Flower Creek watershed report nears completion

Without the Flower Creek watershed, there is no City of Libby.

That’s what Kristi Kline, source water specialist with the nonprofit Montana Rural Water Systems, told local officials during a Feb. 17 meeting.

Due to groundwater contamination from milling operations, the municipality cannot install wells. The only current viable source of water, according to Kline, comes from the watershed.

“Without [the Flower Creek watershed] … you cannot serve public water, you don’t have businesses, you have to go live separately,” she said during the meeting.

To safeguard the resource, city, county, U.S. Forest Service and Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation officials along with representatives from the nearby Kootenai Nordic Club are working to create a new source water protection plan.

Following tours of the Flower Creek reservoir last year and meetings with the parties involved, Kline said she was almost finished with a draft of the plan on March 17. After opening the document for review, she hoped to have a finalized version by the end of the month.

Libby officials said March 23 they had recieved the draft but declined to share a copy with The Western News.

Kline said she drew primarily from comments she received during the Feb. 17 meeting to craft the plan. The document also builds on a source water delineation and assessment report completed by a hydrologist with the Montana Department of Environmental Quality in 2000.

Many of the items local officials listed as priorities for the source water plan echo issues of concerns raised in the 2000 report. Potential sediment loading, runoff, erosion and wildfire events within the watershed area top the list.

County Forester Jennifer Nelson also suggested increasing the security of the reservoir.

“We have more people visiting, we have increased the chance that someone might get on the [Flower Creek] Dam or get into the reservoir,” she said at the Feb. 17 meeting.

Kline said recent timber operations in the watershed area could have led to an uptick in recreation. Thinning projects to reduce the wildfire risks have opened up nearby wooded areas, which could draw people closer to the reservoir.

Kenny Rayome, water treatment plant operator, said he has seen people trespassing to fish the reservoir.

While Mayor Brent Teske said recreation in the reservoir area has been a long-time problem, he agreed that there was no significant source of security for the reservoir or Flower Creek, its tributary.

Nelson proposed addressing potential safety hazards around the watershed as part of the source protection plan. She noted that steep embankments bound the reservoir in some areas. The body of water itself could be considered a hazard, especially for children or anyone unable to swim.

Teske said that addressing the security of the watershed and the safety of those who use the area would go hand in hand.

“[Safety] would be a good leverage point for security,” the mayor said. “Let’s say in the future we can get a grant to put a fence around [the reservoir] for security of the watershed and safety for the public.”

In the short term, Teske suggested putting up a new motion-activated camera to monitor the area.

Nelson raised concerns about pollutants from vehicles and human activity in the area entering the reservoir. While Rayome said plant operators might be able to smell chemicals like gasoline at high concentrations, the plant itself cannot detect spikes in these pollutants.

Teske noted though that a spill in the area would have to be excessive to have an impact on the city’s drinking water.

“If someone is dripping diesel out of their truck, that is not going to go into the ground into the groundwater and end up in the drinking water in a reasonable fashion,” he said. “It would take hundreds of gallons.”

To reduce turbidity, or the opacity of the water generally caused by natural sources of runoff, Rayome suggested collecting more data on erosion, especially between the reservoir and the water treatment plant. In 2015, heavy rains caused a spike in turbidity by washing dirt from the Flower Creek Dam construction site. This led the city to issue a boil order.

Kline suggested listing no net increase in turbidity as one of the plan’s goals.

An assessment of the watershed Kline presented at the meeting listed runoffs concerns from Forest Service and DNRC logging operations, a new access road, a new temporary spoil pile site, a proposed parking area, a paving project on Flower Creek Road, trail development along the creek and the nordic club’s equipment storage building, vaulted toilet, biathlon range and clearing projects.

Kline has stressed that even the finished version of the plan she hopes to have completed by the end of the month won’t be set in stone. As new problems arise, the hope is that officials will continue to update the document.

“It’s the start of a process that ebbs and flows,” said Kline on March 17. “It’s a fluid document.”