by Richard Uhlhorn
Water Rights:
Years ago, Chelan PUD granted the Lake Chelan Valley 60,000 acre feet of water from Lake Chelan to use for development and agriculture. Today, the Valley has used most of those acre feet and only 5,373 acre feet remain before there is no more water available for water right applicants.
Department of Ecology’s Andrea Reyes explained at the Lake Chelan Watershed Planning Unit’s December 11 meeting that the water rights coordinated cost reimbursement application process was moving forward. “Once the remaining water is used, there will be no more water left,” she said.
RH2 Engineering is currently processing nine applications which will be done by the end of the year. “We will be through with Batch No. 4 by April,” said Reyes. “We will review if we get additional water or not.”
Doug England asked how the water right requests are being evaluated and how the needs far into the future.
Anthony Dunn – Ecology, said they were looking four years down the road. “You have to be able to show a need within a particular period of time.”
Mike Kaputa – County Resources, said there are only 15 applications remaining. Dunn replied that if Batch 5 uses up the water, there is nothing left to process. “There are no reserves to allocate from.”
If Ecology actually grants a 2005 request from the City of Chelan for 3,800 acre feet of water for future development needs, only 1,173.62 acre feet would remain. Both the Lake Chelan Reclamation District and Chelan County have requests for 2,040 acre feet and 1,000 acre feet.
The 2015 request from the Reclamation District would break the reserve remaining to (875.33) acre feet leaving no reserve to allocate from unless more water could be found or the PUD granting more acre feet to boost the reserves. Those applications below the Reclamation District’s request would not be able to process their water right applications.
Water Quality:
Phil Long, director of the Lake Chelan Research Institute, reported that the Institute has made some incredible progress in the last several months. “We gone over several years of data,” said Long.
The Institute has hired Anna Galipeau, an environmental scientist from Montana State University in Bozeman. She has been working on data collected since 2018 with funding from the City of Chelan and Chelan County. “She’s been analyzing what has been going on which is helping us immensely” said Long.
Long reported that the Institute is also analyzing the impacts of the 25 Mile Creek fire; updating the State of the Lake report.
Funding for these studies have come from private donations, the US Forest Service, Chelan County and the PUD.
He reiterated the importance of doing research work and shared data put together by Galipeau on phosphorous loading, chlorophyl and dissolved oxygen. Long provided an overview of water clarity data taken from three different sites on the lake from 1990 to 2020. Water visibility ranges from 12 meters to 18 meters depending on the year and time taken with a Secchi disk.
The Institute uses a multi-parameter probe to instantaneously take measurements at different depths in the water column. Long told the Unit that the Institute will be making this data available to anyone who wants to see it.
AIS report:
Steve Lasky, Chelan County resource specialist, reported on the 2024 mobile voluntary watercraft inspection program on the lake. These inspections are conducted on Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the various boat launch sites around the lake from May through October.
This year, 2,830 inspections were conducted with inspections at Old Mill Bay reaching 638 vessels in July and another 143 in August. The inspectors inspected 204 vessels at Riverwalk Park Launch and another 382 at Lakeside Marina in August.
“This year the highest impact was at Old Mill Bay,” said Lasky.
Long suggested putting cameras at the launch sites to count how many vessels are entering the lake versus the number of vessels being inspected. This year 3,753 boats were recorded launching or coming out of the lake.
In other business:
Four hundred acres of Milfoil is growing in Lake Chelan. Asked if diver assisted test to remove milfoil was checked for regrowth, Long replied that there was regrowth. The diver assisted program is extremely expensive and is probably not the solution to removal of milfoil
Stormwater update: Travis Denham, Public Works engineer, reported that the city is preparing a stormwater management plan that includes outfalls, storage basins in the city. The study should be completed in May or June, 2025.
Fishery Forum was not ready to report, but Mike Kaputa asked that they report on the forum at the next meeting in March. The draft report on bull trout re-introduction to the Lake Chelan tributaries
Lake Chelan Research Institute funding:
Funding comes through a variety of sources, but the Institute also encourages private donations to help further its research and hopefully keeping Lake Chelan clean.
For more information on funding, go to Lake Chelan Research Institute – Clear into the future
All Things Lake Chelan 