Local News
Expert hands Flathead 'C' overall
By VINCE DEVLIN of the Missoulian
April 27, 2008
POLSON - Jack Stanford has spent countless hours over the last 37 years peering through
microscopes at water from Flathead Lake, and the microorganisms in it.
But the naked eye tells him something important, too.
"I still walk out on the dock every day, and marvel that a body of water that big is still
that clear," Stanford said Friday, after addressing the Flathead Basin Commission.
“The water quality in Flathead Lake gets an A, even an A-plus. It's
fantastic.”
The longtime director of the University of Montana's
Flathead Lake Biological Station was less interested in assigning a grade to the overall
condition of the lake, however, “because if I said F or D, then I'd have to
place blame.”
He settled on a C.
“There are two
different lake states,” Stanford told the commission earlier. “The one before
Mysis, and the one after.”
Mysis shrimp, introduced by the state in the
1980s into three lakes upstream from Flathead - Swan, Ashley and Whitefish - in
an effort to increase salmon and trout populations there, eventually made their way into
Flathead.
It turned the biology of the lake, along with its fishery, on its
ear.
“It's had a cascading chaotic effect,” Stanford said.
“All things in the lake are trying to adjust to the Mysis.”
The
state was acting in good faith when Mysis shrimp were introduced upstream, Stanford said,
but Flathead has lived with the results since - an explosion in the non-native and
predacious lake trout population, which has all but destroyed the kokanee salmon
population, and threatens the native bull and westslope cutthroat trout numbers.
The growth rate of the Mysis has greatly decreased since the first few years, according
to Stanford, and the food web in Flathead is now stabilizing.
“I'd
call it ‘quasi-stable,' ” Stanford said. “It's not chaotic
like it was.”
One thing that is changing is the volume of water in
Flathead that warms up in the summertime - anyone who has swum in the lake for years
knows that - and that is changing the Mysis' feeding habits on zooplankton.
“Mysis are glacial relics that do not do well in warm water,” Stanford
said. “So now they're coming up to the top to eat, but going back to the
bottom” and colder water, and that's leaving more food near the surface for
something else.
“Somebody's going to figure it out,” Stanford
said, “and my candidate is yellow perch.”
The biggest threat to
Flathead Lake and its tributaries “by far,” Stanford said, are proposed coal
mining operations in British Columbia.
“The other would be the hazardous
materials that are being moved on the rails and highways next to the water,” he
added. “A derailment on the Middle Fork (of the Flathead River) would bring about a
disaster beyond belief.”
The 6,400-gallon gasoline spill in a tanker
truck accident on Montana Highway 35 earlier this month is an example of the danger
Flathead faces, Stanford said.
The trucking industry has said it will oppose
any effort to limit the types of trucks, and what they carry, on Highway 35, which travels
up the east shore of the lake and hugs the shoreline in some stretches. Spook Stang,
executive vice president of the Montana Motor Carriers Association, has said that trucks
not only need to be able to traverse the nation's highways in the most efficient ways
possible, but have a right to do so.
“Mr. Stang says, ‘Sorry, but
we pay taxes, and we deserve to use the road,' ” Stanford said. “Well
I'm sorry, but this is a special place, and it deserves better.”
The
23-member commission, established in 1983 by the Montana Legislature, was updated on the
gas spill by Paul Rodgers of Cedar Creek Engineering, and Lake County director of
Emergency Management Steve Stanley.
The spill has forced the abandonment of
three year-round and two summer lakeside homes where gas vapors have been detected.
Rodgers said officials have debated whether to attempt to flush the area in an
effort to accelerate the movement of the 5,000 gallons of gas that remain underground
through the bedrock. The danger, he said, is that doing so could cause problems with the
well that supplies water to 17 homes in the subdivision.
The well, and a
monitoring well set up midway between the spill site and the subdivision's source of
water, have consistently tested clean since the April 2 accident.
Rodgers spoke
about plans to build a water treatment plant that would operate for several years, and dig
a 500-foot-long ditch along the shoreline in an effort to intercept the gas before it
reaches the lake.
“The fear has shifted from free product going into the
lake, to dissolved contamination,” he said. “That's the main risk
now.”
Stanley told the commission his agency desperately needs a sea
curtain boom to be able to effectively contain any spill that went directly into the
water.
“If we have 6,000 gallons go directly into Flathead Lake or Jocko
Creek, we're going to fail miserably,” Stanley said. “It's not a
matter of if it's going to happen, it's a matter of when.”
The
economics of a fuel spill are that the spiller pays for the cleanup, Stanley explained.
Carolina Casualty, insurance carrier for Keller Transport of Billings, which owned the
truck involved in the April 2 crash, has been great in providing the county, the
Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes and Cedar Creek Engineering with everything they
need to try to keep the gasoline from reaching Flathead Lake, according to Stanley.
But if the crash had happened near Blue Bay when the lake was at full pool, there
is nothing that could be done to protect the lake without a sea curtain on hand and ready
to be deployed.
There are no tax dollars available for his department to
purchase a 1,000-foot sea curtain, which he estimates would cost $13,000, he said. If
the Office of Emergency Management had one, he said, he would propose keeping it at either
the volunteer fire department at Finley Point or Woods Bay, and training the firefighters
to deploy it.
“The first six to 10 hours are critical,” Stanley
said.
Caryn Miske, executive director of the commission, said she would look
into whether grant money might be available for purchasing a sea curtain.
The
Flathead Basin Commission also handed out Paul Williams Stewardship Awards Friday. Elna
and George Darrow of Bigfork were recognized for “their passionate and abiding
interest in the protection of water quality in the Flathead Basin,” and Lake County
and the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes for “their efforts to work
harmoniously and collaboratively to address land use issues within the boundaries of Lake
County and the Flathead Indian Reservation, to the benefit of all residents.”
|
