Feather, N. Fork

Boatable flows are seldom released from Lake Almanor.  There was a boating flow study in 2000.

Seneca Road follows much of the reach and crosses the river as well.  Boaters may be able to utilize this reach in the roadside sections more frequently than the gauge below the dam indicates.

Dave Steindorf writes:

'The Seneca reach of the North Fork Feather River is rarely run by whitewater boaters. This is not because of the quality of the run, but rather the fact this reach rarely has enough water in it to make it boatable. This section of the North Fork Feather clearly has the signs of a river that has been devoid of high flow events. This is because Lake Almanor, and Canyon Dam which creates the Lake, never spills. Now, never might seems like an overstatement but in this case it is not. Somehow the division of Dam Safety allows the PG&E to operate the dam with a spillway elevation that is higher than the elevation of the town of Chester. Even in 1997, the biggest flood in recent memory, which not only cause most reservoirs in California to spill, it turned most of them into essentially wide spots in the river. Not this dam, PG&E did increase flows to about 2000 cfs, but that was it. Unfortunately that was not enough to remove the vegetation that had grown up in the channel.

During the FERC relicensing of this project, American Whitewater was able to negotiate flow studies for this class V reach and the Class 3+ Belden reach. After completing the flow study we got to work negotiating flows with PG&E. Finally, in 2004 we reached agreement with PG&E, resource agencies, Plumas County, and other NGO’s. This agreement includes recreation releases July through October.

Since 2004 the Settlement Agreement has been under review by the State Water Resources Control Board. The main issue in play here is, how to best cool down the water in the North Fork Feather River in order to restore what was once on of the best trout fisherie

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