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PLANNING and STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT for WATER QUANTITY in the LOWER BIG HOLE WATERSHED BOR Watersmart Phase I Grant Application

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PLANNING and STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT for WATER QUANTITY in the LOWER BIG HOLE WATERSHED BOR Watersmart Phase I Grant Application PLANNING AND STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT FOR WATER QUANTITY IN THE LOWER BIG HOLE WATERSHED BOR WaterSmart Phase I Grant Application Big Hole Watershed Committee P.O. Box 21, Divide, MT 59727 (406) 960-4855 [email protected] http://bhwc.org DUNS #: 623593147 Project Manager: Pedro Marques, Executive Director P.O. Box 21, Divide, MT 59727 (406) 552-2369 [email protected] Table of Contents 1. Technical Proposal and Evaluation Criteria...................................................................................... 2 1a. Executive Summary........................................................................................................................... 2 1b. Background Data ............................................................................................................................... 2 1c. Project Location ................................................................................................................................. 0 1d. Technical Project Description .......................................................................................................... 0 1e. Evaluation Criteria ............................................................................................................................ 2 2. Project Budget ..................................................................................................................................... 7 Total Project Cost Table ............................................................................................................................ 7 Proposed Project Budget .......................................................................................................................... 7 Budget Narrative ..................................................................................................................................... 8 Funding Plan and Letters of Commitment .......................................................................................... 10 3. Environmental and Cultural Resources Compliance........................................................................... 11 4. Required Permits and approvals......................................................................................................... 11 5. Letters of Project Support................................................................................................................... 11 6. Official Resolution............................................................................................................................... 11 Big Hole Watershed Committee, 2019 1 1. Technical Proposal and Evaluation Criteria 1a. Executive Summary Proposal Date November 13, 2019 Organization Big Hole Watershed Committee, 501 c(3) non-profit Divide, Beaverhead County, Montana Executive Summary The Planning and Stakeholder Engagement for Water Quantity in the Lower Big Hole Project will support the Big Hole Watershed Committee’s (BHWC) capacity to pro-actively address water scarcity issues in the lower section of our watershed. This project will address water scarcity through Restoration Planning and Watershed Management Project Design activities. These efforts center on our organization’s 25-year history of consensus-based decision-making. We will accomplish our goals by taking previous planning efforts to project design stages and by implementing a concerted stakeholder engagement strategy with irrigators and recreationists that will lay the groundwork for an update to our Watershed Restoration Plan. These parallel efforts will demonstrate our organization’s capacity to deliver tangible improvements in water availability, building trust and local buy-in and will set the stage for active restoration projects on upland slopes where water availability has been dramatically decreased by conifer encroachment and in the river bottom by Pennington bridge, where channel avulsions are posing substantial risks to irrigation and other infrastructure. This project will provide important resources to our group so that we can expand our stakeholder base and build more community-level support to stretch scarce water supplies and avoid conflicts over water in this notoriously dry part of the watershed. This project will take place from the Spring of 2020 through the Spring of 2022. Federal Lands/Facilities As this project is specifically for planning and project design work, it will all take place in the office spaces and lands of our stakeholders. Some of the future conifer encroachment projects we foresee will occur on federal land, but that work falls outside the scope of this grant. 1b. Background Data Description of Watershed and Water Use The Big Hole River watershed is located in Southwest Montana. The Big Hole River is a headwater tributary to the Missouri River, with the bulk of its water supplied by snowpack. It runs 159 miles from its source near Jackson, Montana to its mouth near Twin Bridges, Montana. Big Hole Watershed Committee, 2019 2 The Lower Big Hole River watershed is defined by the River’s mostly unconfined reaches below its canyon section. The landscape is rural, with two small towns of Melrose and Glen. Population is sparse. The valley bottom is primarily private lands used for cattle ranching and hay production sustained by a mix of flood and pivot irrigation. The uplands are primarily public lands managed by the United States Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and the State of Montana. Public lands are often leased by ranches for cattle grazing. Current water use is primarily agricultural, as the majority of land use is cattle ranching with pasture grazing and hay/alfalfa production. Ranches are large and intact; most are descendants of the 1880s homesteads with families owning large expanses of land. A portion of water use is municipal as approximately 300 million gallons are pumped out of the watershed annually to supply the City of Butte, which receives 40% of its domestic water supply from the Big Hole River from a diversion just upstream of the lower section of the river as defined by this project. Domestic use within the watershed is limited as there are only approximately 2,000 year-round residents in the entire watershed. The nearest cities are Butte, Dillon, and Anaconda, which are each about 20 miles outside of the watershed boundary. Water quantity issues, namely the river going dry nearly 20 years ago, catalyzed the creation of the Big Hole Watershed Committee. BHWC introduced the Big Hole River Drought Management Plan in 1997, the first of its kind in the state, to address low flows and high temperatures in the Big Hole River. The plan designates voluntary flow restrictions for irrigators and mandatory fishing restrictions for anglers (enforced by Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks) during periods of low flow or high temperatures. BHWC takes voluntary contributions from stakeholders to partially fund 4 stream gages as part of our planning and collaborate at the state level on stream gages and funding with a diversity of state, federal and NGO partners. BHWC has also commissioned studies to better understand water balances, irrigation infrastructure and opportunities for improving water supply throughout the watershed over its 25 years history. More recently, BHWC has invested significant time and resources into improving natural water storage opportunities in the watershed through the restoration of wetlands, reconnection of streams to their floodplains, use of beaver mimicry, and sediment reduction projects. We are seeing interest in reducing conifer encroachment on the landscape as a water quantity issue and have hired a program manager with a forestry background to develop a program for landowners and public partners to address this issue. Threatened and Endangered Species Considerations The Big Hole River and its tributaries are home to native Arctic grayling and Westslope cutthroat trout. The Westslope cutthroat trout is considered a Species of Concern by the State of Montana. Threat of listing of the grayling under the Endangered Species Act prompted a C.C.A.A program by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, which has catalyzed important work in the upper watershed and has been one of the reasons for BHWC’s work in the middle section of the river, including Phase II WaterSMART funding from the BoR, currently being finalized. Big Hole Watershed Committee, 2019 3 Lower Watershed Character The lower section of the Big Hole, is distinct from the middle and upper sections of the river, particularly its lower elevations, higher temperatures, and reduced snowpack in the low and mid-elevation valleys and foothills. Heightened attention to native fish (grayling and westslope cutthroat) has allowed BHWC and partners to harness significant stakeholder buy-in for restoration projects and grant dollars in the upper and middle sections of the river. These portions of the river see the most snow, and thus are considered important from a hydrologic resilience standpoint and as native fish strongholds. Irrigators in the Upper river all use flood irrigation, which benefit downstream landowners and irrigators due to increased retention time of water slowly leaving the saturated soils the large upper valley. The Lower portion of the river is dramatically different and BHWC has historically not seen the same levels of stakeholder engagement and buy-in to drought response, drought management or restoration. This project seeks to change that scenario. Two key avenues we will pursue to achieve that change is by mobilizing our
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