The Devil's Lake Outlet

Devils Lake is the largest natural body of water in the state of North Dakota.  However this was not always the case.  It actually used to be relatively small and almost even dried up a couple of times in recent history.  The reason that it has become so large is the fact that it has no natural outlet.  So during wet years the water backs up in the lake.  Since the early 1990s we have been in a wet spell here in North Dakota which has caused Devil’s Lake to rise out of control.  This has caused massive damage to the surrounding area.

There have been many ideas on how to get the water off the lake, but the solutions always seem to have some sort of “snag” to them. One of the main reasons why the water is not removed from the lake is because the only place for the water to go is into the Sheyenne River which flows into the Red River and then the Red River flows into Canada.  Normally this wouldn’t be a problem, but Devil’s Lake is very high in nutrients and other solutes.  This could affect the other river systems in a negative way.  This causes the residents that live around these river systems to reject any proposal to remove water off of Devils Lake.

In the last couple of years however the situation has changed.  Devils Lake has finally risen to a level where it is threatening to overflow into the Sheyenne River naturally.  This would cause untold devastation downstream.  The amount of water that would be released would be massive.  This has caused the residents downstream to rethink the controlled release of water into the Sheyenne River.

As of right now there are two pumps that are pumping water from Devils Lake into the Sheyenne River.  I personally think that these pumps are ineffective and unnecessarily costly.  The amount of water that they pump in very minute compared to the amount of water that flows in to the Lake.  They make no noticeable difference in the level of the lake.  They also cost the tax payers a lot of unnecessary money in electricity costs and maintenance needed on the pumps. 

I believe the best thing that could be done alleviate the flooding of the Devils Lake basin is to construct a manmade controlled gravity flow outlet.  This has been proposed many times but keeps getting shut down for some reason.  The basic concept is very simple.  All that they would need to do is go to where outlet would be if the Lake got to the height where it would flow into the Sheyenne.  They would dig out a channel to the Sheyenne River and put in a water control structure.  This would let the water flow by gravity to the Sheyenne River, but would also be able to be controlled by gates or some other control structure that would work best for the situation.  This would cost relatively little money to build compared to the pumps.  It would have a much higher capacity to remove water from Devils Lake and there would be no electric bill every month that the tax payer would have to pay.