: Lake Pend Oreille being chief among them.

Our love for Lake Pend Oreille is well-established and justified. It’s our treasured icon and our economic lifeblood. So it’s no wonder that discussions of lake level management will spark passionate discussion. More than 200 people packed a meeting of the Lakes Commission recently to discuss lake levels.

But lake level management is a complicated issue, with no simple answers. At Idaho Conservation League, we don’t pretend to have all the answers, and we urge caution before drastic changes are made in the lake’s management.

For instance, when the Bonneville Power Administration decided to fluctuate winter lake levels to generate more power in the winter months, we joined many other stakeholders in calling for a full Environmental Impact Statement to study the fluctuations’ effects on erosion and aquatic invasive species. When the BPA moved forward with the decision without a full analysis, we filed a legal challenge in the U.S. District Court of Appeals.

A hearing on our case was held last month in Portland, and we await a decision.

Meanwhile, the Kalispel Tribe and BPA formed their own agreement to address concerns the tribe had over lake management and its impacts on natural resources, including the fate of endangered bull trout.

The agreement led to modeling studies to determine if changes in lake level management might affect downstream temperatures to benefit bull trout. Now when the bull trout wash over or through the Albeni Falls Dam, they eventually die because they can’t return upstream to cooler waters.

Ultimately, what’s needed is fish passage around the dam, but in the meantime, the tribe was looking for a way to keep fish from dying.

The result was a public uproar over the prospect of the lake level being drawn down early and leaving docks high and dry during September, and possibly August. There were calls for holding the lake level up six months of the year — an idea that seemed to garner widespread endorsement despite the fact that this could significantly increase shoreline erosion.

Then, at the recent Lakes Commission meeting, the BPA announced that the agreement with the Kalispel Tribe was revised to remove the prospect of early drawdowns in August. Meanwhile, proponents of a six-month summer pool have backed off that demand and are asking for four months instead.

Whatever the lake’s management regime, it needs to be one that takes into account the needs of not only boaters and dock owners, but also our natural resources, including wetlands, water quality, fisheries and wildlife habitat.

If we were to manage Lake Pend Oreille as a natural lake, we would have an extremely short window when the lake would be at “full pool,” and farmers would be haying Oden Bay and other shallow bays in September, as they did before the Albeni Falls Dam was built in 1951. Instead of nearly three months at full pool now, we’d have less than a month, and we would still have a nine-foot difference between summer and winter pool levels.

It’s doubtful many local residents want to return to the natural lake hydrograph, which would leave most docks unusable most of the year. However, before any drastic changes are made to the lake’s current management, either to hold lake levels up or to draw down, the impacts of those changes should be studied.

We need to find the right balance between the recreation, power, flood control and habitat needs for all the lake’s residents — whether they be feathered, finned or human. And that balance needs to be based on science and a love for this — mostly — natural lake.