Seattle City Light is delaying the start of a drawdown of Diablo Lake until Sept. 23. Seattle City Light is delaying the start of a drawdown of Diablo Lake until Sept. 23.
City Light plans to lower the lake at the utility’s Skagit Hydroelectric Project by 10 feet to continue construction of a new heavy barge landing dock.
The drawdown will take up to six days to complete and low lake levels are scheduled to last until Nov. 5.
The drawdown was scheduled to start Sept. 10, but the contractor working on the project was not ready to start work, so the utility is maintaining lake levels to reduce the impact on recreational opportunities.
Once the lake is lowered, the boat ramp and fishing dock at Colonial Creek Campground in the North Cascades National Park complex will not be usable. The Diablo Lake ferry service will operate as scheduled though passengers should be prepared to walk much steeper ramps at the docks.
This $1.5 million project is one of the final phases of work needed to replace facilities destroyed by a 2010 rockslide. The project must be completed to allow for the delivery of six new transformers to Ross Powerhouse scheduled for 2016.
Seattle City Light is the 10th largest public electric utility in the United States. It has some of the lowest cost customer rates of any urban utility, providing reliable, renewable and environmentally responsible power to about 750,000 Seattle area residents. City Light has been greenhouse gas neutral since 2005, the first electric utility in the nation to achieve that distinction.