By Zach Hagadone
Reader Staff
The Lakes Commission has launched a survey asking respondents to describe their relationship with Lake Pend Oreille and gauge how it affects the local economy.
Available at Bit.ly/SurveyLPO, the questionnaire takes about five minutes to complete and asks about individuals’ reasons for living or visiting the area, how much of their recreation spending takes place in Bonner County, what recreational activities they engage with on the lake and how lake levels affect their recreation options.
The survey also asks respondents to rank their preferred priorities for operations at Albeni Falls Dam, choosing between power generation, flood control, recreation and local employment.
According to the Lakes Commission, the effort to collect feedback is part of an economic study from the University of Idaho Business School — with support from the Lakes Commission and state of Idaho — launched after the delay in raising lake levels in 2024 following the discovery of faulty gates at Albeni Falls Dam.
The effort to replace the gates, which analysis found contained structural flaws in the steel, is expected to take years, with restricted operations at the dam in the interim. That resulted in a slightly slower-than-typical refill in 2024 — ultimately only a few days behind the traditional schedule — though many observers, including Lakes Commission Chair Ford Elsaesser, worried that the “uncertainty” stemming from restricted operations threatened “serious economic impact[s].”
“This is an issue that the folks at Priest Lake and the folks at Coeur d’Alene Lake or Hayden Lake don’t have to deal with because their seasons are set,” Elsaesser said at a January meeting of the Lakes Commission, at which the membership voted to contribute $35,000 to support the UI economic study.
“[T]here is not a question that from Memorial Day from the very least until well into the fall that those bodies of water have a guaranteed season,” he added at the time. “We are put in a position where we’ve seen it’s the second week of July before we have a full, stable lake.”
Lake Pend Oreille reached its normal pool level of 2,062-2,062.5 feet in late June this year.
Dist. 1 Sen. Jim Woodward, R-Sagle, and Dist. 1A Rep. Mark Sauter, R-Sandpoint, took a leading role in getting the UI study under way, with Woodward saying in January that the result is intended to identify “a different answer on how we operate the lake to benefit the people surrounding it.”
