The Blue Lake Dam at work. (KCAW photo/Robert Woolsey)
The Blue Lake Dam site reopened to public access over the weekend (2-14-15), but there isn’t much to see. Almost all of the additional 83-feet of dam height is underwater, thanks to an exceptionally wet winter. Under more typical weather conditions, project engineer Dean Orbison estimated that it would have taken at least two years to fill the lake. Instead, heavy winter rains — and low heating demand — have brought the level to within 12 feet of spill, as indicated by the gauge at right. Orbison says that low snow pack should not be a problem. “We’re storing the snow pack as rain in the lake,” he says. And because of the larger lake volume, the lake should never draw down more than 60-feet, as opposed to 80-feet with the old dam. An added bonus: the hundreds of thousands of dollars in diesel fuel Sitkans won’t have to burn for electricity waiting for the lake to fill. “We’ve really cut the fat hog!” Orbison says.
