Farmers, Bedeviled by Rising Lake, Look for a Lifeline

DEVILS LAKE, N.D. —  When Devils Lake started to swell four years ago, Bobby Michels’ farm sat safely on higher ground. Not anymore.

After swallowing 150 acres of his pastureland, the lake is creeping closer to his crops. Now it is about a mile from his house.

He’s tired of fighting it.

“I don’t have any qualms about leaving--we’ve been under so much stress here,” says Michels, 66, who lives in the farmhouse where he was born.

He won’t even consider passing the farm on to his only son. “I don’t hate him that bad,” he says.

Public officials have racked their brains for solutions to the slow-moving lake disaster, which has flooded thousands of acres and caused more than $50 million in damage in this area of northeastern North Dakota.

Government aid has poured into the region. And still, the lake rises year after year. In a closed basin, it has nowhere to go but onto surrounding towns, roads and farms.

“It’s been awful,” says Gov. Ed Schafer. “You pull your hair out because there’s no ready solution.”

Above-normal rain and snow started the lake’s escalation four years ago, and it kept rising after rainfall amounts went back to normal.

The popular fishing spot now covers about 80,000 acres--about twice the amount of land it covered in 1993.

Geologic evidence shows the lake’s level has dramatically wavered over the centuries--from completely dry to 12 feet higher than today. In the last 130 years, the lake has fluctuated from 1,438.4 feet above sea level to 1,402 feet, and back up to about 1,438 feet this summer.

The dike for the city of Devils Lake protects its 7,800 people up to a lake level of 1,440 feet. A $7.5-million project is planned to add another five feet to the dike.

Some people have built their own dikes to try to protect homes that border the lake. Terry Brenno, on the lake’s north side, has spent $10,000 building a dike but is giving up anyway. He says he’ll move to higher ground this fall.

Federal, state and local governments already have spent more than $100 million on quick fixes. A man-made inlet-outlet system would be another large expense, but would eventually provide more permanent relief, says Vern Thompson, mayor of nearby Minnewaukan, who co-chairs the Lake Emergency Management Committee.

With no outlet, “It would take five years of straight drought to get back to where we once were,” Thompson says.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is working on a plan for an outlet to release excess water and an inlet to let water in during droughts. But the plan will not be finished until 2000.

In the meantime, the corps has released plans for an emergency outlet to drain water into the Sheyenne River, which dumps into the Red River, flowing north through Canada to the Hudson Bay.

The outlet, even if built tomorrow, would have to release water slowly to prevent flooding on the Spirit Lake Indian reservation, which it would cross, and elsewhere, and to ensure that downstream water supplies are not overly tainted by Devils Lake’s high salt content, says Martin Lancaster, the U.S. Army’s assistant secretary for civil works.

Spirit Lake tribal officials are studying the outlet proposal. “We need to educate ourselves before bringing it to the people,” tribal health officer Peggy Cavanaugh says.

State Water Commission Engineer Dave Sprynczynatyk says there may be no stopping the lake if it is simply rising to its natural level.

“It almost appears as though we’re going to continue to go up and reach the level the lake was at hundreds of years ago,” Sprynczynatyk says.

The question is whether farmers can survive while waiting for a solution. John Grann has lost 7,000 acres of his 8,000-acre farm and ranch. He has been forced to sell a third of his cattle because his range land is gone.

“It’s pretty hard to have any optimism,” says Grann, who is married and has three children. “Nobody wants to leave . . . but it’s looking more and more like that day is coming.”

While studies continue and the lake continues to rise, there may not be much anyone can do about the flooding, Lancaster says.

“What I’m praying for here is divine intervention,” he says. “That’s what we really need.”