River lowest since 1987

Ken Johnston
Editor

Last year in early June the residents along the Rainy River and Lake of the Woods were crying for the dams to be closed up stream to reduce flooding. This year the dams at both Fort Frances and Kenora remain open with just a trickle of water as lake and river levels have dropped to their lowest levels since 1987.
Rick Cousins, Senior Water Resource Engineer, of the Lake of the Woods Water Control Board, said that Lake of the Woods is holding its own and really has not dropped that much in the past month or so, but it has not gone up either.
Because of the low spring runoff and very little rain, outflow levels at Fort Frances are at about 100 cubic meters per second. Rainy Lake has just dropped to the Drought Reserve Line and if it fails to improve the outflow on the dam could be further reduced to 65 cubic m./sec. The normal flow for this time of year is 400 cubic m./sec.
However, Cousins is optimistic that June will replenish the levels to higher and better operating levels. “June is historically the highest rainfall month.” All indicators are that the long term weather pattern will be normal.
However, the precipitation levels from last fall to this spring have been the second lowest on record since the early 1900s.
Cousins said that in addition to many calls coming in with people complaining that they can not get their boats in the water or near docks, there has been an even greater impact on big companies.
The paper mills that normally use water flows to generate electricity have not been able to get much this year and last year when the water levels were to the other extreme they had to shut down generation. “That has a tremendous economic impact on them as power is one of their biggest expenses,” said Cousins.
Cousins added that the warm dry weather predicted for this week will not help matters. “We need some moisture to blow in from somewhere.”