Wilderness Watch is urging the Washington Department of Ecology to analyze a wilderness-compatible alternative for replacing the dam on Eightmile Lake in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness. The lake is part of the Icicle Creek watershed within the famously scenic Central Cascades of Washington.

Dams were built at the outlets of several lakes in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness decades ago, before the area was designated as Wilderness, and now the Icicle and Peshastin Irrigation Districts (IPID) are looking at rebuilding the low-level 90-year-old dam on Eightmile Lake. The DEIS is significantly flawed and would degrade the Alpine Lakes Wilderness. 

Incredibly, the project would entail between 101 to 271 round-trip helicopter flights into the Wilderness, averaging 20 flights per day during certain phases of the project. In Wilderness Watch’s many decades of Wilderness advocacy work, this is—by far—the most significant helicopter intrusion we’ve ever seen proposed in Wilderness. The proposal is even more shocking given the relatively small size of the dam and its relatively close proximity to the Wilderness boundary.

It's not just the amount and intensity of helicopter use the DEIS proposes in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness that is shocking, though. All alternatives explored in the DEIS would result in a dam that would be more visible and obviously developed than the current dam, and include the installation of permanent telemetry equipment as well. The alternatives will also increase the size of the dam and the amount of water diverted from the lake, even though the extent of IPID’s water right is disputed. 

• Read our comments (coming soon)
  
  
• Read our 2021 comments on the State's EIS
  
  

Background: 
In January 2019, the Chelan County Natural Resources Department and the state Department of Ecology released a final programmatic environmental assessment (PEIS) for dam construction and water diversion projects in the Icicle Creek Watershed in Washington. The PEIS unfortunately includes rebuilding the dam on Eightmile Lake (and enlarging the lake) in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness, an intrusion WW and others have been opposing.

On May 31, 2018, Chelan County and the Washington State Department of Ecology announced the release of the Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (DPEIS) for the “Icicle Creek Watershed Water Resources Management Strategy.” The DPEIS presents five action alternatives, the worst of which seek to enlarge and/or construct dams and related structures and manipulate water levels on seven lakes within the Alpine Lakes Wilderness in Washington.

The Colchuck, Eightmile, Upper and Lower Snow, Nada, Lower Klonaqua, and Square lakes, and the Eightmile, French, Icicle, Klonaqua, Leland, Mountaineer, Prospect, and Snow creeks could all be negatively impacted.

Alternative 5 in the DPEIS is best. It includes the “Full IPID Pump Station,” which would move Icicle Peshastin Irrigation District’s (IPID) point of diversion downstream to the Wenatchee River, and greatly improve flows in Icicle Creek without building bigger dams in the Wilderness, especially in future decades when climate change will reduce flows in the Icicle watershed.  

However, the DEIS repeatedly ignores protections of the Wilderness Act as well as requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). It incorrectly assumes IPID’s easements supersede the Wilderness Act, and it also fails to fully analyze limitations on the scope and validity of IPID’s water rights, which would limit several proposals. The DPEIS also ignores negative impacts to riparian ecosystems in the Wilderness from proposed off-season releases of water from lakes, which alters stream hydrology.

The DPEIS should be revised to address the above deficiencies, and then released for public comment.

• Read our joint comment letter on the PEIS

• Read our joint comment letter on the DPEIS

In 2016, Wilderness Watch and dozens of organizations joined with a local group—the Alpine Lakes Protection Society—in submitting a group comment letter to prevent this intrusion in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness. In the scoping comments on the Icicle Creek Water Resource Management Strategy, we urged a wilderness protection alternative that would: “not increase the amount of water removed from the Alpine Lakes Wilderness; not expand easements; not encroach on wilderness lands; not use mechanical transport; and not build any structure or installation in the Wilderness.” We instead support finding new water sources and improving stream flows outside the Wilderness. We are also advocating for Chelan County to facilitate buy-back of private water rights so dams and other structures could be removed and the Wilderness restored.

• Read the comment letter

Photo: Eightmile Lake in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness by Richard Cassan