04-01-2004, 04:56 AM
[size 3]Boat ramp situation is anybody's guess[/size]
By RICHARD HINTON, Bismarck Tribune
If you woke up this morning with a
on your face because you had picked all of the winning numbers in the state's first Powerball lottery, you might be the only person lucky enough to accurately predict what's going to happen as this fast-approaching boating season unfolds.
If not, join everybody else in the huddle on the right. That's where folks are scratching their heads trying their best to figure out how good the fishing and recreational opportunities will be on the Missouri River and lakes Sakakawea and Oahe.
As a persistent drought heads into a fifth year, everyone connected with boat ramps is in unfamiliar territory. All of them are trying to puzzle together when and where you can get your boat's hull wet on the river that enters the state near Williston and exits southwest of Linton. Boat ramp access predictions will be about as dicey as forecasting North Dakota's ever changing weather, which, as we all know, can be sunny and 50 in the morning and 10 and blizzard conditions five hours later.[url "http://oas.lee.net/RealMedia/ads/click_lx.ads/bismarcktribune.com/news/local/10.22280069434871108/1638293163/Middle1/TBT2admin/St_Alexius-03042003/stalexius.html/64313365653832333430366239653930?http://www.st.alexius.org"][/url] [url "http://oas.lee.net/RealMedia/ads/click_nx.ads/bismarcktribune.com/news/local/Middle1/1@Right,Middle1,Middle2,TopLeft,TopRight,BottomLeft,BottomRight,x05,x06!Middle1"][/url]
"We're in a new world in dealing with boat ramps," said Paul Johnston, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spokesman in Omaha, Neb.
"We're in a critical state," said Bob Froelich, fisheries development coordinator for the state Game and Fish Department. "If it goes much lower, we'll be starting over with no usable ramps in the lake."
What is known is that Lake Sakakawea is down -- way down. Its elevation Friday was 1,814.6 feet above mean sea level, almost 61/2-feet lower than last year.
Game and Fish, the corps, state parks and rec, local parks and recs districts, county and tribal entities all are trying to get a handle on which ramps will be accessible at which elevations.
What also is known is that plenty of ramp work lies ahead. Removing silt, extending ramps or moving ramps all are options on that lengthy to-do list.
The total cost rings up at "about $1 million," said Linda Phelps, a recreation specialist with the corps at Riverdale. That's the sum that federal, state, local and tribal entities combined will spend.
When Sakakawea is at normal pool elevations, ramp work expenses are negligible, she added, "unless someone is building a new ramp or something."
And there's another issue as well.
Game and Fish already has warned fishing tournament organizers that their events could be canceled because of possible limited boat ramp access.
No tournaments have been canceled, Terry Steinwand, the chief of the fisheries division, said last week.
"Actually, I don't anticipate having to do that," he said. "We got a reprieve with higher water levels."
But he doesn't plan to rescind the warning.
"It's close to crunch time," he said. "If I have to cancel tournaments, I have to do it in the next couple of weeks."
Steinwand said he expects ramp access will be a major topic Thursday at the Game and Fish advisory board meeting in Beulah, which he plans to attend. The meeting starts at 7 p.m. MST at the Beulah Eagles Club.
But the bulk of the ramp work can't start until most of the ice is gone. Last week's balmy temperatures were a good start on losing that winter's worth of ice, but the melt can create another set of problems -- mud. Heavy equipment mired in mud isn't accomplishing much to make boat ramps usable.
Up and down the river at least, early April is the target date. And the farther south the ramp, the warmer the weather and the better the chances that a likely target date of April 1 can be met.
Ralph Gabrysh, natural resource manager in the corps' Bismarck office, is overseeing the three Emmons County ramps on Lake Oahe that will be usable -- Hazelton, North Beaver Creek and the Rivery, a new one.
"If it looks like the river is flowing good all the way down to the South Dakota state line, we will try to mobilize a crew from Pierre (S.D.) to come up and clean the boat ramps off and dig out as much sedimentation as possible off boat ramps and then install courtesy docks," he said.
Froelich takes up the thread from there:
"The Gun Range (MacLean Bottoms ramp) was cleaned off (Wednesday), and the west side ones (Thursday)," he said last week. "There was nothing usable last weekend, but next week at this time, probably all of them will be usable."
But the farther north of Bismarck that Froelich takes his guesswork, the more it depends on warm days melting more ice.
He hopes to fly the river and lake this week to get a bird's-eye view of the situation.
And like everyone in this ramp accessibility prognosticating business, Froelich puts in a disclaimer:
"Given normal water flows, we should have decent access (from Garrison Dam) down to Hazelton," he said. "If the corps gets funny with releases, we'll start backing off."
Froelich knows of only one ramp in that Garrison-to-Hazelton stretch that won't be usable -- Burnt Creek, north of the Interstate 94 bridge. He said it's closed because of continuing erosion problems.
Phelps is coordinating all of the ramp work ringing Lake Sakakawea.
Boat ramp information sheets from the corps show the big lake has 78 boat ramps scattered among 36 recreation or access areas. At a worst-case scenario elevation of 1,812 feet above mean sea level, 22 of the 36 areas would have access after silt removal or other ramp work. Three more areas -- Lunds Landing (White Tail Bay), Parshall Bay and Tobacco Gardens -- may have ramp access.
Eleven will be out of commission. The 11 are: Camp of the Cross, Douglas Creek (Ziegler's), Lewis & Clark State Park, Little Beaver Bay, Little Knife Bay (Beacon Island), Little Field Bay, Little Missouri, New Town Marina, Steinke Bay, West Totten Trail and Wolf Creek (east).
The corps' forecast calls for Sakakawea to rise to 1,815.8 feet msl by April 30.
At that level, 25 recreation areas could have usable ramps. The corps' Beaver Bay ramp, Beulah Bay, Garrison Creek Cabin Store, Sakakawea State Park and Sportsmen's Centennial Park would have access without work, although Stevenson may require some dredging. Parshall Bay will slide into the "usable, will need work" category, but those 11 "unusable" areas will remain out of commission.
A March 1 corps' forecast predicts that Sakakawea will rise to 1,818.5 feet msl by the end of June, typically the lake's high water mark as spring runoff peaks.
"That's ugly," said Froelich said of the elevation.
The lake's lowest end-of-June previously was 1821.9 feet msl, and that occurred in 1990.
Last year, the lake's end-of-June elevation was 1,827.0 feet msl.
Those realities are part of the reason that getting ramps in shape this spring will be so costly and difficult.
And the targeted ramps and work orders will vary with Sakakawea's changing pool elevation.
"A lot depends on what the lake elevation is at ice-out," Phelps said. She added that if forecasts look like the lake will gain a couple of feet of water, work on some ramps could be put off.
Either way, there is a multitude of things to be done, Phelps said. "Some silt removal at the bottom of ramps, some (ramps) need to be extended down farther, and some ramps we will have to relocate to new areas."
Although work has started at a few ramps, Phelps' timetable calls for having the majority of the work done before the Memorial Day weekend.
"It's totally dependent on the weather," she said.
And there are priorities. "We're concentrating on access with the highest visitation," she said, "and we're contracting as much work as possible." With more crews out working, the work will go faster, she explained.
First up are Fort Stevenson and Sakakawea state parks. Then targeted ramps up the north and south sides. Phelps wants to avoid concentrating all of the usable ramps in one small area.
Although he wasn't in charge of the state's boat ramps then, Froelich remembers the last go-round with drought in the late 1980s and early '90s. Right now the lake is a half foot lower than it was then.
"We didn't have any infrastructure then," Froelich said. "Every foot the lake dropped, we basically were looking at new territory. We had no access, no concrete planking in the water. We had several springs in the last drought where no or only one ramp was usable.
"This time when the lake started dropping, we at least had some of the infrastructure to work with."
Johnston describes the concept of forecasting "a little bit of art as well as science."
"What we are doing is taking what we know of the water content and the snowpack and trying to factor in what we will get in rainfall this year and where it will be."
In addition to its more than 100 years of records, the corps gets data from the National Weather Service and the U.S. Geological Service.
"What we can't give you is an idea of how much rain or where it will be four months from now. It's a really big basin. It can rain in one spot and not another, and that will influence where the runoff in the reservoir goes."
[signature]
By RICHARD HINTON, Bismarck Tribune
If you woke up this morning with a
on your face because you had picked all of the winning numbers in the state's first Powerball lottery, you might be the only person lucky enough to accurately predict what's going to happen as this fast-approaching boating season unfolds. If not, join everybody else in the huddle on the right. That's where folks are scratching their heads trying their best to figure out how good the fishing and recreational opportunities will be on the Missouri River and lakes Sakakawea and Oahe.
As a persistent drought heads into a fifth year, everyone connected with boat ramps is in unfamiliar territory. All of them are trying to puzzle together when and where you can get your boat's hull wet on the river that enters the state near Williston and exits southwest of Linton. Boat ramp access predictions will be about as dicey as forecasting North Dakota's ever changing weather, which, as we all know, can be sunny and 50 in the morning and 10 and blizzard conditions five hours later.[url "http://oas.lee.net/RealMedia/ads/click_lx.ads/bismarcktribune.com/news/local/10.22280069434871108/1638293163/Middle1/TBT2admin/St_Alexius-03042003/stalexius.html/64313365653832333430366239653930?http://www.st.alexius.org"][/url] [url "http://oas.lee.net/RealMedia/ads/click_nx.ads/bismarcktribune.com/news/local/Middle1/1@Right,Middle1,Middle2,TopLeft,TopRight,BottomLeft,BottomRight,x05,x06!Middle1"][/url]
"We're in a new world in dealing with boat ramps," said Paul Johnston, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spokesman in Omaha, Neb.
"We're in a critical state," said Bob Froelich, fisheries development coordinator for the state Game and Fish Department. "If it goes much lower, we'll be starting over with no usable ramps in the lake."
What is known is that Lake Sakakawea is down -- way down. Its elevation Friday was 1,814.6 feet above mean sea level, almost 61/2-feet lower than last year.
Game and Fish, the corps, state parks and rec, local parks and recs districts, county and tribal entities all are trying to get a handle on which ramps will be accessible at which elevations.
What also is known is that plenty of ramp work lies ahead. Removing silt, extending ramps or moving ramps all are options on that lengthy to-do list.
The total cost rings up at "about $1 million," said Linda Phelps, a recreation specialist with the corps at Riverdale. That's the sum that federal, state, local and tribal entities combined will spend.
When Sakakawea is at normal pool elevations, ramp work expenses are negligible, she added, "unless someone is building a new ramp or something."
And there's another issue as well.
Game and Fish already has warned fishing tournament organizers that their events could be canceled because of possible limited boat ramp access.
No tournaments have been canceled, Terry Steinwand, the chief of the fisheries division, said last week.
"Actually, I don't anticipate having to do that," he said. "We got a reprieve with higher water levels."
But he doesn't plan to rescind the warning.
"It's close to crunch time," he said. "If I have to cancel tournaments, I have to do it in the next couple of weeks."
Steinwand said he expects ramp access will be a major topic Thursday at the Game and Fish advisory board meeting in Beulah, which he plans to attend. The meeting starts at 7 p.m. MST at the Beulah Eagles Club.
But the bulk of the ramp work can't start until most of the ice is gone. Last week's balmy temperatures were a good start on losing that winter's worth of ice, but the melt can create another set of problems -- mud. Heavy equipment mired in mud isn't accomplishing much to make boat ramps usable.
Up and down the river at least, early April is the target date. And the farther south the ramp, the warmer the weather and the better the chances that a likely target date of April 1 can be met.
Ralph Gabrysh, natural resource manager in the corps' Bismarck office, is overseeing the three Emmons County ramps on Lake Oahe that will be usable -- Hazelton, North Beaver Creek and the Rivery, a new one.
"If it looks like the river is flowing good all the way down to the South Dakota state line, we will try to mobilize a crew from Pierre (S.D.) to come up and clean the boat ramps off and dig out as much sedimentation as possible off boat ramps and then install courtesy docks," he said.
Froelich takes up the thread from there:
"The Gun Range (MacLean Bottoms ramp) was cleaned off (Wednesday), and the west side ones (Thursday)," he said last week. "There was nothing usable last weekend, but next week at this time, probably all of them will be usable."
But the farther north of Bismarck that Froelich takes his guesswork, the more it depends on warm days melting more ice.
He hopes to fly the river and lake this week to get a bird's-eye view of the situation.
And like everyone in this ramp accessibility prognosticating business, Froelich puts in a disclaimer:
"Given normal water flows, we should have decent access (from Garrison Dam) down to Hazelton," he said. "If the corps gets funny with releases, we'll start backing off."
Froelich knows of only one ramp in that Garrison-to-Hazelton stretch that won't be usable -- Burnt Creek, north of the Interstate 94 bridge. He said it's closed because of continuing erosion problems.
Phelps is coordinating all of the ramp work ringing Lake Sakakawea.
Boat ramp information sheets from the corps show the big lake has 78 boat ramps scattered among 36 recreation or access areas. At a worst-case scenario elevation of 1,812 feet above mean sea level, 22 of the 36 areas would have access after silt removal or other ramp work. Three more areas -- Lunds Landing (White Tail Bay), Parshall Bay and Tobacco Gardens -- may have ramp access.
Eleven will be out of commission. The 11 are: Camp of the Cross, Douglas Creek (Ziegler's), Lewis & Clark State Park, Little Beaver Bay, Little Knife Bay (Beacon Island), Little Field Bay, Little Missouri, New Town Marina, Steinke Bay, West Totten Trail and Wolf Creek (east).
The corps' forecast calls for Sakakawea to rise to 1,815.8 feet msl by April 30.
At that level, 25 recreation areas could have usable ramps. The corps' Beaver Bay ramp, Beulah Bay, Garrison Creek Cabin Store, Sakakawea State Park and Sportsmen's Centennial Park would have access without work, although Stevenson may require some dredging. Parshall Bay will slide into the "usable, will need work" category, but those 11 "unusable" areas will remain out of commission.
A March 1 corps' forecast predicts that Sakakawea will rise to 1,818.5 feet msl by the end of June, typically the lake's high water mark as spring runoff peaks.
"That's ugly," said Froelich said of the elevation.
The lake's lowest end-of-June previously was 1821.9 feet msl, and that occurred in 1990.
Last year, the lake's end-of-June elevation was 1,827.0 feet msl.
Those realities are part of the reason that getting ramps in shape this spring will be so costly and difficult.
And the targeted ramps and work orders will vary with Sakakawea's changing pool elevation.
"A lot depends on what the lake elevation is at ice-out," Phelps said. She added that if forecasts look like the lake will gain a couple of feet of water, work on some ramps could be put off.
Either way, there is a multitude of things to be done, Phelps said. "Some silt removal at the bottom of ramps, some (ramps) need to be extended down farther, and some ramps we will have to relocate to new areas."
Although work has started at a few ramps, Phelps' timetable calls for having the majority of the work done before the Memorial Day weekend.
"It's totally dependent on the weather," she said.
And there are priorities. "We're concentrating on access with the highest visitation," she said, "and we're contracting as much work as possible." With more crews out working, the work will go faster, she explained.
First up are Fort Stevenson and Sakakawea state parks. Then targeted ramps up the north and south sides. Phelps wants to avoid concentrating all of the usable ramps in one small area.
Although he wasn't in charge of the state's boat ramps then, Froelich remembers the last go-round with drought in the late 1980s and early '90s. Right now the lake is a half foot lower than it was then.
"We didn't have any infrastructure then," Froelich said. "Every foot the lake dropped, we basically were looking at new territory. We had no access, no concrete planking in the water. We had several springs in the last drought where no or only one ramp was usable.
"This time when the lake started dropping, we at least had some of the infrastructure to work with."
Johnston describes the concept of forecasting "a little bit of art as well as science."
"What we are doing is taking what we know of the water content and the snowpack and trying to factor in what we will get in rainfall this year and where it will be."
In addition to its more than 100 years of records, the corps gets data from the National Weather Service and the U.S. Geological Service.
"What we can't give you is an idea of how much rain or where it will be four months from now. It's a really big basin. It can rain in one spot and not another, and that will influence where the runoff in the reservoir goes."
[signature]