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Water gushes from spillway
By Carole Cloudwalker
This document was published online on Monday, June 16, 2008
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| Two chutes at the Buffalo Bill Dam release water at about 5,500 cubic feet per second into the Shoshone River on Friday. (Photo by Ken Blackbird) |
With water it's feast or famine - and this year the Bureau of Reclamation is dining well in the Cody area, Wyoming manager John Lawson says.
“But next year we could be back to famine,” said Lawson of Casper. His work is managing the inflows and outflows of reservoirs controlled by BuRec.
Due to the large amount of snow pack on the North Fork of the Shoshone River, Lawson actually has been releasing water from Buffalo Bill Reservoir in higher than usual amounts since May. Last week water began passing through the spillway at the dam.
In contrast to the North Fork, snow pack on the South Fork is about normal this year, he added.
While the surface of the reservoir west of Cody was about 21 feet from the top of the dam Friday, Lawson said it probably will rise to 2-3 feet from the top by July 4.
And water began flowing through the spillway at about 5,400 cubic feet per second (cfs), though the spillway was designed to carry as much as 50,000 cfs in a pinch, Lawson said. For that matter, the dam was designed to allow water to flow over it, if necessary.
Lawson hopes that never happens, though. He said high releases from Buffalo Bill could threaten areas downstream, including the sewage lagoons at Lovell.
To prepare for an abundant snow melt, Lawson began releasing some 2,000 cfs at the dam into the Shoshone River in May, an amount he said is “far in excess of irrigation demands.”
In addition to May snow melt, Lawson had to contend with a recent several-day shutdown of the Heart Mountain Irrigation District's canal because of a dirt slide, which added a little to the water held back by the dam.
“We've now increased (releases) to 5,400 cfs below the dam,” Lawson said Friday. “We're anticipating we won't have to go farther, because at 7,800-8,000 cfs, Lovell gets a little concerned about its sewage lagoons.”
North Fork snow pack is unusual this year not only because there is a great deal of it, but also because the melt appeared to peak in May and started to slow, but now is picking up again.
“We have higher snow pack now on the North Fork than we had at the beginning of June,” Lawson said Friday.
“That's highly unusual - it should be dropping off dramatically.”
But with inclement weather in June and nighttime temperatures on the North Fork failing to dip below freezing, “I'm expecting the inflows to hit,” and the reservoir level will start to come back.
“Evenings are how you really judge what's happening,” Lawson said.
He has been studying the weather patterns of previous years, particularly 1982 when the area experienced similar weather patterns.
“We made a daily inflow model to plan releases,” he said.
Big Horn Lake behind Yellowtail Dam also is experiencing an unusual water year, Lawson added.
In recent summers floating boat docks and other facilities along the reservoir were unable to open on time, if at all, because there was not enough water in the reservoir.
This year Big Horn contains about 1 million acre feet of water and “there's only about 66,000 acre feet to go before they get into the flood control pool,” an area of storage used only for floodwaters, he said.
“That's why we build reservoirs - it's typical feast or famine - and this year is one of feast,” he added.
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