Winter pool year-round is very likely
First, let me commend you for your coverage of Monday, Oct. 7, evening’s update on the situation at Albeni Falls Dam by the Army Corp of Engineers. However, I think you missed key point in your headline, “Gate replacement likely years away.” While that is certainly true, if anyone of the 10 remaining spillway gates fails, Lake Pend Oreille will drop to winter pool level for the foreseeable future.
No one knows the condition of the 10 gates that are in place. The one removed by the Corp for inspection was built and the same time as the rest of them; 70 years ago. The Corp’s inspection revealed that the gate is defective. It has delaminated; much the same as the tread peeling off a truck tire. That defective gate was replaced in the spring by the one and only spare. The Corp believes all the gates are in danger of failing. That should have been your headline, the spillway gates are in danger of collapsing.
These gates are not small. They are very large pieces of American Steel. The exact weight and dimensions were not given. At the May meeting, we learned that the gates are 32 feet tall.
Colonel Kate Sanborn finally answered that if even one of the remaining spillway gates fails, the lake will drop to winter pool level. There is no gate to replace it. None are on order. She said they are trying to place a “Band-Aid” on the defective gate in an effort to have it ready by next spring.
The dam is operating on a restricted basis. Simply put, the 10 spillway gates are currently closed and water is leaving the lake by traveling through the powerhouse. Because of the danger of failure, the spillway gates are either fully open or fully closed.
Sanborn explained that 1 million acre feet of water is held back by the closed gates. That has been the case for 70 years. The gates have held. As she said, “That’s a lot of water.” At 8 pounds per gallon, those gates are holding back a lot of weight.
For math nuts, 1 acre foot of water equals about 325,851 gallons.
Sanborn said that a spillway gate failure would occur, “at the speed of sound”. She added that it would, “buckle, collapse downstream; it would collapse like a sheet of paper.” The downstream river could handle the rush of water following the collapse of one gate. Sanborn didn’t elaborate what would happen if more than one failed.
I fear the only thing that would happen faster than water leaving Lake Pend Oreille would be the economic collapse of Bonner County. We saw near panic when they were late in filling the lake this past spring. Imagine the consequences of year-round winter pool for the foreseeable future!
For those of us who attended the meeting, we were comforted to learn that money is not the issue. Bonneville Power is responsible for 97.5% of the cost of routine maintenance. One unanswered question remains, why have these spillway gates have been allowed to exceed their designed 50-year lifetime by 20 years? If BPA is ready and willing to pay the cost, why haven’t they been replaced?
If the gates are in danger of catastrophic failure, and money is not the issue, what’s the delay in replacing them? Why haven’t new gates been ordered?
The Corp is currently in the “design phase” of new gates. They hope to receive the first new gate in the year 2027. The plan is for one additional gate delivered every six months thereafter. Ten gates at six-month intervals sounds like five years before they are all replaced. That would not be until the year 2032 when all the defective gates are replaced; eight years. Eight years before the danger of spillway gate failure is erased. Elon Musk said he will have us on Mars before our local problem is solved. How can an interplanetary mission to Mars occur before the Army Corp of Engineers can replace 10 defective spillway gates? This just doesn’t pass the smell test.
WIN TAYLOR
Sagle