Corps Announces Summer Plans For Reservoir

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plans to begin lowering the level of Dworshak Reservoir in mid-July and drop it some 70 feet by Labor Day to provide water to help flush migrating salmon downstream.

The Dworshak water is needed in the lower Snake River to meet flow targets set in the National Marine Fisheries Service’s biological opinion on salmon recovery, the corps said Thursday.

Keith Hanson of the Orofino Chamber of Commerce said the decision makes no sense with the promise of significantly higher-than-normal runoff into the North Fork of the Clearwater River from abundant mountain snowpack.

“It looks like a good water year but you’re still going to take our water,” Hanson told Cindy Henriksen, the Reservoir Control Center chief.

But Henriksen said spring runoff is over and river flows in the Northwest will have started to drop by July. And water stored in Dworshak Reservoir is about all there is available to keep the Snake River running at target levels, she said.