The lake had risen about 4 meters, doubling its surface area to about square kilometers and increasing its volume fourfold to about , acre-feet.
By the early s, when the lake had risen another meter and covered nearly square kilometers, concern was growing in the Devils Lake region about possible flooding. The Corps of Engineers, called on to help develop flood protection, proposed building a levee between the city of Devils Lake and the encroaching lake waters. Figure 6. Flooding has brought destruction and disruption, even deaths, to the Devils Lake region. In the past 18 years, local officials have linked 23 drowning deaths there to driving into water.
In the top photograph, Highway 57 in Devils Lake was pounded by waves and littered with debris on a windy day last June. They are now under water. More than homes, many covered by the National Flood Insurance Program, have been moved or destroyed. In the bottom photograph, firefighters in September burned down the historic Studness House in Churchs Ferry, which could not be relocated.
The levee, consisting of gravel and clay overlain by boulders, was raised to a crest elevation of Levee height was increased to a crest elevation of Construction currently underway will raise crest elevation even farther, to The outlet, authorized by the North Dakota State Legislature in , was essentially a channel that extended from Devils Lake near the westside town of Minnewaukan to the Sheyenne River, over a distance of about 23 kilometers.
Presumably, this relatively low discharge rate was established to prevent outflows from eroding the outlet channel and damaging the filtration system. The outlet, operated initially in August , has since proved to be largely ineffective. After an day trial run in , the outlet was shut down for the rest of the year.
In , the outlet operated for 38 days, discharging only about acre-feet of water. Between and , the outlet removed approximately 30, acre-feet of lake water. Meanwhile, during the same period, the lake rose 0. Increased sedimentation may have resulted from the higher discharge rate authorized in , which increased channel erosion.
Between May and September , the outlet had removed about 38, acre-feet of water, an amount that lowered the lake by an estimated 6 centimeters. Inflow to Devils Lake in totaled a record high of , acre-feet.
Figure 7. The Tolna Coulee control structure, which is under construction, is intended to prevent such a disaster. As lake levels rise, stop logs will be added to a maximum elevation of about If needed, logs will be removed to release controlled flows of water. Huck Krueger top.
Army Corps of Engineers. The first of these, the East End Outlet, is designed for a maximum discharge capacity of cfs. Water will first be pumped through a buried conduit to the top of a rise, where it will then flow downhill through another buried conduit to the downstream reach of Tolna Coulee, a total distance of about 9 kilometers.
Outlet number 2, the Emergency Gravity Water Transfer Channel, is a simple gravity-flow, open-channel outlet that will extend from the former West Stump Lake basin to Tolna Coulee, a distance of about 1. Discharge rates will increase to a maximum rate of about cfs as the lake level approaches the natural overflow elevation of near meters.
Outlet number 3, the Tolna Coulee Control Structure, is designed to prevent catastrophic flooding downstream as Devils Lake begins to overflow. Functioning somewhat like a dam, this project will limit discharge rates to a maximum of 3, cfs during overflow.
People living downstream of Devils Lake generally favor this outlet because of its flood-controlling capability, although there are some who insist that 3, cfs is still too much. Flood stage at the town of Kindred, 45 river kilometers from the Sheyenne—Red River confluence, is about 3, cfs.
Upstream, the Devils Lake Basin Joint Water Resource Board initially opposed the outlet, claiming it would raise the lake approximately 1 meter above the natural overflow elevation. The board eventually withdrew its opposition, apparently after the Corps of Engineers provided absolute assurances that this would not happen.
From the beginning, the idea of discharging Devils Lake water into the Sheyenne River through manufactured outlets has been highly controversial.
Opponents claim that outlets could introduce potentially harmful biota—pathogenic microorganisms, parasites and invasive species—and pollutants—agricultural pesticides, fertilizers and organic wastes—into the Sheyenne River and, ultimately, into Canadian waters via the Red River. Further, they argued, high sulfate concentrations would affect municipal water-treatment plants downstream.
Worse, perhaps, outlet discharges could substantially increase the risk of flooding in the Sheyenne, Red River and Canadian watersheds. The Canadian government, along with the State of Minnesota and nine other states that border the Great Lakes, led opposition to the westside outlet.
All feared environmental damage to their waters. In a letter to various U. Congress refused to kill the project. A nonbinding agreement eventually was negotiated between Canada and the U. In , the Sierra Legal Defense Fund and other groups requested that the Commission for Environmental Cooperation—a watchdog organization created to monitor how well North American governments comply with environment laws—investigate the westside outlet, claiming it violated the Boundary Waters Treaty.
While thousands of people in the Devils Lake region have been gripped by an appropriate sense of desperation bordering on near-panic, their fellow North Dakotans living downstream of the lake in the Sheyenne and Red River valleys are also troubled.
The result has been a lake that is many times larger and the formation of a kind of high plains version of the everglades. Some were able to move their houses to higher ground and adapt to farming fewer acres but a great many had to sell out completely. Rural roads have been continually built up to keep them above lake level and the town of Devils Lake constructed a massive levee around it to keep it from flooding.
The flip side of this event is that the lake has become a very popular fishing destination due to the increase in rich underwater habitat and that has helped the local economy. I grew up on a farm in North Dakota and remember being fascinated by stories of the continually rising lake as a kid.
More recently, I took Amtrak through the area and was amazed to see that what was once farmland was now miles of open water and wetlands with only an occasional grain bin or cluster of dead trees where a farm once stood breaking the horizon.
This is the scene that planted the seed to take a trip to explore and photograph the remaining farms and the ongoing change to the landscape in the area. Since you grew up on a farm in ND, did you feel you had a particularly strong reaction to Devils Lake, or was it more of a curiosity? I wanted to see and capture one firsthand. What did you expect to find there?
How did your experience match or subvert your expectations? Before visiting, I printed satellite photos of farms that were completely inundated by water with the intent to kayak out to and photograph as many as possible before they disappear into the lake.
What I found was that a great many of these buildings no longer existed. Although the satellite images were only a couple years old, these farms had already been completely erased by the lake. Could you see remnants of these buildings?
Sometimes a steel grain bin or an old windmill would be the only remaining sign. I think most of the buildings were probably damaged by shifting winter ice, then collapsed and floated away during summer storms. Given the choice, they both prefer to deliver a sentence with a chuckle rather than with a serious look, even when they're explaining how their farm has been almost entirely swallowed. Like so many here, they tell their story with an air of incredulity, perhaps still in shock despite 18 years of flooding.
The lowlands on the south side of the farm were part of what people had always called the "lake bottom," but before it had been dry land—hay fields, pasture, even some crop acreage. Same with the areas people referred to as "banks. The farm's main house was built in , and as far as anyone knew water had never come near it. In , the farmhouse was moved up the hill to drier land. Sitting in the living room there last spring, Jim told me, "I never in my wildest dreams thought in 20 years I'd be chased away, only to watch it all disappear even more.
I never thought I'd see it actually become the bottom of a lake. And who knows when it will stop? The day before we spoke, there were winds Jim judged at 40 miles per hour. Coming across nearly eight miles of water, they sent waves to crash on what remains of the paddocks that front the farm's old, red barn. As he recounted this, a rare storm passed over him and his face darkened.
The waves out there are brown—that's land in them. The Yris are not alone. It's almost hard to find a farmer in the area who has not lost some land since the lake began rising.
Government payments are available to make up for flooded land that has been planted two out of the last four years, but for those acres that have gone underwater for the long term, there is no compensation. The burn is that landowners must continue paying taxes on their property or risk ceding ownership to the government.
It's a gamble of sorts, since ownership really matters only if the land reverts to being land. For years most farmers continued to pay, but recently that has begun to shift. The cropland and pasture have become a distant memory. For a population this small, that's a huge hit. And yet at the same time, a bittersweet trade-off is taking place, as the rising waters allow the growth of a new, albeit much smaller, market: tourism.
Even when it was small, Devils Lake was a popular fishing spot, but since it has become a destination for anglers from all over the region. Many of the landmarks that have disappeared are now reappearing on fishing maps of the lake, as angling hot spots with names like "Howards Farm" and "Haybale Bay. In a premonition sometime before the flooding began, the county raised the road what seemed like a ridiculous 12 feet above the lakebed.
Today the road is 14 feet underwater, and on contour maps it has been renamed "The Golden Highway": its steep slopes are a perfect habitat for walleye, and fishing guides go there when they need reliable bites for their clients. Accompanying the fishing is an alternate economy in the form of bait shops and guide services, resorts and RV parks.
The capital infusion is welcome, but the shift toward a tourist economy comes with a strange transformation of the community and landscape. As houses are torn down because of flooding, often the land is sold for pennies to people from Fargo or Minneapolis, who set up trailers and use the lots as fishing camps.
On the dry side of the K school in Minnewaukan, a motel has taken over an entire neighborhood block. There's no restaurant in town anymore, but the bait shop is open daily.
In , the year after the Yris bought their farm, they went to the bank in spring as usual. But this time, instead of asking for the customary farm loan to cover seeds and fertilizer, they had in hand a business plan for an endeavor called "West Bay Resort"—and a request for far more capital than they had ever borrowed before. As they tell the story, the banker was unfazed. His only question: "When do you need the money?
The Yris brought in three fishing cabins—all modular, so that if it didn't work out they could sell them off. Heavy rains have affected fields and roads as flooding concerns return to the Devils Lake Basin. As Devils Lake's levels rise, water in surrounding areas miles away, such as the standing water on Doug Becker's field near Crary, N.
Rather, flooding here was slow and relentless — a steady inch-by-inch, foot-by-foot increase in water levels that claimed roads, fields and farmsteads that once had just enough elevation to escape flooding.
As lake levels rise, water in surrounding areas miles away, such as the standing water on Becker's field, often is unable to drain as it normally would. Water doesn't always drain directly into Devils Lake — some of it goes first into other smaller area lakes, which Frith called feeder lakes — but it relates to some extent to Devils Lakes.
Communities get hurt," said Bill Hodous, the longtime Ramsey County extension agent.
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