Diary of a small town Mayor.........I thought to myself, man is it dark out here! All I could hear was the sound of water rippling as it swept passed my body. The night air was both warm and cool at the same time. I was beginning to shake slightly and my teeth were beginning to chatter as I remember doing when I was very young running through the sprinkler in my parents front yard. Here I was standing in the middle of the Moyie River at 1:30 AM in the morning holding onto a fire hose for crying out loud. Then I thought what now?......Well lets go back a day or so so you can have some back ground as to how I got myself in this predicament. The City of Bonners Ferry, Id., provides its citizens not only the traditional municipal services of police & fire, streets, planning & zoning, animal control, parks, swimming pool and golf course etc., but also water & sewer and waste water treatment and along with only two other Cities in Idaho owns its own hydro-electric dam and electrical distribution system. The dam located on the Moyie River produces approximately 1/3 of the power consumed by the Citys customers. The balance of the power needs the City purchases from the Bonneville Power Administration who sells power generated in the Pacific NW by the Federal Dams on the Columbia River and its tributaries. When the Moyie Dam was designed and constructed, one of its features included a hole in the bottom of the dam which is open and shut by an extremely thick metal gate. The gate is controlled manually at the top of the dam by a very long metal shaft that was threaded into the plate and when the shaft was turned the gate would move up and down, opening and closing the hole in the bottom of the dam. The purpose of the hole was to allow the dam to be drained in the event of an emergency or for maintenance purposes. It had been several years since the valve had been opened and the City Engineer had made a decision that it was time to exercise this valve to make sure it was in working order. He chose the middle of August when the flow of water in the Moyie had calmed down from the spring runoff season and therefore would not be exerting too much pressure on the gate offering a better chance to get it opened in the event of it being twisted or stuck. Well it opened. Boy did it open. The dam and its reservoir exists primarily to make sure that the water used to turn the electrical generators that produce the electricity falls a far enough distance that the pressure it exerts is sufficient enough to be able to turn the turbines that in, turn spin the generators at a speed necessary to create the electrical power. This dams design therefore, doesnt create a storage reservoir but instead, the water goes past the dam at the same speed and rate that it enters the reservoir. When the gate was opened at the hole in the bottom of the dam the reservoir immediately began to drain. Well, it was expected that some sediment that may have settled behind the dam, may be released but that the amount of sediment would easily be suspended in the column of water and with the velocity that the River was running would be taken down stream and harmlessly find its way somewhere between the dam and the Pacific Ocean. Well that did not happen. Over the preceding years a huge amount of sediment had built up, perhaps due to the Mount St. Helens eruption and all the ash that was deposited in the Moyie drainage or just due to normal runoff. The effect of the huge buildup was to have it go down river of the dam only a mile or so and completely plug off the water intake source of both the City of Moyie Springs water system and the Three Mile Water District water system. I received a call from the City Engineer at about 6:30 the evening of the day the gate was opened requesting that I meet him at the mouth of the Moyie River as soon as possible. End of part 1 of this post….I have not written part 2 yet...stay tuned
Posted on: Tue, 18 Nov 2014 23:38:26 +0000
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