RSVP HERE

Please join us for the next installment of River News & Brews, The Future of the Clark Fork River is Collaborative on Wednesday, August 7 from 6:00pm – 7:30pm at Le Petit Outre in Missoula.

Clark Fork Coalition Executive Director, Dr. Brian Chaffin, will explore the complex challenges facing the Clark Fork watershed, as well as hope on the horizon: CFC’s collaborative strategies to address these challenges and work toward a sustainable future for the river and its communities. Brian will share highlights from his prior university research and dovetail it with CFC’s ongoing legacy of critical watershed protection and stream restoration work. We’ll wrap up with a brief Q&A session and a meet-and-greet.

Free beer and non-alcoholic beverages will be provided. Seating is limited, so RSVP today to reserve your spot!

The post River News & Brews: The Future of the Clark Fork River is Collaborative appeared first on Clark Fork Coalition.

RSVP HERE

The only thing separating the Clark Fork River from ill-constructed holding ponds brimming with toxic waste at the abandoned Smurfit-Stone pulp mill site is a shoddy, permeable berm that stretches on for four miles. If that berm failed, the site would release a catastrophic 300 billion gallons of wastewater containing a laundry list of toxic heavy metals and other dangerous contaminants into the river. Given increasingly extreme weather trends and the outdated algorithms used to calculate the risk of environmental disasters, the conversation has, troublingly, moved away from questioning if and towards an inevitable when.

It’s not hyperbole to say that this question keeps many of us at CFC up at night.

To better understand flood risks at Smurfit, the Clark Fork Coalition and American Rivers commissioned River Design Group, a local engineering and restoration firm, to construct a hydraulic model of the site that explores potential implications of various berm failure scenarios under current and future climate conditions.

This study suggests that the berm at the Smurfit site will not prevent a future catastrophe and that storing toxic waste adjacent to the Clark Fork River is an unsafe gamble with substantial ongoing risk for the river and downstream communities.

River Design Group will be presenting on their findings, with CFC Staff Scientist Sam Carlson facilitating and a Q&A to follow. Free beer and non-alcoholic beverages will be provided.

Looking for additional ways to get involved?

We’ve made it easy to get the scoop on Smurfit’s history, understand the current risk it poses to ecological and human health, and take action:

• Listen to our fantastic podcast about the site, Toxic: the Mess at Smurfit-Stone.
• Explore the website for the Clean Smurfit Now campaign, a collaborative effort between Clark Fork Coalition, American Rivers, Montana Trout Unlimited, and MontPIRG.
• Add your name to the petition demanding that the EPA protect the health of our communities and water by thoroughly assessing and cleaning up contamination and hold responsible parties accountable.
• Watch the video that helped the Clark Fork get onto American Rivers’ 2023 list of America’s Most Endangered Rivers.
• Read Montana Free Press’ spot-on piece exploring what’s at stake if the contamination at Smurfit is left unchecked and why a thorough remediation is imperative.

The post River News & Brews: When the Berm Fails appeared first on Clark Fork Coalition.

Live music, local food trucks, drinks, and an introduction to incoming Executive Director, Brian Chaffin!

RSVP HERE

Join us in celebrating this extraordinary leader and human as she journeys beyond a career marked by positive impact, deep personal connections, and saying YES! to initiatives and projects that have profoundly improved the Clark Fork watershed. Karen Knudsen is, at the cellular level, committed to a clean and healthy Clark Fork River.

CFC’s capacity and ability to respond quickly to threats to the watershed is paramount to Karen, and she has asked that we set up a special appeal in her honor to do just that.

This pot of funds will be the culminating piece of Karen’s legacy as leader of the Coalition – her gift back to the river that she loves so deeply. It is something so quintessentially Karen, one final selfless act on her way out the door.

Our goal? $31,000. One thousand dollars for each year that Karen, through her work with CFC, has dedicated to protecting our communities’ greatest resource – clean, cool, and abundant water.

The Coalition’s grassroots origin story has proven time and again that when we take collective action, each individual can have tremendous impact.

You can honor Karen’s legacy and increase her impact by making a tax-deductible gift in her honor to the Ripple Effect Fund. We’ve left space on the donation page for you to leave your well-wishes, gratitude, or other message to Karen – we’ll pass those along to her.

We hope to see you there!

CFC Staff + Board

The post Karen Knudsen’s Retirement Bash: Celebrating 31 Years of “YES!” appeared first on Clark Fork Coalition.

Chaffin holds a Ph.D. in Geography from Oregon State University where he studied water conflict management and conducted research on the social processes that eventually led to the recent removal of major dams on the Klamath River. He earned an M.S. in Environmental Science from the University of Idaho, and a B.S. in Resource, Recreation & Tourism, also from the University of Idaho.

Brian lives in Missoula with his wife Jenni and their two cats. They enjoy year-round outdoor activities in Big Sky Country and can often be found on a river or behind binoculars somewhere in the Five Valleys.

Stay tuned for meet and greet opportunities later this year!

The post Meet CFC’s new Executive Director! appeared first on Clark Fork Coalition.

When it comes to the application of these principles, there is no clearer opportunity to “course correct” than Arrowstone Park in Deer Lodge. This public park is located on the idyllic banks of the Clark Fork, receives significant public use, and is part of the larger Upper Clark Fork Superfund Complex. Like much of the floodplain, the property at Arrowstone is heavily contaminated with toxic mine tailings – including arsenic, lead, copper, cadmium and other heavy metals. Before it was a park, the property underwent a waste-in-place “cleanup” in the late 1990s, paid for by the responsible party – Atlantic Richfield, now British Petroleum. This largely “hands-off” cleanup involved “capping” (i.e. burying) the toxic wastes under clean dirt, prohibiting the use of groundwater, and preventing any future development of the site.

When it was proposed, the waste-in-place plan was met with strong resistance from health experts, residents, and others who were concerned on a number of fronts – particularly the cleanup levels for arsenic that were not safe for park users, especially children. At a minimum, health experts recommended that park users be warned of the risks of potential exposure to dangerous contaminants. Environmental advocates were equally concerned that river migration would erode the soil caps along the banks of the river and re-expose buried contaminants to surface waters. In the end, BP-ARCO and EPA downplayed all of these concerns, and the proposed plan moved forward.

More than 20 years later, the community’s fears at Arrowstone have been realized. Sections of the riverbank have washed away to reveal toxic tailings. Soil caps throughout the park have eroded, leaving lifeless dirt patches, and metals have migrated to the surface, leaving vulnerable users unknowingly exposed to high levels of arsenic. The Clark Fork Coalition and others collected samples from this highly used park that tested alarmingly high for arsenic and heavy metals. We’ve also asked human health experts to look at the risk-based cleanup levels on which the cleanup was based. These experts have concluded that the cleanup standards for arsenic, and current institutional controls in place, are not protective. In other words, the remedy has failed.

Montana DEQ officials recently announced that the agency will prioritize cleanup of Arrowstone Park in Deer Lodge, with design work to begin immediately, and construction to begin in late 2024. To their credit, DEQ also recently posted signs warning users of the risks associated with park. We applaud the agency for taking concrete and reasonable steps to address Arrowstone’s failed remedy, but the question remains: what kind of “cleanup” will the park and the Deer Lodge community receive this time around? Will decision-makers rely again on waste-in-place and soil capping to prevent dangerous exposures to arsenic and heavy metals? Will they remove a narrower buffer along the riverbanks and hope that the river doesn’t go outside of its 100-year migration zone? Will decision-makers let costs (not protectiveness) drive the cleanup, or will they heed the mistakes of the past and take every reasonable measure to ensure that all park users – especially children – are protected?

Arrowstone Park represents a clear opportunity to correct the mistakes of the past, and we expect that officials will dedicate the resources needed to implement a remedy that is protective and that will stand the test of time. Will we be here again in 20 years asking these same questions? Let’s hope not.

Andrew Gorder, Policy & Advocacy Director, Clark Fork Coalition

Alex Leone, Restoration Policy Manager, Clark Fork Coalition

The post Deer Lodge Community Deserves a Safe & Clean Arrowstone Park appeared first on Clark Fork Coalition.

Organizations are a lot like rivers. They don’t stand still. They move and shift. They cut new channels. They have seasonal flows.

As the Clark Fork River went about its summer business of moving snowmelt through western Montana, the Clark Fork Coalition (CFC) was busy with its own transitions. This summer, I announced to CFC’s board and staff that I am retiring in May 2024, which will mark 17 years as executive director and 31 years at the CFC. This was a tough decision because I am excited about the campaigns and projects currently on CFC’s plate and the opportunities for impact on the horizon. Still, I believe the timing is right for me and for the organization.

We recently finalized an ambitious 5-year strategic plan that has CFC scaling core strategies to meet the complex challenges facing the watershed. We are making headway pressing for thorough and comprehensive cleanups in the Upper Clark Fork, we are pioneering new tools to boost flows in thirsty streams, and we are knee-deep in campaigns to restore Grant Creek and clean up the toxic Smurfit-Stone mill site. CFC’s finances are secure. New public-private partnerships are gelling and collaborations with conservation partners are bearing fruit. Our board is strong, our staff is extraordinary, and our base of support is expanding and loyal. We are making a significant impact restoring the health of our watershed.

The Board of Directors has created a Transition Committee and will launch a search process in September. The goal is to have CFC’s next executive director in place by March 2024. I will overlap with the new E.D. for several weeks to ensure continuity. Stay tuned for progress updates.

As I embark on this transition, I am filled with gratitude for the opportunities that CFC gave me to do work that is meaningful, important, and based on giving back to a river that is central to everything we care about in western Montana. When I joined the team, the Clark Fork had the stigma of being a backyard dump. However, the removal of Milltown Dam, the launch of Superfund cleanups along the Upper Clark Fork, and countless CFC restoration projects and water deals have elevated the cause and delivered results that I could never have imagined possible when I hired on in 1993. Now there are boats and people on the water every day and entire communities are engaged in caring for the river.

It has been an enormous privilege to work alongside friends and supporters like you who care so deeply about the future of the watershed. Over the coming months, I will put my full effort into preparing the Coalition for the leadership transition. The cause for a clean and healthy Clark Fork is served by some of the most talented and passionate people in the West, and I have no doubt that I will be leaving this work in very capable hands.

Thank you for all you do for the river,

Karen Knudsen

Executive Director, Clark Fork Coalition

The post A New Season for Clark Fork Coalition appeared first on Clark Fork Coalition.

Situated in the heart of the ancestral homelands of the Salish, Kalispel, and Ksanka peoples, the Clark Fork River plays an important part not only in the history of the region, but also in the present and future for all who live here. Rising out of the Continental Divide and flowing through a 14 million-acre basin, the river is a magnet for recreation, an economic driver for our riverside communities, an agricultural resource, and rich habitat for bountiful fish and wildlife.

After weathering decades of heavy industrial use, many sections of the Clark Fork River have been cleaned up thanks to the hard work of citizens, conservationists, Tribal nations, and government officials. The river is cleaner now than most of us remember it ever being in our lifetimes. Yet, a major threat to the Clark Fork remains: the shuttered Smurfit-Stone pulp and paper mill near Frenchtown.

Leaking, Unsafe, and Illegal

Much of the waste generated by the Smurfit-Stone pulp mill is still onsite—strewn across 1,000 acres right next to the Clark Fork River. Within that toxic area, roughly 140 acres of unlined sludge ponds and landfills pose the greatest risks. Thirteen years after the mill closed, the 3,200-acre industrial site is still poisoning the groundwater and river. These pollutants harm fish and wildlife and put the health of Tribal subsistence fishers at risk.

Not only are the dumps leaking toxic chemicals into the groundwater that flows to the river, the only thing separating much of this wasteland from the river is an uncertified, crumbling four-mile-long earthen berm that’s riddled with rodent holes. Last July, we talked with three experts to get more information on the leaking dumps, the crumbling berm, and the illegal burden on the river. You can listen to these experts in new episodes of our podcast Toxic: The Mess at Smurfit-Stone.

Clean Smurfit Now

The river sustains us, gives us food, and supports our livelihoods. We have a duty of care for the river, too. We want the Clark Fork River returned to a condition where it functions ecologically, sustaining healthy wildlife and plant life. The river is not a waste dump for companies to pollute and then abandon.

Local stakeholders—including the Clark Fork Coalition, Missoula County Water Quality District, Montana Trout Unlimited, Montana Public Interest Research Group (MontPIRG), Hellgate Hunters and Anglers, Frenchtown Community Advisory Group, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, the Kalispel Tribe, and the Montana Natural Resource Damage Program—dream of a clean site where people can live, play, and connect with the river and wild nature can flourish.

Getting the cleanup the river needs and downstream communities deserve will require widespread, vocal support to make sure the EPA holds the potentially responsible parties accountable for their industrial mess.

This summer, if you live in the Frenchtown area, you might see a friendly new face on your doorstep, clipboard in hand. The student-run nonprofit organization MontPIRG will canvas the area to garner support and collect signatures for a petition. The petition calls on the EPA to collect adequate data on the full scope of contamination, work on a timely cleanup of the Smurfit-Stone site, and create a plan that restores the floodplain.

Cleaning up the Smurfit-Stone site and reconnecting the river with its floodplain presents a rare opportunity to get a big one right. Let’s get started.

The post The Mess at Smurfit-Stone appeared first on Clark Fork Coalition.

To address the situation, the State of Montana revisited and updated past analyses, refined its guidelines, and developed a new approach that agencies hope will bring cleanup activities on all the remaining phases into line with budget realities. Before finalizing and implementing this strategic plan, the State wants to hear from you.

Does the plan deliver the best possible outcome for the river and the people, fish, and wildlife it sustains?

Talking Points for Public Comment

The plan is currently open for public comment until May 21. Read on for some of CFC’s talking points you should feel free to adapt, then  email your comments to the Montana Natural Resource Damage Program.

HUMAN HEALTH: We appreciate that cleanup of Arrowstone Park – a popular public park in Deer Lodge – has been bumped up as a priority on the cleanup timeline. In that vein, we would like the plan to expedite cleanup on other reaches and river access points that see high-use and are exposing people unknowingly to dangerous toxins. Furthermore, we would like to see “protecting human health” highlighted as an explicit goal in the new plan.

STREAMBANK DESIGN: We are excited that the State is promoting streambank designs and treatments that promote ecological function and fish habitat. For example, the recent use of large wood for bank construction is an improvement over previous designs that relied heavily on engineered coir logs (see photos below). Incorporating new data into cleanup as research is completed is key and we encourage the State to implement an adaptive management approach in practice.

RIVER FUNCTION: We would like to see river function fully integrated into the plan as a component of the design process. A fully restored, ecologically functioning river system requires connected and diverse suites of aquatic habitats. Actions that encourage floodplain connectivity and promote off-channel and instream habitat development are the foundations of system resilience.

FUNDING: This new plan is based on the recognition that currently available funds are insufficient for maintaining the waste-removal approach of the prior cleanup phases. As a result, the plan proposes to stretch the settlement dollars to Garrison by leaving more waste in place along the way, where it will sit exposed to Montana’s dynamic climate. Another approach that doesn’t cut corners on protecting human health and restoring fish and wildlife habitat would be to maintain the remediation goals of previous mainstem cleanup phases and collect additional funding – through “the round robin” provision – that can be made available if money runs out.

BOTTOMLINE: This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to do a big one right for the river and the people, fish, and wildlife it sustains. The State’s strategic plan should set the tone for scaling the funding to match the public’s aspirations for the river.

Send Public Comments Now

It’s crucial that the State hears the community’s concerns before May 21. Please provide comments for the Montana Natural Resource Damage Program via e-mail at nrdp@mt.gov. The subject line must contain “CFROU Strategic Plan Comments.”

The post Public Comments Open on Upper Clark Fork Strategic Plan appeared first on Clark Fork Coalition.

As any of us who spent the last six months paying a power bill in western Montana can attest, this winter has been a long one! With temperatures throughout the state hovering well below average this winter, we’ve seen an abundance of mid and low elevation snowpack that has stuck around. Although the Clark Fork Basin hasn’t seen the record-setting snowfall totals experienced by the states to our south, the gradient of snowfall abundance increases as you move south even within Montana. As illustrated in the April 4 snowpack map below, portions of the Gallatin and Madison Basins are seeing some big-time snowfall numbers this year.

When it comes to the Clark Fork Basin, the Bitterroot, Flathead, and Upper Clark Fork sub-basins are all hovering around 100% of normal for this time of year but there is much more to that story when you dig in! If you take a look at all of the SNOTEL locations in the Upper Clark Fork, Flathead, and Bitterroot sub-basins, snowpack totals differ significantly depending on elevation. For all SNOTEL sites below 6,000 feet (n=13), the average median snow water equivalent is currently around 148%. For all of the SNOTEL sites above 6,000 feet (n=23) the average median snow water equivalent is currently around 102%.

With abundant snowfall in the mid and low elevations, we expect to see river levels bump with the onset of more seasonal spring-like weather later this week.

The post Peak Snow Water Equivalent Season appeared first on Clark Fork Coalition.

It’s been 15 years in the making and when it’s done, it will be one of the biggest funding boosts to help wildlife and their habitats in many, many decades.

The federal bipartisan Recovering America’s Wildlife Act (RAWA) will help conserve fish and wildlife in every state in the country, including many species that depend on the waters and riparian corridors of the Clark Fork watershed. Importantly, it creates a much needed mechanism for how fish and wildlife conservation is funded, ensuring we can act now – before these species become even more rare and  more costly to protect.

This far-reaching legislation allocates $1.3 billion per year for state wildlife agencies to implement pro-active, non-regulatory actions to protect fish and wildlife. It also includes $97.5 million for tribal fish and wildlife managers to conserve fish and wildlife on tribal lands and waters. This means the critical work  needed now to protect key habitats and species can be funded and implemented, instead of being delayed or – as often happens currently – never carried out.

RAWA has already passed the US House of Representatives and made it through the relevant Senate Committee. It is now before the full Senate. Prospects for passage look good, BUT, if it doesn’t pass by year’s end, we have to start all over in the House after the new Congress is sworn in. So your help is needed now!

You Can Help Wildlife

YOU can help ensure that the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act crosses the finish line!

If You Live in Montana

Contact our U.S. Senators from Montana—Senator Jon Tester and Senator Steve Daines—and ask them to vote YES for the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act.

Resources below to help you reach your senators. Your contact by website, e-mail, in person, or phone call will make a difference!

Senator Steve Daines
320 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
(202) 224-2651
Email

Senator Jon Tester
311 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
(202) 224-2644
Email

If You Live Outside Montana

You can look up your states’ U.S. Senators with the button below. Ask them to vote YES for the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act. Additional information and talking points here and below.

Recovering America’s Wildlife Act Talking Points

• THANK YOUR SENATOR for co-sponsoring RAWA if they are a co-sponsor (List of current Senate co-sponsors)
• List the many benefits of RAWA to your state:
  • It helps conserve fish and wildlife and their habitats, helps ensure no species falls through the cracks, and helps prevent more endangered species listings
  • It helps local economies by safeguarding high-quality outdoor recreation, benefiting pollinators to food supplies, and improving human health, well-being, and jobs
  • It saves money. By benefiting at-risk species, it prevents them from being listed as Endangered or Threatened, preventing the highly costly measures needed to recover those species once they are listed.*
  • It provides the funding needed to implement your state’s Wildlife Action Plan (many states have such plans, but no funding to implement them)
  • It helps ensure that future generations can find the same enjoyment from fish and wildlife that past and current generations have (including your senator!)
• Remind your senator that RAWA enjoys overwhelming support across the country, with 86% of voters in favor of its passage (Data for Progress Sept. 2022 poll)
• Say that you need their help to get this unique, bi-partisan legislation across the finish line this fall.

* Defenders of Wildlife estimate that it costs the federal government more than $19 million on average to recover a species once listed under the Endangered Species Act (estimate as of 2019). If an additional 2,000 species need to be listed as endangered or threatened over the next 10 to 15 years, which is not unrealistic given that states have identified more than 12,000 species in conservation need, it would cost taxpayers an estimated $38 billion to recover these additional species. That $38 billion would be over and above what is still needed to recover the more than 1,660 U.S. species already on federal Endangered Species Act list—and that’s just the estimated cost to the federal government. States, territories, Tribal nations, would also bear some of the costs of recovering federal endangered and threatened species. There would also be significant impact on the private sector and private landowners, especially America’s farmers, ranchers, forest landowners, and builders, all of whom would face greater regulatory and economic uncertainty and tens of billions of dollars in costs.

The post Once-in-a-Lifetime Opportunity to Help America’s Wildlife appeared first on Clark Fork Coalition.

“The plaintiffs are owners of lands requiring irrigation, which could be served by Racetrack Creek, were the waters of the stream sufficiently copious. […]. Conceiving that an ample supply of water might be obtained if the surplus flood and waste waters of the stream were impounded and stored, the plaintiffs at various times have constructed dams at the outlets of various lakes and by means of the reservoirs thus created have stored water which they have sought to use.”

—Excerpt from the Montana Supreme Court’s 1926 opinion in Donich v. Johnson

Racetrack Lake Water Rights

After ten years of negotiation, Racetrack Creek finally has a chance to run from its high alpine headwaters all the way to the Upper Clark Fork River, even through the hottest months of the summer. With a water management plan that satisfies irrigation needs and instream flow protection for native fish, this decade-long project sets an important precedent for what’s possible when we cooperate on restoring streams in our watershed.

Located high in the Flint Creek Range southwest of Deer Lodge, Racetrack Lake forms the headwaters of Racetrack Creek. One of the largest tributaries of the Upper Clark Fork River, Racetrack Creek has supplied water for farming, ranching and other beneficial uses in the Deer Lodge Valley for over a century. Racetrack Creek also provides important habitat for numerous fish species—such as native cutthroat trout—and its clean, cold, waters historically recharged the mainstem of the Upper Clark Fork. But due to competition for limited water supply, the lower reaches of the Racetrack Creek go completely dry virtually every year.

For as long as anyone can remember, every year in the late summer months the creek has been cut off from the Clark Fork, blocking upstream movement for fish seeking cooler headwaters habitat, harming ecological function, and leaving fish stranded in pools that gradually dry up.

A History of Heavy Use

Like most key tributary streams in Montana, the natural supplies on Racetrack Creek were fully appropriated—or “spoken for”—by irrigators well before the 20^th century. In other words, irrigation demands had outpaced supply. There simply was not enough water to allow all irrigators to irrigate for the full season. To provide more water for their lands, in the late 1800s, a few enterprising irrigators labored to construct a dam at the outlet of Racetrack Lake to raise the natural water level and capture snowmelt and runoff that otherwise would have been lost during spring runoff. These “lake users” would then release the stored water into the natural channel of the creek where it would flow down to the valley to be diverted into ditches and onto fields.

Competition for water on Racetrack Creek has always been fierce. As a result, the creek is no stranger to controversies that often end up in court. In the early 1900s, users with water rights predating the existence of the dam challenged the lake users’ practice of damming and storing surplus waters in Racetrack Lake. According to these users, they had already claimed all available water in Racetrack Creek, so by holding back spring flood waters for later use, the lake users were actually injuring the rights of these other users. The case eventually landed in the Montana Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of the lake users. The court found that preserving water supplies that would otherwise go to waste for beneficial uses is “of very high public importance” to the State of Montana.

A New Idea

In 2012, almost 90 years after the rights to stored water in Racetrack Lake were upheld by Montana’s high court, the Clark Fork Coalition posed a new, controversial question. Could those stored water rights be put to instream use to restore flows to the dewatered section of Racetrack Creek and (hopefully) reconnect the tributary to the mainstem? Restoring flows and ecological function in Racetrack Creek wasn’t just a goal for CFC. Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks (FWP) and the Montana Natural Resource Damage Program (NRDP) also considered restoring flows on the creek a high priority. Thanks in large part to funding provided by the NRDP, CFC purchased a water right equal to two-thirds of the stored water in Racetrack Lake from a willing landowner. However, getting approval from the state Department of Natural Resources and Conservation (DNRC) to use the water for instream flow would involve nearly a decade of bureaucratic and legal wrangling that has far surpassed any of CFC’s other restoration projects.

CFC first applied to change the use of the water from irrigation to instream flow in 2012. After it became clear that the DNRC would deny the application, CFC withdrew and opted to resubmit. Years of back-and-forth with the agency took place before the DNRC issued its initial decision in 2017. According to the decision, CFC would only be able to protect the lake water release during summer low flows for the top 17 miles of Racetrack Creek, but only to the point on the stream where previous water right holders diverted the lake water to use for irrigation. In other words, CFC could use the water to restore flows, just not within the dewatered reach.

After CFC challenged this nonsensical decision, a reviewing DNRC hearings examiner ended up reversing some, but not all, of the agency’s initial findings. CFC then asked the Montana Water Court to review the DNRC’s decision. In April 2019, the Water Court ruled in CFC’s favor, reversing the DNRC decision and ordering the agency to grant CFC’s request. In a strongly worded opinion, the Water Court took DNRC to task for abusing its authority under water right change laws and failing to properly give effect to the purpose of the instream flow statutes—namely to put water back into dewatered streams.

Following the Water Court’s decision, CFC’s change application went out for public notice.  While many irrigators had questions about the potential impact of this change on their use of the water in the creek, through lengthy negotiations and a final DNRC order, those questions have now been settled. On May 3, 2022, the DNRC issued its Final Order granting our change as proposed, finding that the change to instream use would not adversely affect other water users.

A Collaborative Plan

It’s been a long time coming, and we’re excited to finally see how this release can benefit late-season flows on Racetrack. Like many over appropriated streams, the Racetrack system is complex, and ensuring that both water users and wildlife have the water they need can be a challenge. But it’s a challenge that can be overcome. During the 2022 irrigation season, for the first time on Racetrack Creek, a collaborative water management plan is in place between CFC and irrigators. This plan makes it possible for the creek to meet both ecological and agricultural needs. Best of all, we expect that this vitally important tributary now has a much better chance of staying connected to the mainstem Clark Fork during a critical time of need for the fishery.

We also recognize that this project could not have happened without the funding and support of the Montana Natural Resource Damage Program and the Columbia Basin Water Transactions Program. This is a unique instream flow change in western Montana, and, in our view, sets an important precedent for what’s possible when we work together to restore flows on dewatered streams in our watershed.

The post Racetrack Creek Finally Has Chance to Connect to Clark Fork River appeared first on Clark Fork Coalition.

Commissioners not telling the truth about selenium standard

As the adage goes: everyone is entitled to their own opinion, just not their own facts. The fact is, the recent opinion piece signed by the Lincoln County Commissioners (Montana Standard Feb. 27) concerning the establishment of a scientifically justified selenium standard is long on opinion and painfully short on facts.

Ignoring the facts, the Commissioners aim to weaken our water quality standards for Montana’s treasured Lake Koocanusa and the Kootenai River in order to satisfy a foreign mining company that is harming our water, fish, and communities.

The Commissioners make the erroneous claim that the process to establish the standard was rushed over three months and excluded the public, including themselves. In reality, the Commissioners have been involved, alongside many of us for the better part of a decade in public meetings, to achieve this standard. They participated throughout a robust, and transparent, rulemaking process, years of data collection, community discussions, and development of the protective standard.

The Commissioners once again falsely state that the new selenium standard is more stringent than federal guidelines. Again, not true. Montana regulators applied the federal standard for acceptable levels of selenium in fish tissue and used peer-reviewed scientific models to determine a protective water threshold to protect Koocanusa’s fish. To be clear, the state standard is the federal standard. It relies upon six years of local data collection and is based on toxic levels of selenium in Koocanusa right now. The objective is to protect fish in Koocanusa. Given these facts, any call to weaken the standard is a move against protecting fish and communities in Montana and ignores our downstream neighbors in Idaho.

The Commissioners distort the facts about the federal guidelines for selenium standards. Those guidelines clearly recommend site-specific standards based on local data. After six years of investigating selenium in Lake Koocanusa, a diverse team of selenium experts found that the local data requires a standard of 0.8 ug/L to protect fish and aquatic life. The sad fact is that several species of fish in the reservoir already exceed the Environmental Protection Agency’s toxicity threshold for selenium. To be crystal clear, selenium is already at toxic levels in the reservoir because Teck Coal’s Canadian mines have been leaching selenium into the reservoir for decades.

A shared, protective standard

Contrary to what the Commissioners published in their error-filled letter, Lake Koocanusa has been listed as impaired under Montana’s 303(d) list due to selenium contamination since 2012. This listing was a precursor to the six-year process that Montana and British Columbia embarked on to design a shared, protective selenium standard.

With respect to Idaho’s standard, the science is clear that selenium toxicity bioaccumulates in the food web, and that it concentrates more in slow moving waters than in fast moving waters. That is why both Montana and Idaho adopted 3.1 ug/L in the Kootenai River, and 0.8 ug/L was needed for the slow-moving reservoir in Montana. In plain language, lakes are more vulnerable to selenium toxicity than rivers, and Lake Koocanusa is a worst-case scenario because it has been receiving selenium from Canada for several decades. Another very important and overlooked fact is that Idaho also recently listed the Kootenai River as impaired due to selenium, in both fish and water.

Given that the source of this problem is entirely Canadian, and that Montanans gain nothing from weakened standards except more pollutants from mining, why are the Commissioners defending Teck Coal and attacking a standard designed to protect Montana’s waters? This is the very same company that has been fined millions of dollars for releasing contaminants into rivers flowing into Koocanusa and the Kootenai, has repeatedly failed to meet water quality objectives in B.C., and is the subject of an investigation into a westslope cutthroat trout population collapse.

Read: The selenium battle of Lake Koocanusa

The facts is: Montana’s best interest is in holding international polluters accountable for the selenium flowing into our state’s waters from Canadian mining operations. The peer-reviewed scientifically robust process for establishing this standard included years of data collected by some of the top selenium experts in the world. The resulting standard was adopted to protect Koocanusa’s waters and the aquatic life that support our businesses and way of life. It’s a Montana-made solution that we should support and be proud of, not undermine with misinformation.

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