March 20, 2026
Front page news from the Wenatchee World.
Forest Service at odds with Irrigation District over Eightmile Dam
By Ed Rieckelman
For The Wenatchee World
Mar 18, 2026Eight years after flooding damaged a dam deep in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness Area, reconstruction of that structure continues to await a resolution that would allow officials to move forward. The project was estimated for completion by the end of 2026 but now no one can say when the rebuild will get underway.
The Eightmile Lake Dam was damaged by flooding and erosion in 2018 after a devastating fire scarred the landscape in 2017. As a result, the Washington Department of Ecology designated the dam a high hazard structure and declared a state of emergency in the Icicle River watershed below due to the number of residents downstream in towns like Leavenworth and the threat to life and property.
Now years later, with the Environmental Impact Statement complete along with most of the design work, the project timeline remains uncertain due in part to a dispute between the United States Forest Service and the owners of the dam, the Icicle-Peshastin Irrigation District, or IPID.
"They (the Forest Service) are requiring us to get a permit but we're refusing, so things are in a kind of limbo right now," Levi Jantzer, IPID manager said. "We have a special warranty deed for that property, and we have rights that we reserved, and they granted to us back in 1990 saying specifically that we don't need their permission and we don't need permits. And now they're saying we need permits anyway."
But David Knibb with the Icicle Network, a group monitoring water use in the Icicle and working to inform the public on the proposed dam project at Eightmile Lake, believes the Forest Service does have the right to require IPID to secure their permit.
"I think that view is misinformed. With that deed, the irrigation district did retain authority to do certain things in the sections that it deeded to the government," Knibb said. "But that did not include the right to expand its use and, in any event, its deed only covers the lands formerly owned by the irrigation district. The reservoir covers much more. It floods federally owned land within the Alpine Lakes Wilderness."
In a memo to the Icicle Network in January, the Forest Service public affairs office indicated it is waiting for IPID to apply for permits.
"The Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest has been working closely with the Icicle Peshastin Irrigation District to address permit requirements," the memo stated. "While no applications have been submitted to date, our current understanding of the proposed work indicates that several authorizations will be necessary. These include a road use permit and special use permits for activities on National Forest System lands not covered by the Special Warranty Deed. We have communicated these requirements to the irrigation district and look forward to continuing our coordination to support their project needs."
Scarlet Tang, the northwest region communications manager for the Washington State Department of Ecology, said her office figured on the Forest Service permit being part of the process from the beginning.
"We've expected that this project would need various authorizations from USFS," Tang said. "It sounds like construction won't happen this summer, as there is a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permit in progress that won't be ready in time. USFS permitting could potentially be done at the same time."
Jantzer said the irrigation district is working with politicians to try to persuade the Forest Service to allow the project to go forward.
"The Forest Service is trying to say that the special warranty deed only applies to small parcels up there (near Eightmile Dam), one of which the dam actually sits on," he said. "We negotiated for ten or thirteen years, starting when the wilderness area was created and we signed the special warranty deed."
He said the Forest Service is claiming that the district only has a claim on the parcels surrounding the dam and not the rest of the lake.
"We did a land transfer where (the Forest Service) would own that land up there, but the district would retain its rights. Now the Forest Service is totally changing its position because there are new people who don't quite understand and they're just taking a hardline stand."
Knibb maintains the new dam will change the configuration of the reservoir and that the IPID's rights under its deed don't apply to the extended federal lands.
"The irrigation district has a grandfathered right to maintain and operate its dam. I don't think anyone questions that," he said. "But it does not have a right to expand that operation or to ignore Forest Service requirements."
However, the irrigation district continues to claim the dam will remain at its original elevation of 4,671 feet and will stay within the current footprint of the original deed.
"If the special warranty deed didn't even exist we still wouldn't need a special use permit to use the lake because we didn't raise the lake above the high-water mark, and we're not raising the dam with this new construction either," Jantzer said.
Meanwhile, Jantzer fears funding for the reconstruction of the dam could be at risk if the differences aren't resolved soon.
"The Office of Columbia River for Ecology has agreed to fund a hundred percent of the design phase, but they have already told us they can't fund the construction if we don't figure out this permit issue with the Forest Service," he said.
Officials continue to monitor the dam and say the temporary repairs done after the 2018 flooding are holding up but Ecology's Dam Safety Office, as a result of ongoing safety concerns, is requiring that the dam's outlet gate be kept open to reduce the volume of water stored and thus reduce risk of failure during the winter and early spring until permanent repairs can be made to the dam.
"The Dam Safety Office wants us to keep the lake as low as possible, and this causes woody debris to gather and plug up our outlet gate," Jantzer said. "So every year we have to go up there after the lake is drawn down and clear the wood out of there because it's always collecting."
With record low snowpack in December and not much improvement so far this winter streamflow in the Icicle River drainage may be strained by the demands of irrigators this summer.
"We could really use that water in Eightmile (Lake), and it's a shame that this is taking so long," Jantzer commented.