Elise Richman

Eight Mile Lake, which feeds Eight Mile Creek, Icicle Creek, and the Wenatchee River, is located nearly 5,000 feet above sea level on the east slope of Washington’s Cascade Mountains. Eight Mile Lake’s outlet was dammed in the 1920s to control water supply for downstream orchardists. Fifty years later, in 1976, the lake -- and several other dammed lakes in the area -- became part of the Alpine Lakes Wilderness. The dam on Eight Mile Lake is currently in disrepair. Some argue it simply ought to be repaired at its current scale, others that it should be expanded to provide more water supply for farms and communities in the face of climate change and population growth, while still others believe the dam ought to be removed entirely because it is in a Wilderness Area. There are multiple entities that depend on the water released from Eight Mile and several other nearby lakes including the town of Leavenworth, local orchardists, and the Leavenworth National Fish Hatchery on Icicle Creek. The hatchery is intended to mitigate for the loss of salmon blocked by Grand Coulee Dam, and provides a fishery for the Yakama Nation and the Colville Tribes.

The debate surrounding Eight Mile Lake highlights enduring and pressing considerations at the heart of this and many other environmental debates.  Do humans have a responsibility to preserve or even regain “untrammeled” environments in federally-designated wilderness areas and national parks? How can the needs of tribes and stakeholders be taken into account while protecting the high level ecological function of relatively pristine habitats? How does climate change affect the overall balance of needs as snowpack diminishes and water becomes less available when it is needed most for downstream fish, farms, and communities?

Enloe Dam, like a few others in Washington state and dozens around the country, is abandoned and longer serves a purpose. Enloe was built on north central Washington’s Similkameen River -- a tributary of the Okanogan River -- in the early 1900s to power a local mining industry that no longer exists. The dam, which has not produced power since 1958, continues to block salmon, steelhead, and lamprey from accessing up to 348 miles of spawning streams that extend into British Columbia’s Okanagan region. Removing the dam would play a major role in protecting upper Columbia steelhead and spring Chinook from extinction. The Okanogan County Public Utility District (PUD) currently owns the dam. 

After a failed, approximately $20 million effort to repower the dam, the PUD has stated that it is open to removal of Enloe Dam if another entity takes on the liability for removal and disposal of any toxic sediment that has settled behind the dam. The Colville Tribe and British Columbia’s Similkameen Band support dam removal and the return of fish that swim above the dam site, but not artificial fish passage like a fish ladder around the dam. Before the dam was built, the river was partially blocked to fish passage by a large rapid that a tribal story attributes to a Coyote legend. Cultural history, mining contamination, and local politics all have played and will continue to play a role in the future of the Similkameen.