HORSESHOE BEND, Idaho — Horseshoe Bend issued an emergency message on Thursday evening asking residents to conserve water, and today we learned that this should continue until Saturday.
Public Works Director Jobie Catherman was monitoring the Payette River, where Horseshoe Bend gets its drinking water.
Catherman noticed the water turning brown, and a couple of hours later, it was black. Catherman sent a member of his staff up to the confluences of the rivers, and they found that the North Fork, the South Fork, and the Middle Fork all had mudslides making the water dirty.
"It was basically like a once-in-25-year event where the water gets that dirty," said Catherman. "So it is kind of a unique deal."
Watch how the City of Horseshoe Bend's reaction to muddy water prevented a larger problem:
Horseshoe Bend has a city water tank, so residents still had water available, but they were asked to conserve because Catherman had to shut off the water from the Payette River because they couldn't treat it to acceptable levels.
Turbidity is how much light can shine through the water, and its measurement can determine how safe the water is. The water coming out of the Payette had five times the acceptable limit, as slides from Wednesday's storm brought down sediment into the rivers.
"The instrument has a vial that holds water with a laser that is shooting through it, and a sensor on the other side is reading how much light comes through," said Catherman. "If you send water to town with higher turbidity, it can be carrying protozoa or any number of viruses."
The Public Works team and Valley Pump and Equipment out of Emmett have been working since 5:30 a.m. on Friday to solve the problem — their quick reaction assured that the dirty water didn't get into the city's water system or people's homes.
"The river is clearing up and operations are returning to normal," said Catherman. "We are asking that people conserve water for one more day, and then they can return to their normal operations once we get the tanks full."
Shout out to Cascade Raft and Kayak as they provided the best pictures of what the Payette River looked like on Thursday, as people definitely had a unique rafting experience. The turbidity doesn't add any additional dangers to running the rivers; they will continue to run trips this weekend, and I hope to get up there too for some kayaking.
"We assess the river conditions daily, including flow rate, debris presence, and overall river hazards," said Tren Long of Cascade Raft and Kayak. "If conditions are unsafe, trips are delayed or canceled, but in most cases, the brown water simply means the river is carrying a little more of the mountain with it."
People also need to be aware if they travel into the mountains this weekend because these slides happened all over the region. One example includes the Boise National Forest closing the road that goes to Deadwood Reservoir from the South Fork of the Payette River over Scott Mountain.
Make sure to tune into our weather forecasts as our team of meteorologists predicted flash floods with the storms that rolled through Idaho on Wednesday. The water will continue to get clearer by the hour as the rivers flush out all the sediment.
