Nov. 17, 2017
After strong criticism of its earlier Environmental Assessment, the Bureau of Reclamation will reopen public comments and may revise its assessment for a large valve at Snow Lake.
The Bureau announced on November 17 that it and the US Fish & Wildlife Service will hold an additional public comment period from late December to mid-January. The Bureau said it was taking this step because of the amount of interest shown in the project and “additional analysis” that is now being completed.
The agency has not hinted at what this analysis might be, but Dale Bambrick, a NOAA official, has attempted to shed more light on the reasons for the new valve, which would allow water withdrawal at a 60% higher rate.
He explained in a November 16 email to Karl Forsgaard, president of Alpine Lakes Protection Society, that the bigger valve is needed to cover the amount of water required by the Leavenworth National Fish Hatchery plus amounts that the irrigation district was a right to withdraw. If the irrigation district took water at the same time as the fish hatchery needed it, the existing valve could not supply both.
“This measure [the bigger valve] isn't intended to increase the total annual withdrawals from Snow and Nada Lakes” Bambrick says, “but would allow extracting the total volume if needed during primarily September in a drought year.”
This is the first known time that anyone has said that the bigger valve is not intended to increase the total volume of water withdrawn. The next move is now the Bureau of Reclamation’s to declare publically that this is indeed its plan, and to explain what measures it will take to ensure that the bigger valve is not used to withdraw more water from Snow Lake.
The Bureau will announce the new comment dates on its website at: https://www.usbr.gov/pn/programs/ea/wash/snowlake/index.html