Nechako River

Nechako River
The Nechako River and Highway 16 bridge, near Fort Fraser
Etymology	Dakelh term meaning "big river"
Location
Country	Canada
Province	British Columbia
District	Cariboo Land District
City	Prince George
Physical characteristics
Source	Nechako Plateau
Mouth	Fraser River
• location	Prince George
• coordinates	53°55′2″N 122°42′53″W
• elevation	559 m (1,834 ft)
Length	516 km (321 mi)
Basin size	42,700 km2 (16,500 sq mi)
Discharge
• location	gauge at Isle Pierre
• average	277 m3/s (9,800 cu ft/s)
• minimum	40.8 m3/s (1,440 cu ft/s)
• maximum	1,180 m3/s (42,000 cu ft/s)

The Nechako River (Dakelh: ᘅᐪᙠᗶᑋ) /nəˈtʃækoʊ/ arises on the Nechako Plateau east of the Kitimat Ranges of the Coast Mountains of British Columbia, Canada, and flows north toward Fort Fraser, then east to Prince George where it enters the Fraser River. "Nechako" is an anglicization of netʃa koh, its name in the indigenous Carrier language which means "big river".

The Nechako River's main tributaries are the Stuart River, which enters about 45 kilometres (28 mi) east of Vanderhoof, the Endako River, the Chilako River, which enters about 15 kilometres (9 mi) west of Prince George, and the Nautley River, a short stream from Fraser Lake. Other tributaries include the Cheslatta River, which drains Cheslatta Lake and enters the Nechako at the foot of the Nechako Canyon via Cheslatta Falls, near Kenney Dam and the Nechako Reservoir.

History

The expedition of Alexander MacKenzie went past the mouth of the Nechako in 1793, curiously without observing it. The first European to ascend the Nechako was James McDougall, a member of Simon Fraser's expedition, in 1806.

Nechako Reservoir

The Nechako is one of the main tributaries of the Fraser River, although half of its flow was diverted through the Coast Mountains to the Kemano generating station at sea level on the Gardner Canal, 858 metres (2,815 ft) below the reservoir's intakes, which supplies power to the aluminum smelter at nearby Kitimat. The main reservoir of the Nechako power diversion is called the Nechako Reservoir or Ootsa Lake Reservoir, but there are many subnames for different parts of the lake because its conversion into a reservoir involved the amalgamation of chains of lakes, the largest of which were Eutsuk Lake and Natalkuz Lake, which form the south arm of the reservoir. The reservoir's alternate name comes from Ootsa Lake, now merged into the north arm of the reservoir but originally flowing into the Oosta River, a tributary of the Nechako. Other lakes also merged into the north arm are Whitesail Lake and Tahtsa Lake, with the correspondingly-named rivers connecting them now flooded and renamed Whitesail Reach and Tahtsa Reach. The Quanchus Range is located between the two arms of the reservoir.

The damming of the Nechako in 1952 and the consequent massive reduction in flow has been the source of considerable political controversy. The Cheslatta Carrier Nation, a subgroup of the Dakelh or Carrier people, were flooded out by the creation of the reservoir and forced to abandon their homes with only two weeks' warning. The increase in water temperature caused by the reduction in flow has been an ongoing problem for the salmon run on the Fraser and Stuart Rivers as well as the Nechako. Populations of White Sturgeon may have also been affected as studies show an unnatural decline in late-juvenile/early adult populations of the species.

See also

• List of tributaries of the Fraser River
• List of rivers of British Columbia

Further reading

• Christensen, Bev (1995) Too Good to be True. Vancouver: Talonbooks. (A history of the Kemano project, which dammed the Nechako.)
• Giesbrecht, Jean Clark (1994) Heritage Lost: A People's History of the Ootsa Lake Region 1905-1955. Likely, BC: Quesnel Lake Publishing. (Contains an account of the flooding caused by the construction of the Kemano Project.)
• Wood, June (2013). Home to the Nechako: The River and the Land. Heritage House Publishing Co. ISBN 978-1-927527-13-9. Retrieved 4 August 2013.

External links

• BC Lakes and Rivers
• "Engineers Invade Another Wilderness - Huge Canadian Power Project Marks 20th Century Frontier Boom" , by Richard Neuberger detailed 1951 Popular Science article on the Kemano Hydro Project