STORY BY KAREN BOSSICK

PHOTO BY ED NORTHEN

A look at “Flooding and the Future—How We Balance Nature’s Impact on the Big Wood” will be the focus during Thursday’s monthly meeting of the Hemingway Chapter Trout Unlimited.

The meeting, from 5 to 7 p.m. at Whiskey Jacques in Ketchum, is free and open to the public.

Presenters will be Mark Davidson, director of Conservation Initiatives, and Blaine County Commissioner Larry Schoen.

They will discuss flooding that occurred in the spring of 2017 following record snowpack in the Big Wood Basin.

The record runoffs that followed altered the established pathways of the Big Wood River. They scoured new holes and left large piles of sediment and woody debris in various places along the waterway. The flood also damaged property, homes and infrastructure.

Thursday’s presentation is one in a series of programs the Hemingway Chapter of Trout Unlimited is conducting on issues concerning the Big Wood River.

The October program looked at how past practices of removing large woody debris, building of river front homes and straightening the river with rip rap resulted in increased flood damage because the river had lost its ability to move into the flood plain.