Gallatin River water level drops to a trickle

By NICK GEVOCK, Chronicle Staff Writer

BELGRADE -- From the coffee-with-cream toned torrents of a month ago, the West Gallatin River just west of here has been reduced to an ankle-deep brook.

Irrigators diverting water from the channel into ditches to water thirsty crops have dropped the river dramatically, especially in the past week.

"I heard that the West Gallatin was just barely a trickle between ponds," said Scott Compton, Bozeman office manager for the state Department of Natural Resources and Conservation. "People were worried about the fish."

Compton said several people called to complain about the river's condition and the resulting damage to fish.

But officials say after a weekend in which the river reached painfully low flows, irrigators are starting to be cut off and the river's flow has rebounded somewhat.

"There's a decent flow now," West Gallatin Water Commissioner Dave Pruitt said Monday. "It's not good, and it's not going to be good."

Pruitt, who is charged with monitoring the flow into each of more than 30 ditches that pull water from the river, began work on July 3, after District Judge Mark Guenther appointed him to the job. The commissioner comes on after a majority of water rights holders petition that a monitor is needed to ensure that no one is illegally taking water.

Water rights are based on first in time, first in right. Within a week, Pruitt had cut off all of the 1890 water rights. Holders of rights dating to 1889 and older are still able to draw from the river.

He increased the flow near the Amsterdam Road bridge over the river by reducing the amount of water pulled in some ditches. Before that, Pruitt said the river could be crossed there "without hardly getting your feet wet."

Now that he's on the job, Pruitt establishes a baseline flow at the Interstate 90 bridge and intends to keep the river at a minimum there. But the river is dropping dramatically upstream as well.

Pruitt's work came none too soon, as mountain snows quickly melted off and water levels in tributaries dropped. Although the snowpack looked healthy in June, five years of drought has left soils incredibly dry.

Most of the snow and runoff never reached tributaries or the river, Compton said.

"The soils are so dry, it's just sucking it up and there's very little reaching the river," he said. "That early hot weather we had seemed to compound things."

The West Gallatin is dropping rapidly even before water is pulled by farmers and ranchers. A monitoring station in Gallatin Canyon just downstream from where Spanish Creek dumps in showed the river dropped from 744 cubic feet per second Sunday to 713 cfs on Monday.

District Court Administrator Dorothy Bradley said she's glad Pruitt is taking a comprehensive look at the river, from its headwaters to the lower reaches.

"We want to make sure there's very careful watchdogging so the river doesn't dry up," she said.

That surveillance will probably include inspections in Gallatin Canyon, where Pruitt has in the past discovered landowners illegally dipping into the river to water lawns.

"We're losing that river because there's so much use in the Canyon," he said.

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