BOISE, Idaho — Ada County has not said if it will appeal a notice of violation issued against it this week.
The Idaho Department of Water Resources issued the notice Wednesday, fining Ada County 50-thousand dollars for a power failure at Barber Dam.
Ada County owns and operates the dam, located just east of Boise.
The malfunction happened early in the morning on August 2nd and lasted only about an hour.
The state says the outage caused more than 1,600 cubic feet per second of water to be shut off, impacting lots of people downstream.
Once the power came back on, river flows then spiked, creating what officials describe as potentially dangerous conditions on the river.
Ada County says it understands the river is important to everyone and is working to determine what happened.
The State wants Ada County to pay the fine by September 1 or face a civil action through the State Attorney General's office.
Both sides could meet in the near future to talk about ways to prevent further situations like this form happening again.
