page_title: Kootenay River
section_title: River modifications
hierarchical_section_title: Kootenay River / River modifications
caption_attribution_description: English: Maps of dams, drainage and estuaries along the Columbia River in North America (USA, Canada). Original caption: The Columbia River carved the Interior Columbia River Basin from the landscape of seven Western states and two Canadian provinces. The river itself flows from its headwaters in British Columbia, Canada through only two states, forming part of the Washington-Oregon border, the vast Interior Columbia River Basin is defined by the area drained by the river and its many tributaries. This 58-million-hectare area (about the size of France) extends roughly from the crest of the Cascade Mountains of Oregon and Washington east through Idaho to the Continental Divide in the Rocky Mountains of Montana and Wyoming, and from the headwaters of the Columbia River in Canada to the high desert of northern Nevada and northwestern Utah.
context_page_description: The Kootenay is a major river in the Northwest Plateau, within the borders of southeastern British Columbia, Canada, and northern Montana and Idaho in the United States. It is one of the uppermost major tributaries of the Columbia River, the largest North American river that empties into the Pacific Ocean. The Kootenay River runs 781 kilometres from its headwaters in the Kootenay Ranges of the Canadian Rockies, flowing from British Columbia's East Kootenay region into northwestern Montana, then west into the northernmost Idaho Panhandle and returning to British Columbia in the West Kootenay region, where it joins the Columbia at Castlegar.
  Fed mainly by glaciers and snow melt, the river drains a rugged, sparsely populated region of more than 50,000 km²; over 70 percent of the basin is in Canada. From its highest headwaters to its confluence with the Columbia River, the Kootenay falls more than 2,000 metres in elevation. Above its confluence with the Columbia, the Kootenay is comparable in terms of length, drainage area and volume, but has a steeper gradient and is characterized by larger falls and rapids.
context_section_description: Dams, power plants and diversions of the Kootenay River, of which there are many, have been built for a variety of reasons throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. The seven dams on the Kootenay serve many purposes, ranging from generation of local electricity to regulation of Columbia River flow between Canada and the United States. None provide for navigation or fish passage. In former times, the Kootenay would rise each spring and early summers with "enormous freshets that every summer flood the Kootenay River valley", but because of water regulation nowadays, such extreme variation in flow are no longer common on the lower river below Libby Dam.
caption: Map highlighting major dams and reservoirs in the Kootenay River watershed and surrounds
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "1499997/5000", "Image YResolution": "1499997/5000", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Elements 6.0 Macintosh", "Image DateTime": "2010:05:22 17:28:15", "Image ExifOffset": "176", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "314", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6814", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "484", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "501"}