Dam management keeps Flathead Lake low

As temperatures warm up and rain in the immediate forecast, officials with SKQ Dam are working to keep Flathead Lake at the lowest elevation possible.

“We are keeping the lake filling at the slowest pace possible,” Travis Togo, chief commercial officer of Energy Keepers, Inc., said Monday morning.

He noted that the lake is filling naturally on the spring runoff, along with forecasted precipitation, leaving the inflows to the lake higher.

As of Monday, the lake was at 2,891 feet, still two feet from full pool, Togo said, adding that water was flowing at 42,000 cubic feet per second.

By this Friday, the river is expected to increase to 68,000 CFS.

The dam doesn’t hold water from leaving the lake, Togo explained.

Water travels around seven miles from the lake in Polson, down Flathead River and then into the dam.

“In that segment of river, there’s a natural restriction in the river channel” that allows only a certain amount of water to sift through the area, Togo explained.

Flooding concerns would mostly come from above the lake, out of the Hungry Horse Dam, which is managed by the Bureau of Reclamation.

Togo said that the water feeding the Hungry Horse Dam are also being kept as low as possible but at the end of the day, flooding and other natural causes cannot be controlled by humans.

“I think right now the message is, the river and reservoir are” as low as possible to minimize the likelihood of flood risk, but “to some extent, it’s in Mother Nature’s hands,” Togo said.