U.S. Water News Online
HELENA -- The amount of contaminated water in Montana has changed little over the past two years, with about half of all rivers and streams and 80 percent of lakes still considered contaminated, says a draft of a new state report.
The report, required by federal and state laws, is intended to measure water conditions as part of a program for protecting and improving the quality of rivers, streams and lakes in Montana.
It rates waterways as impaired if changes to natural conditions are found that result in quality failing to meet state standards designed to ensure water can be used for such things as fisheries, agriculture, recreation and aquatic life.
Causes of the pollution range from metals and bank erosion to changes in flow and increased sediment. The sources include removal of natural resources and grazing.
The biennial report, on which the public can comment until March 12, identified 9,858 miles of rivers and streams, and 489,582 acres of lake water as impaired. That represents 47 percent of all river and stream miles and 81 percent of total lake acreage in the state.
The lake figure is identical to those listed in the 2002 report, and the amount of rivers and streams is about 104 miles less than two years ago. Sixteen streams were added and 17 removed from the list.
``We're certainly making progress,'' said Michael Pipp, acting supervisor for data management in the state Water Quality Planning Bureau. ``Some people may not be content or happy with the pace, but we're making progress in development of plans.''
The law mandates that the state devise plans for improving the quality of waterways labeled impaired. In the process, officials must establish the ``total maximum daily load'' for each pollutant found to be causing a violation of state standards in a waterway.
Of the 17 streams removed from the list of impaired waters over the past two years, 15 were taken off because planning has begun to improve quality. That means they are no longer considered impaired, even though the water is no cleaner than it was in 2002.
Sage Creek in northern Liberty and Hill counties is an example. About 110 miles of the stream were removed from the list because pollutant limits had been adopted for the water. But, like 2002, the latest report still found high levels of salinity and nutrients in the water related to agricultural activities, including crops, grazing and livestock feeding.
On the other hand, a 52-mile section of Rock Creek in Granite County above Missoula was delisted because new monitoring showed improvement in quality. While the 2002 study concluded ``both habitat and chemistry show impairment,'' the latest report said metals in the water no longer exceed state standards.
Some waters added to the impaired list were not included before because no assessment of their quality had been done earlier. Twenty-five miles of Dog Creek in Fergus County and 18 miles of Eagle Creek in Chouteau County are two examples.
In all, the report lists 7,600 miles of streams and 55,410 acres of lakes for which the state does not yet have sufficient data to determine their status.
Jeff Barber of the Montana Environmental Information Center said the report by the Department of Environmental Quality is useful as a snapshot of water quality in the state. But it doesn't necessarily ensure improvement in those conditions, because compliance with pollutant limits is voluntary, he said.
``It's a baseline,'' Barber said. ``It can flag high-priority sites ... and can be used to get a handle on some areas and get the easiest cleanup done first.''
Also, he said, most of the impaired water is the result of agriculture and abandoned mines. There is little that can be done about widespread farming and ranching effects where the culprits often are siltation and field runoff, and the state has too little money to make much of dent in the scores of derelict mines scattered around Montana, Barber said.
The report showed that agriculture was a factor in 5,713 miles, or 59 percent, of impaired streams.
Pipp said the state must have maximum pollutant limits established in on all waters by 2007, but that doesn't mean Montana will have an empty list of impaired streams and lakes. Continuous monitoring of waterways will find more to put on the roster as a host of human activities create more contaminated water, he said.
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