Big Sky’s collective ‘Water Plan’ is receiving an update for its fifth birthday
By Marne Hayes EBS COLUMNIST
Healthy water benefits the quality of life and habitat for fish and wildlife in the Big Sky area, as well as for the people that live here and depend on clean water in our daily lives. When the Gallatin River Task Force considers what contributes to the health of our water, we examine the area in and around our community that is tied to the Gallatin River, local streams and groundwater, which feeds both the river and our community drinking water resource. In other words, our water is key to all aspects of our community’s health and is a resource that requires careful consideration, thoughtful strategies and community collaboration to be kept healthy.
Understanding what tools it takes to maintain clean water, and encouraging practices that lead to healthy rivers and streams are imperative in our ever-growing community, and our changing climate. That is where the Big Sky Sustainable Watershed Stewardship Plan comes into play.
The original plan was created in 2018 by a collaborative stakeholder group of 35 entities, representing local, regional and national conservation goals, local, county and state government, community leaders, resorts and developers, and downstream agricultural interests, in an effort to create a plan that identified solutions to water resource issues in the Big Sky area.
Built into the initial workings of the Water Plan was the group’s vision that it would establish Big Sky as a model mountain community for our efforts to protect and improve water resources, sustain ecological health of our waterways, and support a vibrant local economy. These essentially became the bases of three focus areas for the plan, which intended to move forward action items that would address issues related to these fundamentally critical areas.
The primary focus in 2018 was to address water resource issues in the Big Sky area, which includes the West Fork Gallatin River, Jack Creek, and the Gallatin River mainstem and smaller streams along the stretch of U.S. Highway 191 that runs through Big Sky. All of these lands and waters contribute to the Gallatin and Madison Rivers, and the Water Plan focused on developing recommendations to address current and future water needs for both the natural and human communities in our collective footprint.
Now that the plan is at the five-year mark, its progress presents the opportunity to evaluate the actions since it was launched. It’s time to understand where the Water Plan needs updates, what focus areas need to be reconsidered, and how we continue engaging the stakeholder group so that the plan and the work remains a collaborative, community-based, and community-led process on behalf of the Gallatin River and our community water’s future health.
Priorities identified in the original plan covered three key areas: ecological health of river systems, water supply and availability, and wastewater treatment and reuse. Action items included water monitoring to establish trends, strategies for water conservation and groundwater modeling, and improved and expanded wastewater treatment and reuse capabilities.
In order to implement innovative solutions from the plan, partners at all levels would need to commit to working together. Ongoing coordination and increased organizational capacity would be integral to accomplishing the goals of the Water Plan.
Since 2018, community partners have moved forward many action items that are now outlined in the 2023 progress report. With an original expectation that the plan would take 20 or more years of focused action, these initial successes are encouraging to the long-term wins for the plan, and for the Gallatin River. Issues that have arisen since the plan’s inception will guide the additional framework to lead ongoing action items and recommended solutions. Challenges like widespread algae blooms, faster-than-predicted community growth, lack of a water management boundary comprehensive of the entire Big Sky community, and the potential for catastrophic flooding will now be part of the substantive dialogue that will keep the Water Plan and its successes moving forward.
Led by the Task Force and a committed collection of more than two dozen stakeholder groups, the five-year update process is currently underway. The goal is to identify gaps and new issues that face our water resources, develop and prioritize ongoing solutions, and identify funding and accountability mechanisms that will set the Water Plan up for success. Awareness, education, engagement, and the willingness to find solutions is the name of the game, and the readiness of the community to step in and take an active role is paramount to the ongoing progress of this plan, for our waters.
For further information about the updated Big Sky Sustainable Watershed Stewardship Plan or the work of the Task Force, please visit our website.
Marne Hayes is the communications manager for the Gallatin River Task Force.
