Diary of a small town Mayor...............Moyie Dam Debacle...........Part 2..........Once I arrived at the mouth of the river I saw the maintenance man from the Three Mile Water District and an employee from the City of Moyie Sprigs along with the City of Bonners Ferry City Engineer holding fire hoses while standing in the middle of the Moyie River. I waded on into the river and went out to where they were standing. They were attempting to use the high pressure fire hoses to wash the silt that had settled on the bottom of the river at this location to move further down the river with the hope that the bottom in this area would clear up enough to allow the flow of water to go into the intake system of the two water systems that had been completely plugged off. We would continue this effort all night till about 1:30 AM in the morning. It was then that the Engineer shined his flash light in my face and said well it is not going to work…..what do we do now? With my teeth chattering from being chilled by the rushing water while standing in the middle of the Moyie River my response was……it is time to call a City Council Meeting. He said “Now?”. I said yup….now.” If we had cell phones back then I don’t remember but we did have two way radios and the word went out to call all of the City of Bonners Ferry City Council and the Mayor and hold an emergency meeting at City Hall for 5:30 AM in the morning. When I got up to the top of the hill from the mouth of the Moyie I used the City of Moyie’s fire station’s phone to call Mayor Harold Sims and bring him up to speed. He wondered for a minute if we really needed to meet that early in the morning to which I simply replied yes. It may have been the tone in my voice or it just may have been that the Mayor had finally cleared his mind enough of sleep to realize that we indeed have a problem. A BIG problem. We had just wiped out businesses, dairy farms, lumber mills, and thousands of peoples sole source of potable water at the hight of the summer watering season for crying out loud. So what did Bonners Ferry do? That morning we called the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality and began to hire every truck within a hundred mile radius that could legally haul potable drinking water. Tanker trailers that had not been certified were pressed into service by disinfection of their tanks and testing their water getting them quickly certified. We had put into place a 24 hour, 7 day a week continuous caravan of semi-trucks hauling water from hydrants in the City of Bonners Ferry and dumping into the Three Mile Water District’s reservoir. We then built a new water line connecting the Three Mile Water District to the City of Moyie Springs water system. We then purchased a water well just below Smith Lake by the old Usher Foust place just off of Oxford Loop Road and hired a water engineering firm to quickly design and install new high volume submersible water pumps. We then built new water line between the Three Mile Water District line and the Bee Line Water Association and connected them together. We now had the entire region interconnected and we could send water any direction back and forth as was needed. We then drilled new wells for the City of Moyie and the Three Mile Water District and rebuilt major portions of the City of Moyie Springs’s water system to get rid of major bottle necks to the efficient distribution of their water to certain areas of the City especially to the large lumber mill located in Moyie. We asked all of the citizens to voluntarily cut down their water usage during this time and most people did an awesome job. As a result there was not one law suit. While some people I am sure were a least a little disgruntled they were for the most part extremely understanding. It took about 3 weeks to accomplish all of these tasks and roughly $650,000 plus dollars all of which was covered by the City of Bonners Ferry’s insurance company. To this day few people ever realized the full extent of what it took to remedy the calamity. The result however was a vastly improved water system serving much of Boundary County and a deep quiet pride inside me of both a community and a vastly improved water system legacy that is still serving citizens of today.
Posted on: Wed, 19 Nov 2014 01:29:42 +0000
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015