Bonners Ferry Local Guide including all of Boundary County Idaho

Corps: Error caused flooding

Wednesday, November 29, 2006; DB

Despite a stunning admission by the Army Corps of Engineers that $10 million in crop damage along the Kootenai River could have been averted if the agency had followed protocol for releasing water from Libby Dam, the mayor of Bonners Ferry praised the corps' straightforward honesty in admitting it had erred. "The corps was quite clear," said Mayor Darrell Kerby. "It discovered it didn't know as much as it believed it should have known. You can't have record floods in average water years and think nothing is wrong. "This was a man-made type flood based on altering the operation of the Libby Dam." Last spring, flooding along the banks of the Kootenai River was blamed for damaging about 40 miles of flood-control levees as well as causing more than $10 in crop destruction to Boundary County farmers. - Full Story