56

Only once since Libby Dam was completed did the Creston Valley come close to flooding. "In 1997," says Cyril Colonel, "the river rose 56 feet above normal. It had got to fifty feet before, and we knew the dykes could handle that, but we were worried when it got to 56."

Some areas did have very heavy seepage, even though the dykes held. Worse, though, fourteen inches of rain fell in June, 1997, and the pumps in the various dyking districts could not remove the water fast enough. "We lost about 75% of the crop that year," recalls Cyril, "even though the dykes didn't break."

57

After 120 years of trying, the Kootenay River is still not tamed. It is merely waiting: sooner or later, the time will come when Libby Dam cannot hold back all the spring runoff, or erosion on the dykes lets the river break through. Changing weather patterns are making winter snowfall and spring thaws increasingly difficult to predict; and it is these predictions that have made any control of the river possible.

Reclamation of farmland is never the subject of newspaper articles anymore, except in the occasional history or letter-to-the-editor whose author thinks back to "the way it used to be." Indeed, a different definition of reclamation has come to the Creston Valley: it now involves recreating marsh lands that once existed in the area, reclaiming them from human development and the natural growth of forests: re-establishing, as much as possible, the wild, un-tamed character of the Kootenay and its floodplain.