Montana Drought Management Plan Update (MDMP): Working Group

Montana Drought Management Plan Update (MDMP): Working Group

MDMP Working Group

February 15, 2017

9:00 am

Mission: To help the State of Montana create a Drought Management Plan that reflects the interests and concerns of all water users.

MEETING MINUTES

  1. Attended: Stephanie Micek (BOR), Stephen Begley (FWP), Dick Gooby (Indian Nation Conservation Alliance), Ted Dodge (Watershed Restoration Council), Kristi Kline (Montana Rural Water Systems), Lain Leoniak (City of Bozeman), Kai Peterson (Ecolab), Deb Mullowney (Northwestern Energy), Eric Urban (Montana Department of Environmental Quality), John Dilliard (Montana Department of Environmental Quality).
  1. Welcome back and brief update. (10 minutes)
  2. Review any questions or comments on the Meeting Minutes from 1/18/16.
  3. No questions were raised nor comments made.
  4. Lt. Gov. spoke at Montana Watershed Coordination Council annual meeting, The Montana Water Resources Association, and the Greater Gallatin Watershed Council.
  5. Upcoming speaking engagements: Montana Rural Water Systems (2/23 – Great Falls), Watershed Restoration Coalition (3/2 – Butte).
  6. Ted Dodge gave an overview of the 3/2/17 meeting to be held in Butte. This is a follow-up meeting to one held last fall for conservation organizations, sportsmen, irrigators, business, and did not include agencies. It was a facilitated meeting to identify what is important to communities in regards to drought. The meeting on March 2nd will include agency folks, including the Lt. Governor, staff and legislators. The meeting will be to review existing efforts and to learn about what more is needed.
  1. Update from Kristi Kline on Source Water Protection Plans.
  2. Source Water Protection Plans are created through a community assessment that identifies contaminant issues with DEW and then creates a management and emergency plan.
  3. The Emergency plans approach drought management by creating councils and boards to ensure safe drinking laws continue to be met and that the communities have 1-2 days worth of stored water. They evaluate the situation and develop communication and outreach means to water users. For example, large water users are identified in order to provide low water warning notifications. Industrial and business operations as well.
  4. In the context of long-term drought, where are we going and how are we monitoring conditions? DEQ has standards. There are USGS gages, and ground water monitoring wells, but wells are tricky because you have to shut off the community water system to measure them.
  5. Need to identify who else is in the watershed using water so you know who you are communicating with. It would be great to identify these folks ahead of time. Source Water Protection Plans identify the folks who you need to talk to.
  6. These plans are voluntary and only 50 have been done in the last 10 years. They offer an opportunity to cover more community water systems and provide more robust response measures and coordination in times of drought.
  7. Discussion on furthering the process of defining drought for Montana. (20 minutes)
  8. Update on monthly assessment process.
  9. Discussion on potential next steps.
  1. Discussion on Drought Mitigation (20 minutes)
  2. Explore how to make this more functional and easy to use.
  3. It was determined that the google doc approach should be abandoned in favor of a word document that is emailed to everyone each month.
  4. When people add to the word document it will be discussed at the next meeting.
  5. Ada will send out the word document titled “Mitigation Brainstorm” prior to the next meeting.
  6. Various members of the Working Group provided the following input on mitigation:
  7. Dick Gooby –
  8. things to do ahead of time are create more organic matter in the soil, and explore beaver mimicry and other ways to slow water down as it moves across the landscape.
  9. Getting folks to implement these approaches could be done through USDA grants.
  10. There is a lot of information out there so we need to be gathering that.
  11. Stephen Begley –
  12. Should we develop a list of Best Management Practices (BMPs)?
  13. If yes, then let’s brainstorm mitigation measure that then we can flesh out into specific recommendations on what is most effective in addressing drought.
  14. Lain Leoniak –
  15. Whether it’s industrial or community – water conservation is the number one municipal drought resilience strategy regardless of budget or size.
  16. Ted Dodge –
  17. When we pull together all kinds of stakeholders there a whole list of things identified like high mountain lake storage, off-stream storage, groundwater infiltration basins, conifer encroachment, etc.
  18. If these are all reasonable, then we need to look at the potential liabilities. If we are looking at a policy for the state then we need to identify what are reasonable proposals.
  19. Need to look at what is reasonable and what are potential roadblocks.
  1. Closing remarks/suggestions/feedback from Working Group members (10 minutes)
  2. Source Water Protection Bill (HB 424) – this Bill was tabled in committee two days after this meeting was held on February 17, 2017.
  3. The bill raised the question on whether the Working Group could promote or oppose legislation.

AS ALWAYS, THANK YOU VERY MUCH!

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