'Sacred' Waters, Unholy Controversy

Dakota Tribe Fights Plan to Drain Lake

DEVILS LAKE, North Dakota -- Mary Ann Blackbull stood by Devils Lake, a basin of salt water that is overflowing its banks with little mercy. Gnarled trees extended from the lake, like the fingers of a drowning man, a reminder that the water is covering land that was once dry.

"This is holy water," said Blackbull, an elder of the Spirit Lake tribe. "This lake is sacred. To us, it's sacred." As she spoke, Blackbull swatted away a cloud of black flies. Traffic rushed by. "The lake is a woman. It's the blood of mother earth. It can give life and take life," she said. "If you take her away, we will die."

The 129,000-acre Devils Lake, about half the size of the Great Salt Lake in Utah, is at the center of an international controversy that crosses the border into Canada, about 100 miles north. Canadian officials have joined with environmental groups and Native Americans to raise concerns about plans by the federal and state governments to build drainage outlets, intended to reduce the lake's flooding. Canadians say the plan would push pollutants north into Canadian waters and violate a treaty between the United States and Canada.

Scientists say Devils Lake, which has no natural drainage and loses water mostly through evaporation, has grown over recent years as water has flowed into it from adjacent wetlands. In the last 10 years, the lake, located about 170 miles northwest of Fargo, has risen 25 feet, breaking its banks and eating up farmland. The government has moved more than 300 people out of the way.

Arguing that building a drain is critical to stop the flooding, North Dakota's Water Commission has approved a $19 million project to pump water out of Devils Lake into the Sheyenne River. Officials hope the outlet, including two pumping stations, nine miles of channel and three miles of pipeline, will lower the lake by four inches a year and counteract flooding.

Despite protests by the Canadian government, Congress also passed a bill in January 2003 allowing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to build a separate emergency outlet for Devils Lake, to drain out more water.

Canadian officials and some scientists warn that pollutants, invasive vegetation and fish species will flow into the winding Sheyenne River, and then into the Red River, which crosses the U.S. border into Canada and into Lake Winnipeg, eventually emptying into Hudson Bay.

"The problem of occasional flooding of Devils Lake is serious but should not be solved by visiting potentially catastrophic environmental damage on downstream users in the United States and Canada," said Reynald Doiron, a spokesman for Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs.

Canadians also protest U.S. plans to drain the lake on legal grounds.

"The boundary waters treaty of 1909 says we will not pollute Canada's waters and Canada will not pollute U.S. waters," said David R. Conrad, a water resources specialist at the National Wildlife Federation.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said in a recent statement that the government did not believe a drain would violate the treaty. On the state level, Todd Sando, assistant engineer for the North Dakota Water Commission, said the commission had studied Devils Lake for years, concluding that an outlet would not damage other waters.

"Devils Lake basin is part of the Red River basin and part of the Hudson Bay drainage and it has flowed to Canada in the past in the last 4,000 years," Sando said.

The water volume of Devils Lake, which is about 1,450 feet above sea level, has quadrupled since 1993. If it continues to rise, it could cover more than 277,000 acres.

"Devils Lake came up 2 1/2 feet this year," Sando said. "People are really hurting from the impact. Hundreds of people had to be moved. These people, when their homes were flooded, they couldn't get any money for homes until water was on the first floor. It had to be there for 90 days. For a while, homes were just being burned in the water so that people could avoid debris in the lake."