Recreation for a few causing harm to all

Recently, the Priest River dropped 3 feet in two days. It does this for Memorial Day and the Fourth of July. The river then rises just as radically in October.

These alarming drops and falls are the direct result of the gates closed and opened at the Priest Lake Outlet Bay Dam. Please take a look at Google folder shorturl.at/HGPWT to see 15 years of flow history, a 50-second video filmed by a riverfront longtime resident, showing the recent devastating water level drops and a one-page report about why this is contributing to the decline of several species of spawning salmonids. 

Along with negative impact on cold-water fish, the sudden changes cause banks to collapse exposing water mammals’ dens where they are raising litters, bird nests in the banks are destroyed and wetlands along the river dry up overnight killing millions of benthic macroinvertebrates larva like damsel flies, dragon flies. The dam is not for electricity, flood mitigation or irrigation.

It is so a relatively small amount of people can recreate.  

BETTY GARDNER

Priest River