Environment
Payette River Water Flow Highest In Years
June 8, 2010 
A drive up Highway 55 along the Payette River and its North Fork to Cascade provided a spectacular display of spring runoff.
Water flows were the highest in they have been in at least 13 years. From the top of Horseshoe Bend Hill the river looks like a junior version of the Muddy Missouri as it winds through town, dominating the surrounding green scenery.
The famed “Hounds Tooth” rock and rapids which is a challenge to kayakers in mid-summer is dangerously impassable at current flows. The GUARDIAN saw only 3 kayaks in the river and they were in a relatively calm stretch just above Horseshoe Bend.
At Cascade the dam is dumping water at a rate not seen in ages. It forms a huge plume below the spillway, prompting folks to take pictures and get free car washes in the spray.
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Comments & Discussion
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Jun 8, 2010, 10:28 pm
Magnificent nature shots! I almost feel like I’m there.
Jun 9, 2010, 1:02 am
Gosh, the society that erected all these highly engineered and expertly built structures, like this dam, the power plants, the roads & bridges; they must have been really amazingly smart to make such good use of their available resources. Were they from outer space? I don’t see any trace of them anywhere now except for all the amazing things they did to make our lives easier.
Jun 9, 2010, 9:40 am
Wow zippo, you must not get out much. Have you seen I-84 lately? Between Broadway and Garrity?
Compared to the puny humans who built the uninspired diamond interchanges, bridges that barely spanned 2 lanes and left hand merging flyover ramps, the current civilization, just one generation removed, has made a quantum leap in sophistication.
Where none existed before, we now have a SPUI, noise barriers, storm water retention basins, a 3 lane right hand flyover transition road, internet traffic cams and garvee bonds. There is one remaining relic of your so-called smart society, the Meridian Road interchange but that span’s life span is nearly over as well.
I guess this huge technological leap could have only been at the hands of alien aid.
EDITOR NOTE–Now all we need is for the next couple of generations to figure out how to pay for these things.
Jun 9, 2010, 11:12 am
I will view this water as a gift from mother nature for the impoundments for hydroelectric power generation that was not planned for this year.
Also, I would hope it would improve the reservoir levels for farm irrigation and the food it will help grow.
The flooding is an inconvenience to those living in low areas but probably not a new thing for them to deal with. Just not planned for this time of year.
Jun 9, 2010, 12:54 pm
Then who are the guys who drilled an oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, cut corners whereever they could and blew up the well and destroyed the Gulf of Mexico? They are not from outerspace.
There are people who know what they are doing and there are people who are just plain greedy, stupid, or evil.
Jun 9, 2010, 5:49 pm
what is I-84 and why would I want to go there?