Panel to discuss Flathead Lake water management
The clear waters of Flathead Lake ripple along the rocky shoreline of the Wayfarers unit of Flathead Lake State Park on Friday, Oct. 20. (Casey Kreider/Daily Inter Lake)
An online panel discussion focused on the Flathead Basin's dams and water management decisions will be held Thursday, March 14.
Representatives with Energy Keepers Inc., the Bureau of Reclamation, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and NOAA Weather Service will host the virtual informational meeting from 4 to 6 p.m.
The panel will provide an overview of the Hungry Horse Reservoir Dam and the SKQ Dam on Flathead Lake, as well as basin conditions and reservoir operations for water years 2022 and 2023, and the current water supply outlook and snowpack conditions.
The meeting is intended to be informational with no opportunity for questions and answers.
Those interested in participating in the virtual meeting may call in on Zoom at us02web.zoom.us/j/83737320218. For those unable to attend the meeting, a recording will be placed on Reclamation’s website at usbr.gov.
Energy Keepers, an entity of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, manages the SKQ Dam. After a historically dry summer in 2023 led to diminished inflows and record low water levels for Flathead Lake, concern arose among residents who questioned the dam operators’ management tactics. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last month dismissed allegations that Energy Keepers mismanaged the water level last summer.
Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Montana, last fall introduced the “Fill the Lake Act,” which would direct the Interior Department to maintain Flathead Lake’s water levels between 2,892 and 2,893 feet from June 15 to Sept. 15. The bill mandates that those levels be reached by providing water from Hungry Horse Reservoir and by releasing excess water downstream.
The SKQ Dam stands 208 feet high and is a concrete, gravity-arch dam. It is located five miles from Polson. The three-unit hydro plant has the capacity to generate 208 MW of electricity. Flathead Lake has a total capacity of just over 18,780,000 acre-feet. On average, it produces 1.1 million MWh annually.
Hungry Horse Dam is 564 feet high and has a variable-thickness concrete arch structure with a crest length of 2,115 ft. The four-unit hydro plant has the capacity to generate 428 MW of electricity. The reservoir has a total capacity of 3,468,000 acre-feet. On average, it produces 913,197,196 kWh annually. The average U.S. household consumes about 10,500 kilowatt hours of electricity per year.
Both dams are part of the Columbia River Basin.