Watergate: Did someone monkey wrench Jackson Lake Dam?

Environmental Reporter

Jackson Lake Dam in the fall of 2020, when outflows were about 280 cfs. Bureau of Reclamation officials have set the gates to similar outflows this spring in an effort to capture as much spring runoff as possible.

The deluge started about two hours before sunset.

For weeks, the Bureau of Reclamation had been holding the amount of water leaving Jackson Lake Dam steady at a gurgle of about 280 cubic feet per second, a fraction of the dam's usual springtime torrent. Still, it was a level federal water managers had settled on after weeks of negotiation with the State of Wyoming and other federal agencies in a recent boondoggle about water management in the Upper Snake River Basin.

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A gate stem at Jackson Lake Dam without its cap during an adjustment in the fall of 2020.

Contact Billy Arnold at 732-7063 or [email protected].

Environmental Reporter

Billy Arnold has been covering the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and the people who manage it since January 2022. He previously spent two years covering Teton County government, and a year editing Scene. Tips welcomed.

I suspect a measurement error, caused by beaver/muskrat/human? The flow deviation is not possible.

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