Guest column: Preserving our most important asset: our water

By Holly Hill Guest columnist

Link to Bozeman Chronicle Article

Summer has only officially been with us for two weeks, yet our changing climate has sent the mercury creeping over ninety degrees for many days already. In Montana, these temperatures aren’t usually seen until late July or August. Agricultural lands need more water during hot, dry times, residential areas are watering their lawns more, and people are retreating to fish and play in our shared waterways to beat this abnormal heat.

This summer — perhaps more than ever — our local watershed will be stressed to a critical level.

The Lower Gallatin Watershed provides the Gallatin Valley with drinking water, irrigation water, and critical habitat for fish and wildlife. Rapid growth and a warming climate stress our shared waters, which affects us all so intimately, in many ways. For the past 17 years, the Gallatin Watershed Council — along with a number of other dedicated organizations and individuals — has worked toward restoring, protecting, and preserving water resources in the Gallatin Valley.

Recently, the Montana Department of Environmental Quality announced the Lower Gallatin as a “focus watershed,” which will bring over $1.5 million to local on-the-ground watershed projects over the course of three years beginning in 2023. Before these projects can start, we need to listen, assess, and plan.

GWC is currently facilitating stakeholder workshops, kitchen table discussions, and gathering data and local recommendations to aid in a community update to the Lower Gallatin Watershed Restoration Plan. This plan serves as a blueprint to guide the future work needed to ensure our shared watershed is healthy and supports all the humans, animals, and plants that thrive because of it.

Addressing the challenges our watershed faces takes collaboration. From the outset, GWC’s work has focused on consensus-building and finding common ground around natural resource concerns. We strive to bring diverse interests together and unify around solutions. In order to ensure all voices are heard, and all interests are represented, we rely upon our partners. Strong partnerships make our work more widespread, more impactful, and more durable.

Creating the healthy watershed we all want to be a part of also takes engagement from every one of us. GWC provides community members with the skills, tools and knowledge they need to better understand and contribute to the health of our watershed. We recently launched the Gallatin Watershed Stewards program, which incentivizes, challenges and motivates community members, landowners, businesses and families to become stewards of our shared water resources. Through training, workshops, and events, the Watershed Stewards and Business Stewards programs are creating a movement of positive change, where our community recognizes water as one of our most critical resources and actively works to steward it.

This summer — and always — tread easy on our shared waterway. Plant drought tolerant plants. Dial back your lawn watering. Abide by hoot owl fishing restrictions. Join our Watershed Stewards program. Together, we can preserve our most important asset: our water.

Holly Hill is the executive director of the Gallatin Watershed Council. GWC is working to guide collaborative watershed stewardship in the Gallatin Valley for a healthy and productive landscape.