Klamath Falls, ORE– Early Tuesday morning last week around 2:30 a.m., they opened the gates on Upper Klamath Lake almost quadrupling the flow of water for three days.
The purpose? Mitigating the drawdown of Copco 1.
The outflow was about one-tenth of a foot of Klamath Lake according to Klamath Water Users Association Director of Water Policy Moss Driscoll.
During the drawdown periods for all of the dams, the water levels in each of the coinciding reservoirs were reduced to the minimum operating pools.
As each of the dams came down, the reservoirs of water held by the next upriver dam were used to not only improve rim stability but also to flush out sediment the dams had collected over the years.
The increased flows from Upper Klamath Lake are now reduced to the usual flow rate and will remain as such