Forum Index > Trail Talk > Proposed project to draw down Kachess Lake during droughts - comments
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AlpineRose
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PostWed Jun 13, 2018 3:37 pm 
Ski wrote:
^ True. But if you owned real estate on one of those "fake lakes", or your family had vacationed there every Memorial Day for the last couple of decades (like my favorite teller up at the bank I mentioned above) you'd be singing a different tune. (i.e., Lake Tapps, Riffe Lake, etc.)
No, I wouldn't. I would never have invested in such a location in the first place. Or if I had, I would have done so with understanding how it could change for the worse. I'm hyper-aware (paranoid?) of the benefits and drawbacks of real estate location. But that's just me.

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cambajamba
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PostWed Jun 13, 2018 3:57 pm 
AlpineRose wrote:
vacationed there every Memorial Day for the last couple of decades
Whole lotta these places have been getting ruined by overcrowding lately, let alone low lakes.

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gb
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gb
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PostWed Jun 13, 2018 4:05 pm 
DIYSteve wrote:
Kachees Lake, 100+ years ago a natural lake, was engineered to have water drawn from it as part of the Yakima Project in the early 1900s. The current issue is about how much to draw it down and related infrastructure to do it. Not an issue this year or last year nor the year before because the Yakima River watershed had plenty of water for irrigation. Those cabins were built because the lake was dammed, enlarged and stabilized. The lake aint gonna return to a natural lake in our lifetimes -- that bell has rung -- and if it did via dam removal, the property values would plummet to zero or near zero.
The year that was modeled for data was 2015. And there have been droughts and low snowpacks fairly frequently in the past 18 years as in 2001, 2005, 2015. And this year is not great for eastside snowpack. Rainfall was meager this year east of the Cascades and it is too early to call summer drought this year. But the snowpack at this point is not good except for high peaks along the crest. The government documents state that in the case of drought and drawdown that it may take four years to refill the lake. But if you get droughts in 2001, 2005, and 2015 (how about this year?), the normal state of the lake and of Lake Kechelus that is proposed to be used to help fill Lake Kachess will be drawn down.

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DIYSteve
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DIYSteve
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PostThu Jun 14, 2018 9:09 am 
I don't doubt any of that. My point is that the homes on Kachess Lake would not be there but for the dam. The current lake level is c. 60' higher than the natural lake was. The owners built those structures on an artificially enhanced lake subject to recorded notice that the the lake might someday be drawn down to supply water to senior water right holders.

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kiliki
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kiliki
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PostThu Jun 14, 2018 11:32 am 
DIYSteve wrote:
Kachees Lake, 100+ years ago a natural lake,
I didn't realize that. Does anyone know of a historic photo of it? I'd love to see what it looked like. I was a little surprised to hear about the opposition to us because I also think that any reservoir is subject to this, and that everyone knows it and there isn't an expectation that the lake will be pretty, or accessible to boaters, or whatnot. I don't think I've ever seen it without a bathtub ring, which I think makes it ugly, though I don't go over there mulch. Aren't there a lot of clearcuts on the nearby mountainsides as well? The fact that it was once a natural lake maybe makes me think more about this stance, but then again as someone mentioned, now there's a dam and that ship (being a natural lake) has sailed.

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Token Civilian
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PostFri Jun 15, 2018 8:46 am 
Go onto Caltopo kiliki and switch the base layer map to the 1895-1915 version. It'll show something like what the natural lake was. Edit to add: Ctrl-Alt-Print Screen when you have it in the old map. Paste that into a Word Document. Without moving the screen, change to the modern USGS map. Do the same screen grab and paste. Save As pictures out of the document. Open them in the photo viewer and flip back and forth.

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kiliki
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PostMon Jun 25, 2018 3:36 pm 
I found a couple. These are from 1900; the dam was built in 1912. Gosh I bet it was pretty back then.

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Randito
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PostMon Jun 25, 2018 8:18 pm 
joker wrote:
I would imagine that the next big conflict will be around proposals to make much higher capacity reservoirs to better buffer the water supply given said faster melting snowpacks...
Yeah, but I think that requires a lot of imagination. Both Kachess and Cle Elum could be raised with only "secondary" housing being flooded. But even with the low prices that the feds typically pay for houses condemned for right of way, the buy out costs would be many many millions. Raising Kecheelus more than a small amount would require changes to I-90-- redoing the current improvement project along the way. So yeah those things could happen-- but it would be tied up in court for decades.

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joker
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PostMon Jun 25, 2018 9:36 pm 
Hence the word conflict ;-)

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