The water level in Okanagan Lake is slowly dropping as water is let out of the dam ahead of freshet.
The flow out of the dam is about 60 cubic metres per second.
“That really is our design channel capacity for this section between Okanagan Lake and Skaha Lake, and that is there so that we don’t do any erosion on the banks and create some problems farther down in the Oliver area,” Shaun Reimer, with the forests and lands ministry, said.
“What this translates to is a little bit more than a half centimetre per day drop on Okanagan Lake,” he added.
“That being said, for instance, when we had the rainfall that we saw over the previous weekend, it really just flattened out the lake. But now after we’ve started drawing it out again, now we’re going to see that drop continue for another several weeks.”
The lake level is about 40 cm below this time last year.
It typically starts to rise again in the third week of April when the lake’s tributaries bring in more water because of the snowmelt, Reimer said.
“We’ve had the ability to see it coming and prepare much more aggressively than we did last year,” Reimer said.
But there are still concerns about the high snowpack, he added.
“Anytime we have a significantly above-average snowpack, the risk of flooding goes up. If it comes down in a measured, gradual way, that will help us out. But if it comes in a very fast way or we get a lot of rain, it really creates issues for us.”
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