A River Runs Dry

Rowing across rivers and lakes brought to mind Norman Maclean’s story A River Runs Through it: “Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.”

Fifty years ago Maclean published his story about growing up in Missoula, Montana and fishing the Big Blackfoot River. Maclean wrote about the struggle to understand the people we are closest to, the loneliness and forgiveness that families experience, and the landscape that connects us.

But that landscape is changing. Montana is a headwaters state. We like to think the water starts here, so we’ll always have it. But that may not be true.

We are home to Triple Divide where water flows into three different drainage systems. To the Saskatchewan River into the Hudson; into the Columbia and on to the Pacific; and the Yellowstone and the Missouri flowing to the Mississippi. But the water is flowing away from us and August is the truth-teller. Our rivers are dependent on winter snowpack and a steady run-off that will last long enough to offset the summer heat.

Without a snowpack, or if the snowpack is gone by June, our geography won’t help. The water is gone sooner, our riverbeds drier sooner, and by late July or early August the rivers are running dry.

Source: Water Quality Data; NRCS Interactive data

Climate scientists have pointed this out for a long time, but we are now seeing it in real time. The peak river flow is lower and earlier in the summer. Trying to get a permit to float the premier rivers means going for June, and August has become almost a no-go zone.

This August the consequences of early runoff have hit Montana hard. The Big Hole, the Jefferson, and the Clark Fork are hitting historic late-summer lows.

For the Blackfoot, the river Maclean’s fished with his brother Paul, late August brings Hoot Owl restrictions. Fishing is banned from 2 pm to midnight because low water volume and high afternoon temperatures suffocates the trout. Catching a fish in 70-degree water is a death sentence for the fish, since the warm water doesn’t have the dissolved oxygen they need to recover from the fight.

Let’s be realistic about what we’re dealing with. Cold water runoff lasting well into the hot summer is no longer status quo. How are we going to deal with that reality?

Water management is one option. We can’t make more snow, but some things we can do include:

• Lease Water Rights: Create incentives for water right holders to leave allotted water in the stream during critical low-flow weeks in August.

• Improve Irrigation Efficiency: Many water systems in the west are a hundred years old. Updating them to store water and limit evaporation will help

• Restore Headwaters Storage: Natural solutions, like beaver dam analogs, give us examples of how to slow snowmelt in the high mountains.

Fifty years on from the publication of A River Runs Through it we are facing rivers that are smaller, and warmer, than the rivers of last century. That is the result of choices we’ve made as a country and a state. Whether our rivers keep running through the next fifty years depends on what we do next.

All together.