Testing the Waters

So for those folks whose eyes are glazing over right now with wonky regulatory talk, how about we spend a few minutes just talking about the tangible stuff of this conversation? That is water.

So as I'm looking out our lovely 1960s era flashback, office building in downtown Missoula towards the Oxford.

At the end of the last great ice age, we would have been fully submersed in water, Glacial Lake, Missoula, and all of that is a precursor to the aquifer that we now are enjoying today.

Travis, you want to talk a little bit about water and geographic availability of water and how all that works here in Missoula County?

Sure, I would be happy to.

I guess to start with, all water is connected in one way or another.

So we have water in various forms through Missoula County.

We have wetlands, we have small tributary streams, we have large rivers, we have chain of lakes connected by river.

We have our aquifer, as you mentioned, Dave.

So our aquifer was formed over 15-ish thousand years ago, I think was the last of the draining and filling of glacial Lake Missoula, which brought the substrate, the cobbles, the big rounded rocks through that hold water so well in our valley.

If we look at our abundant water in the valley, that is directly related to that filling of the bathtub and draining.

And it continues to be sustained by the Clark Fork River as it comes through the Hellgate Canyon and spreads out and loses its water through the valley, spills up that bathtub.

It's that and largely the rattlesnake.

There are other forms of recharge as well to our aquifer, but those are the big ones.

So it's kind of interesting.

We're in a place that it rains 12 inches a year, just basically a desert.

And it feels like we are rich in groundwater in terms of rivers, creeks, and an aquifer.

How is that possible?

Yeah, we are fortunate to be in the situation where we have a very leaky, big river running through.

That's the main recharge.

That is the main recharge.

Are we truly snowmelt dependent?

We are.

Yeah, these rivers, they're all snowmelt dependent.

The rattlesnake, snowmelt dependent.

So for those folks whose eyes are glazing over right now with wonky regulatory talk, how about we spend a few minutes just talking about the tangible stuff of this conversation? That is water.

So as I'm looking out our lovely 1960s era flashback, office building in downtown Missoula towards the Oxford.

At the end of the last great ice age, we would have been fully submersed in water, Glacial Lake, Missoula, and all of that is a precursor to the aquifer that we now are enjoying today.

Travis, you want to talk a little bit about water and geographic availability of water and how all that works here in Missoula County?

Sure, I would be happy to.

I guess to start with, all water is connected in one way or another.

So we have water in various forms through Missoula County.

We have wetlands, we have small tributary streams, we have large rivers, we have chain of lakes connected by river.

We have our aquifer, as you mentioned, Dave.

So our aquifer was formed over 15-ish thousand years ago, I think was the last of the draining and filling of glacial Lake Missoula, which brought the substrate, the cobbles, the big rounded rocks through that hold water so well in our valley.

If we look at our abundant water in the valley, that is directly related to that filling of the bathtub and draining.

And it continues to be sustained by the Clark Fork River as it comes through the Hellgate Canyon and spreads out and loses its water through the valley, spills up that bathtub.

It's that and largely the rattlesnake.

There are other forms of recharge as well to our aquifer, but those are the big ones.

So it's kind of interesting.

We're in a place that it rains 12 inches a year, just basically a desert.

And it feels like we are rich in groundwater in terms of rivers, creeks, and an aquifer.

How is that possible?

Yeah, we are fortunate to be in the situation where we have a very leaky, big river running through.

That's the main recharge.

That is the main recharge.

Are we truly snowmelt dependent?

We are.

Yeah, these rivers, they're all snowmelt dependent.

The rattlesnake, snowmelt dependent.