Haskill Basin Watershed Council Advocates for Stricter Protections in Whitefish City Water Plan

The Haskill Basin Watershed Council (HBWC) is calling on Whitefish city officials to take greater action to protect water levels in the two Haskill Creek tributaries utilized by the city — a call watershed advocates say has repeatedly been met by a lack of meaningful policy implementation.

In a nearly 30-page report, the HBWC outlined what it sees as key changes needed in the city’s current Water Master Plan draft — including installing a radio telemetry diversion management system to allow for real-time monitoring and adjustment of water withdrawals from Second and Third Creeks — in order to combat dewatering and protect tributary health in the basin. 

“There are many ways that a river or stream can be harmed,” the council stated in its June 8 report. “Complete dewatering causes the greatest harm. Nothing else compares. Nothing survives. There can be no water quality when there is no water.

“If the city’s admirable goals about protecting water quality and water courses are to mean anything, the city needs to acknowledge the harm that it is causing to Haskill Creek, which it has committed (in several of the cited documents) to protect.”

The Water Master Plan is set to go before city councilors for a public hearing ahead of its adoption during the council’s regular meeting at 7:10 p.m. on Monday, Aug. 17. 

If adopted as is, the plan will reject the HBWC’s “most important proposals, without adequate consideration for the impacts on Haskill Creek,” and perpetuate existing city water system operating procedures that “seriously harm the creek, its tributaries, fishery, banks, vegetation, and floodplain.”

“It is important that the city exercise conservation in how it manages the municipal water system of Haskill Basin,” the report states. “It should be a goal of the city to only divert as much water from Second Creek and Third Creek as is required to meet its citizens’ needs, thereby preventing the diversion of excess water and wasting it into another drainage. It should also be a goal to maintain a reasonable minimum flow in both creeks throughout the year to preserve the ecological function of the natural watershed.”

The Haskill Basin Watershed Council is a five-member organization created by the Flathead Conservation District in 2001 and tasked with protecting and improving Haskill Creek. One of its longtime projects has been to investigate low flows of water in the creek during the summer and early fall — an outcome they’ve consistently found in Second and Third Creeks, which are used by the city of Whitefish for the municipal water system. 

This monitoring has also led to longtime discussions between the Haskill Council and the city about how to maintain a minimum flow that would support the aquatic biota and fisheries in the watershed — discussions the HBWC views as largely ineffective to this central goal.

“City employees have been courteous and generous in meeting with us and providing information that we requested,” the report states. “They have given us tours of the city reservoir, the creeks and the locations where the water is drawn. The city cooperated with us in installing equipment to measure the excess Haskill Creek water that flowed over the reservoir spillway, and to measure the creek’s flow at Monegan Road. 

“However, in 15 years of numerous requests, the city has declined to consistently adopt any of our policy proposals regarding maintaining minimum flows within Haskill Creek by reducing water diversion under dry conditions.”

With the Water Master Plan now up for adoption, the HBWC is again coming to city councilors urging them to approve amendments to the draft plan directing staff to implement six specific actions. Chief among the requests is the installation of a radio telemetry diversion management system — an automated, wireless network used to monitor, track and control water diversions from a central location using radio frequency signals.

Currently, the city has no way to electronically measure, in real time, how much water it is taking from each creek and how much remains. A city employee must travel to and from both creek diversions, resulting in a 60- to 90-minute round trip, according to the Haskill council’s report.

A radio telemetry system is the most effective way to modernize this process and better manage the water levels at Second and Third Creek directly from the city’s water treatment plant, the HBWC argued in its report. 

The city, however, views the installation of the radio telemetry system as a complicated one, with Public Works Director Craig Workman telling city councilors at their Aug. 6 work session it would require a generator to produce power at the intakes, as well as additional improvements at the intakes themselves.

“About two years ago, we came up with a much more cost-effective solution that we think will provide a very similar result, which will allow us to control the flow at the water plant itself,” Workman said. “It’s essentially an actuated valve, and we’ll still use SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition), but it only has to communicate with the reservoir, which is right there.”

“Essentially, the valve will open and close based on the reservoir level to make sure that we’re not spilling any water,” he added. “Any water then that is backed up into Haskill Creek would go into our lowest intake, which is First Creek, but it would still provide that overburden of water to the lower reach of Haskill Creek.”

Workman added that the Water Master Plan up for discussion at Monday night’s meeting “recommends against doing the remote telemetry at the head gates until the actuated valve is proven not to work.”

In their June 8 report, the HBWC argued a natural gas-powered generator could supply “all of the electricity needed” at the diversions for their proposed radio telemetry system, which is also within the city’s budgetary range. The Haskill council also asserted the city’s plan “obviously would not benefit Second and Third Creeks, as water would continue to be taken from those streams, but any excess water would flow into First Creek.”

“Second and Third Creeks would experience the same demands on their water that they currently experience, including at times the loss of all their water,” the report states. “There would be no communication between the water plant and the diversions. The city would still be unaware of how much water, if any, remained in those creeks. There would be no ability to remotely adjust the amount of water taken from Second and Third Creeks. The city would need to rely on its existing system of having an employee drive to the diversions, observe the flows, and then make a manual adjustment.”

Another key point of disagreement between the HBWC and the city’s Water Master Plan draft lies in the decision of whether to increase the city’s use and reliance on Whitefish Lake, especially during times Second and Third Creeks run low. 

In the draft plan, the city reaffirms that Haskill Creek provides an “exceptionally high-quality source water” that supplies the majority of the city’s annual water demand, showing little interest in relying more heavily on “lower quality” water sources like Whitefish Lake.

“Maintaining this source is critical to sustaining affordable and efficient water treatment operations,” the draft plan states. “A transition to lower-quality sources would increase treatment complexity, operational costs, and ultimately, utility rates for city residents. Relying more heavily on Whitefish Lake as a supplemental source would introduce several compounding cost increases.” 

When the notion of utilizing more water from Whitefish Lake was suggested during the city council’s Aug. 6 work session, Mayor John Muhlfeld echoed similar sentiments.

“When we sold the Haskill Basin easement to the voters, which we bonded for $10 million, the campaign was all about water,” Muhlfeld said. “I mean certainly there were ancillary benefits, recreation, etcetera, but in those presentations and in the campaign, we argued very strongly of the economic benefit of different scenarios of where we would revert to 25,50, 75, 100% lake water.

“That was the economic analysis that we presented to the voters, and that’s the only reason that bond passed, so I’m very reluctant to, with all due respect, to revert to a scenario where we’re pumping more water from the lake because it’s significantly more expensive. It’ll hit our water fund and our utility bills and our taxpayers.”

In contrast, one of the council actions proposed by the HBWC for the Water Master Plan is to “offset reduced tributary diversions by increasing use of the city’s existing Whitefish Lake pumping system” to balance “municipal supply reliability with watershed protection objectives.”

“The Haskill Council is unable to calculate what the additional cost to the city would be if it used Whitefish Lake water to keep Second and Third Creeks flowing during the warm summer months,” the report states. “The city is able to make that calculation, but we’re not aware that it has done so. If that calculation were made, the city could then make an informed judgment concerning whether the additional expense justifies protecting Second and Third Creeks.”

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