Firm picked for Priest Lake study

PRIEST RIVER — International consulting firm Mott MacDonald Group has been hired to complete a comprehensive water management study, the Idaho Water Resource Board has announced.

The study seeks to develop a range of feasible alternatives, in consultation with stakeholders and the public, for improving management of water in Priest Lake.

A steering committee has been formed to help guide the study and includes representatives from the local community. Public meetings are planned for this summer to hear from waterfront and upland residents.

Mott MacDonald is a global engineering, management and development consultancy with expertise in hydrology and water resources, among numerous other disciplines.

The company has undertaken multi-million water and stormwater projects here and abroad, in addition to a project that reconnected Cedar Bayou in Texas with the Gulf of Mexico, which restored marshes and an estaurine ecosystem, according to the company’s website.

The $300,000 study commissioned by the board will include a half-dozen elements including a hydrological analysis, improved water supply forecasting and the lake’s capacity for storing water in order to maintain a lake level that floats the summer recreation season.

Drought conditions in 2015 made it difficult to maintain required summer lake elevations and downstream flows.

The study is also expected to include engineering analyses of potential improvements to the Outlet Bay Dam and the wounded breakwater, which needs rehabilitation and is causing sedimentation that is making the Thorofare — the 3-mile channel linking Priest and Upper Priest Lakes — impassible to motorboats.

The study will also examine potential impacts to landowners, water quality and habitat.

A draft report is expected in December and a final report is tracking toward an early 2018 release date.

Keith Kinnaird can be reached by email at kkinnaird@bonnercountydailybee.com and follow him on Twitter @KeithDailyBee.