Lakes board meets Tuesday

By KEITH KINNAIRD

News editor

DOVER — The Idaho Lakes Commission will be wading through a number of weighty topics when it meets on Tuesday.

The meeting starts at 9 a.m. at City Hall on Lakeshore Avenue.

Thomas Woolf of the Idaho State Department of Agriculture will be giving a presentation on this year’s aquatic invasive species treatment plan for the Pend Oreille basin.

Jim Yost of the Northwest Power & Conservation Council will update the board on the overhaul of the Columbia River Treaty. The 1964 accord provides a framework for the U.S. and Canada to invest in greater water-storage capabilities within the Columbia River basin and to better coordinate flood control and power generation.

The new treaty is slated to take effect in 2024.

The newly-formed Lake Pend Oreille Alliance is concerned the treaty revision will erode Idaho’s water rights and weaken recreation as a management goal when competing demands for water are balanced out.

The commission is also scheduled to take in an oft-delayed report temperature modeling results on the Pend Oreille River. The modeling is being conducted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in connection with an agreement between the Kalispel Tribe of Indians and the Bonneville Power Administration.

The agreement proposes summer drawdowns of Lake Pend Oreille in an attempt to cool water temperatures in bull trout habitat below Albeni Falls Dam.

On Tuesday night, the Lakes Commission is hosting a presentation on parallels between aquatic invasive species issues in Lake Pend Oreille and California’s Lake Tahoe.

It starts at 7 p.m. in the Little Panida Theater in downtown Sandpoint.

An aspect of the talk will involve Asian clams, which are present in Lake Tahoe and discovered in Lake Pend Oreille in 2012.