River Residents Issued Flood Warning Spillways Wide Open In Case Pend Oreille Spills Its Banks

People who live along the Pend Oreille River are being warned of possible flooding.

There was no immediate danger, but spillways at Albeni Falls Dam near Newport and the Box Canyon Dam near Ione were wide open Thursday.

Officials say the flow isn’t abnormal except that it is caused by recent rains rather than spring runoff - which is yet to come.

Many people have forgotten what’s normal because of seven to eight years of drought. And many new riverfront houses have been built since the last high water in the mid-1970s.

“Now we’re more worried about those areas than previously we would have been,” said JoAnn Boggs, Pend Oreille County director of emergency management.

Boggs said the county has stockpiled 2,500 sandbags and can get more on short notice from Spokane and Whitman counties.

“We just want people to understand that, if they live around the river, they need to be prepared for the next couple of weeks,” Boggs said.

There’s nothing more officials can do. Because of natural restrictions in the river, the relatively low Box Canyon and Albeni Falls dams have no effect on flows when their gates are fully open.

“We’re cautioning people now because we really haven’t seen the spring runoff yet,” said Mark Cauchy, spokesman for the Pend Oreille County Public Utility District. No one is sure how many houses may be threatened, but Cauchy said water already is uncomfortably close to a few houses in the Cusick area.

Some residents are making comparisons with the flood that covered the town in 1948, before the river was dammed.

“It’s fairly sure the peak flows aren’t going to be a record like 1948, but I don’t want to say that with certainty,” said Tom Schmitz, operations chief at Albeni Falls Dam, which controls flows from Lake Pend Oreille. “You don’t know how that water that’s stored in the mountains is going to come off.”

Schmitz said the National Resource Conservation Service estimates the snow pack in the Pend Oreille River’s 24,000-square-mile drainage is 104 percent of average and 118 percent of last winter’s level. Stream flow is predicted to be 116 percent of average.

This is the first time since 1982 that Albeni Falls Dam has been on “free flow,” and only the third time since the dam was built in 1951, Schmitz said.

He said the dam opened all its gates from April 15 to May 8 and again May 15. Plans call for keeping the gates open at least through Monday, Schmitz said.

Cauchy said Box Canyon Dam will be open as long as necessary to ensure the dam doesn’t cause the river to rise above the 2,041-foot elevation at Cusick - as required by the dam’s license.

Boggs said the river dropped 6 to 8 inches after the dam went on free flow Tuesday. The level at Cusick Thursday was about six inches below the 2,041-foot high-water mark.

Neither dam can generate electricity with its gates fully open. The water no longer falls far enough to develop the force needed to turn the generators.

The federally operated Albeni Falls Dam is mainly for flow control and seldom generates power at full capacity. But loss of generation at Box Canyon costs the Pend Oreille County PUD about $22,000 a day.

, DataTimes