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Welcome to the Flathead Basin

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Saved by Christina Staten
on August 20, 2009 at 1:00:04 pm
 

 Welcome to the Flathead TMDL Project

 

 

Flathead Lake drains an area of six million acres stretching from its northern reaches in Canada to the Salish-Kootenai tribal lands and the Swan. Timber, agriculture, tourism, hunting, fishing and a rapidly growing urban and suburban population all depend on clear, cool waters in the rivers, lakes and streams in the Flathead watershed.

 Flathead Basin TMDL Planning Areas

Water quality standards have been set to ensure healthy and productive systems for the wellbeing of the natural environment and the people who live, work, and play in Montana. The Montana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) assesses the waters, and for those waters not meeting the state standards, develops framework strategies that will lead to the achievement of those standards. This process is known as TMDL development.

 

DEQ has identified the following primary cause groups as impairments to water quality in the Flathead: nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus), siltation/sediment, PCBs, metals (mercury, arsenic, copper and lead) and thermal modification (temperature).

 

The TMDL planning process in the Flathead watershed incorporates a combination of a watershed scale hydrologic model, lake response models, and on-the-ground field efforts to further identify and quantify pollutant contributions from all significant sources. Used in combination, these methods will yield the best available picture of the current water quality conditions and reasons for problems.

 

The current effort addresses two related issues: developing TMDLs for impaired waters in the Flathead-Stillwater Planning Area and developing the Phase II allocations for nutrients in the Flathead Lake watershed. The overall modeling strategy will help address needs for both efforts, while more focused investigation and analysis will be used to address the needs specific to the Flathead-Stillwater area. TMDLs have already been completed for Flathead Lake (Phase I), Swan River watershed, and Flathead Headwaters.

 

The result of this process will be individual TMDLs for all impaired rivers and lakes, plus a comprehensive understanding of how nutrient inputs are affecting Flathead Lake.


In the sidebar to the right, you will find quick links to other Flathead Basin pages on this wiki.  The Project Overview page contains a downloadable TMDL Pamphlet that expands on the information presented above, in addition to a presentation that was presented to stakeholders in 2007.  Documents related to development of these TMDLs can be found on the Flathead TMDL Documents page.  For further information regarding development of the Flathead TMDLs, please use the Flathead Basin TMDL Contacts  page to determine the appropriate contact.