Near VANTAGE, Wash. — There's no water in the marina at Crescent Bar Resort in Quincy.
The boat launch is closed; the gas pump is idle.
All but a handful of campers have canceled their reservations for Memorial Day weekend because there won't be any water sports.
The resort’s assistant manager, Todd Saunders, said, “It’s a huge impact for us. We’ve gone to a skeleton crew, and we’re trying to trim where we can. Hopefully we can make it through until we do get water.”
The reservoir behind the Wanapum Dam was lowered by 26 to 30 feet after a crack was discovered in a concrete spillway last February.
Thirty-seven miles of shoreline and river are closed to the public through at least the Fourth of July weekend.
The Grant County Public Utility District owns and operates the dam.
A spokesman, Chuck Allen, said, “We know that if we did raise the reservoir again, without making the repairs that we need to make to the structure, that it wouldn’t be stable.”
The PUD is working on a repair plan that would include driving steel rods through the fractured spillway to shore it up.
That plan and a timetable for completing the fix won’t be ready until the end of the month.
Allen said the utility district is working as safely and as quickly as possible.
When the reservoir was lowered, the fish ladder at the Wanapum Dam was also left high and dry. The PUD had to modify the ladder to make sure migrating salmon and steelhead trout could use it.
Water is now being pumped from the reservoir through the ladder so fish can swim up it.
A plywood slide has been installed at the top of the ladder so the fish can gently plop back into the river as they exit.
Jeff Grizzel, from the PUD, said, “The fish are making it through just fine. No delays, no stunning of fish and no mortalities of fish.”
While that's great news for the fish, the resort upstream is losing thousands of dollars in business from those who normally come to enjoy the water and now find there's no water to enjoy.
KIRO
