Jan. 11, 2018
Revised plans for a valve that could withdraw water from Snow Lake 60% faster than now continue to dominate the Icicle debate.
A revised Environmental Assessment (EA) issued four days before Christmas by the US Bureau of Reclamation and Fish & Wildlife Service still proposes a bigger valve on Snow Lake dam that would allow water withdrawal at a rate of 80 instead of the current 50 cubic feet per second. Its purpose is to facilitate simultaneous withdrawal of water by both the Fish & Wildlife Service and the Icicle Peshastin Irrigation District.
The first EA released in October drew so much flak that the federal agencies decided to revise it and invite more public comments. Their revised EA proposes the same valve as before with an added alternative for workers to camp at Snow Lake during installation rather than shuttling back and forth via helicopter.
Alpine Lakes Protection Society and a number of other groups jointly filed comments today at the end of the 15 day period allowed for them. Not surprisingly, their first point was that the comment period was too short, given the Christmas holidays and the major issues raised by the proposal.
Cart before the horse
One concern that has dogged this debate since the federal agencies first announced plans for the new valve is what conservationists call "putting the cart before the horse." Snow Lake is part of the Icicle drainage; boosting withdrawal from it is designed to help meet the stated purposes of the Icicle Strategy. That Strategy purports to lay out and evaluate all the major alternatives for increasing stream flows in the Icicle.
Both the US Bureau of Reclamation and Fish & Wildlife Service are members of the Icicle Work Group. That Group has said that its environmental review process would follow this sequence: (1) scoping, (2) draft programmatic environmental impact statement (PEIS), (3) public comments, (4) final PEIS, and then (5) "begin project-level environmental review." In sum, the process calls for an assessment of the overall Icicle Strategy before looking at individual projects.
Yet, the new Snow Lake valve is an individual project. The draft PEIS won’t be out until mid-2018, per the latest estimate. Snow Lake has jumped the queue, skipped the scoping process, and, according to conservationists, ignored how it fits into the overall Icicle Strategy and its cumulative impacts.
To date the Icicle Work Group has made no public comment on this apparent end-run around the process it outlined.
Part or apart?
Turning from the process to the EA itself, the Fish & Wildlife Service claims throughout the document that the lands it manages at Snow Lake are an in-holding surrounded by the Alpine Lakes Wilderness but not part of that wilderness. It cites nothing to support this claim, which appears to be offered as a way to circumvent restrictions imposed by the Wilderness Act.
Conservationists respond that the Alpine Lakes legislation supports their view that Congress meant for all federal lands within the wilderness to be part of it. Because of that, the Wilderness Act applies.
They criticize the federal agencies for ignoring the Wilderness Act and failing to address the impacts of their Snow Lake proposal on it, including among others, the alternative to transport workers over and into the wilderness by helicopter.
Ignored issues
Most of the comments by conservationists address a litany of issues that the revised EA ignores. These range from drawdown on the level of Snow Lake and increased seasonal stream flows, to questions about continuing water rights under both state and federal laws.
Overall, the groups claim, the bigger valve proposed at Snow Lake raises too many issues that are too significant to handle via an EA, and that those issues require a full environmental impact statement. The conservationists conclude that the revised EA "is so defective that it needs to be withdrawn."
The next move now is up to the federal agencies.