The dog days of summer are upon us. For anglers, that means our state’s rivers are at the lowest and warmest flows of the season, resulting in various angling restrictions statewide and stress on native and wild fish. It is also peak water demand for our communities – irrigators and ranchers getting their crops and livestock to market, municipalities implementing water restrictions, and tourists coming from around the world to float and fish our world class rivers.
More broadly (and dire) than a single summer of heat and low water, our state is on a crash course of water supply and demand. We have increasing and changing needs for water statewide at the same time our supply is changing, both in quantity and timing. To further complicate matters, Montana’s water law system, built from the prior appropriation doctrine, means that water rights are tied to a specific time and place of use, in order of seniority. Periods of low water and high demand, like right now, increase conflict and acrimony in our communities.
That is why over the last four years, under Governor Greg Gianforte’s leadership, the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation convened a diverse stakeholder group to explore the state’s most pressing water challenges, including those mentioned above, and offer recommendations to help fix them. As a member of that group on behalf of Montana Trout Unlimited, I can attest that we had spirited debates befitting the topic of water in the West. But there was one discussion that united everyone – from municipalities to agriculture to development and instream flow advocates like myself – that as a headwaters state we must find ways to increase the amount of water we can keep on our landscape before it runs downstream.
While we all shared that common goal to increase water storage, we needed to find was how to address it. We learned in our investigations that Montana lagged behind other western states in the financial investments it makes in storage. In fact, neighboring states like Wyoming were greatly outspending us. Our recommendation to the agency and Governor was that by greatly increasing the investment in water storage, the state would be better positioned to meet some of the thorniest water problems that affect us all.
We were grateful that the Gianforte administration heard us and put forward an aggressive and transformational investment in his executive budget delivered to the legislature. He proposed a trust fund concept. Invest today and use the interest from those investments to fix the water infrastructure we already have before it fails, while and also devoting a portion of the interest for innovative, new storage opportunities – everything from natural processes to underground and new small scale surface storage.
Through the legislative process, the trust account gained traction. Both HB 924, sponsored by Rep. Llew Jones of Conrad, and HB 932, sponsored by Rep. Ken Walsh of Twin Bridges, passed the legislature and were signed into law by Governor Gianforte, which taken together mark a transformational investment in water storage, ensuring that we fix what we already have before it breaks (avoiding water catastrophes like the current situation on the Milk River Project) and innovate our way into the next decades of our state’s water needs.
Increasing water storage in Montana will lift all boats. We at Montana Trout Unlimited are grateful to Governor Gianforte and legislative leaders for sharing the water community’s vision, and we are ready to roll up our sleeves to get these new investments on the ground.
Clayton Elliott is the Conservation and Government Affairs Director for Montana Trout Unlimited. He has worked on water policy issues in the Montana Legislature for nearly two decades and resides in Butte.