Boaters warned about Prosperous
Signs at boat launch posted after record drop in water levels
Evan Kiyoshi French
Northern News Services
Friday, August 28, 2015
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Water levels on Prosperous Lake are so low, warning signs have been posted at the McMeekan Bay boat launch to let people know launching there could be dangerous.
Several boaters took their chances loading and unloading their boats at the Prosperous Lake boat launch Sunday despite an NWT Parks sign warning that it was closed to due to low water levels. - Mike W. Bryant/NNSL photo |
Briony Wright, spokesperson for the Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment, said the signs were posted last week after the department's North Slave office received reports of low water at the launch.
"The signs were placed as a result of comments received by boat launch users and the water level itself was not measured," she wrote in an e-mail.
After a week of rain, water levels spiked but have dropped again, according to Environment Canada's water office website.
A real-time hydrometric graph for the lake shows the water has dropped around one third of a metre between June 19 and Aug. 24.
Charts from the water office indicate water levels are at their lowest since 1987.
Pam Coulter, spokesperson for the Northwest Territories Power Corporation (NTPC), said the low water isn't due to water being held back at the Bluefish Dam.
"We are not holding back any water," she said. "Everything that is running into the system we are running out of the system. It is the lowest (water level) we have ever experienced."
Low water has been the power corp.'s concern for a year now, said Coulter.
"We can't generate any more power than what's coming in right now," she said. "We'd like to have more water so we can get more power."
Coulter said drought didn't affect power generation from the Yellowknife River last year but it usually takes time for snow melt and rain fall further north to work its way south through the system to the North Slave region.
"There's no water running in the whole river system," she said. "The bed that feeds us is further north. It melts in the spring and then it comes down the river system. It usually reaches our areas in the summer time."
Coulter said all the snow and rain fall from last year - which she said wasn't much - is working its way through the system now and power corp. doesn't expect the situation to change any time soon.
"We are not expecting an influx at this point," she said.
Water levels in the Cameron River at the outlet of Reid Lake are the lowest they've been since 1975, according to another hydrometric graph. Because this spot is an unregulated sub-basin in the Yellowknife River system, it provides a more natural picture of water levels because it's not affected by the Bluefish Dam, unlike Prosperous Lake.
Jason Clark, general manager for Force One, said the boat dealership launches from the Giant Mine launch, which isn't suffering from low water levels. Joey Sutton, sales manager at Polar Tech Recreation, said a dropoff at the end of the boat launch on Prosperous Lake means boaters trying to launch their boats have to sink the mufflers of their vehicles in order to get enough water to float their boats.
"It drops off pretty steep there," he said. He added when he last launched a boat on Prosperous Lake about two weeks ago the water was already frighteningly low.
"I had my muffler in the water so I had to make runs at it," he said.
"I had to do it kind of fast to kind of shove it off, because I couldn't go back any further or my truck would have been in the water."
