The drawdown of Lake D’Arbonne caught back up (or down, I guess) to where it was two weeks ago before a torrential rainfall in our area. The lake was at 75.2 feet yesterday, just .1 above its lowest point since the drawdown began the day after Labor Day. The gates will remain open for several more days to allow the water to get low enough to withstand another good rain. The Lake Commission plans on keeping the lake down about five feet through the first of January in hopes of exposing acres of aquatic weeds to a frost and thus killing them. Lake property owners are also using this time to do work on their seawalls, boat houses and other property. Here’s the USGS chart showing the lake level through yesterday:
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Lake down nearly 5 feet
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Good question, Paul. I agree on the surface it’s hard to understand. I feel badly for the folks who get flooded. But in defense of the lake commission, Lake D’Arbonne has a huge watershed that takes in our entire region to the north, including a lot of south Arkansas. When we have back to back 8 to 10 inch rains, or five days of 3 inches every day in the watershed, it takes days for the water to get through the lake, out of the gates and over the top of the spillway. It’s like running two gallons of water a minute into the bathtub and only being able to let out one gallon a minute. You know what is going to happen.
There are also times in the spring when the Ouachita River is backed up, D’Arbonne Bayou is backed up and the water just has nowhere to go. The new tainter gate project will help a lot, but still won’t be able to stop all flooding in that last case. It’s a lot easier to lower the lake for a drawdown because you have an extended amount of time. For instance, it’s taken a month to get the lake down five feet. Hope that helps.
Posted by darbone1 | October 11, 2012, 12:368:09 pmHow can the lake commission have the ability to do a drawdown, at their discreation, but when we have homes that are flooded the commission can do nothing to lower the lake?
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Posted by Paul | October 11, 2012, 12:361:47 pm