Coalition renews work on Clark Fork River restoration plan
Laura Lundquist
(Missoula Current) The Clark Fork River has suffered a fair amount of abuse over the past century, but the stretch passing through Missoula has no official plan for restoration. The Clark Fork Coalition wants to change that.
On Friday afternoon, representatives from several local nonprofit groups and conservation districts joined the Clark Fork Coalition to identify areas of the central Clark Fork River that could use some work to restore the damage done by mining, development, dewatering and general neglect. Over the next year, they’ll use that information to develop a restoration plan for the Central Clark Fork River.
“We want to utilize your knowledge that you have of work that’s been done in these subbasins and potential work that could be done in these subbasins,” Clark Fork Coalition executive director Brain Chaffin told the representatives.
The Central Clark Fork River extends from Drummond downstream to the confluence with the Flathead River. While the upper Clark Fork River above Drummond has had a restoration plan since 2012, development of a plan for the central segment of the river hit a few stumbling blocks.
Starting in 2017, Vicki Watson, University of Montana Environmental Studies Program professor emeritus, spent three years working with stakeholders to find the pollution issues and problem areas that they thought were important. But then, COVID-19 put the brakes on that effort. Now, the Clark Fork Coalition is picking up the baton and building on Watson’s work.
Gretchen Watkins, Clark Fork Coalition restoration project manager, explained the process for developing a restoration plan and why one is needed.
“Some things are bad. This is where my students would (get depressed). But we can fix stuff. And we have,” Watkins, a former schoolteacher, said. “But without a watershed restoration plan, a lot of projects aren’t as fundable.”
The state has identified which sections of the Clark Fork and its tributaries are impaired due to pollutants, such as sediment, heavy metals, high temperature and nutrients, which cover nitrogen and phosphorus. Turns out the entire length of the Clark Fork is impaired, mainly due to heavy metals from past mining. In addition, there are non-pollution issues, such as dewatering or low flows, lack of riparian vegetation and chlorophyll-a, an indicator of the amount of algae.
The restoration plan would identify what needs to be done to correct these problems, and then various groups could apply for Clean Water Act grants from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to fund various projects, such as repairing streambanks. For example, the 2020 Bitterroot River restoration plan has enabled irrigation improvements on Lost Horse Creek, thanks to a $100,000 Clean Water Act grant. Groups can’t qualify to get these grants if a river or stream doesn’t have a state-approved restoration plan.
Watson’s earlier work on the Clark Fork Restoration Plan identified 10 priority streams and the restoration work that needed to be done on each. Since then, Grant Creek was removed from the priority list, because its restoration plan was approved just this year. The remaining priorities include Albert, Deer, Fish, O’Keefe, Flat, Petty and Trout creeks and the Smurfit-Stone mill site.
For the new restoration plan, the Clark Fork Coalition divided the central Clark Fork River into eight sub-basins, starting upstream with Bear Creek then down through Cramer, Rattlesnake, Mill, Petty, Fish and Trout creeks and ending with Dry Creek. During the meeting, the attendees discussed potential projects that could be done in each sub-basin to address specific problems, such as having better land-use management and restoring the floodplain in the Mill Creek sub-basin.
The Clark Fork Coalition also wants to hear from the public. It has created an online survey to allow the public to provide any additional information on restoration they’d like to see.
“You can look at those priorities that were developed in 2020, because a lot of effort went into coming up with those priorities. But yet, a lot of work has been done within some of those in the meantime. Now, here we are five years later. What has been done and where can we move forward?” Watkins said.
Contact reporter Laura Lundquist at lundquist@missoulacurrent.com.