Category: Yellowstone River

Creeks tainted by produced water unable to sustain aquatic life, regulators say — @WyoFile #KeepItInTheGround #ActOnClimate

A DEQ worker collects samples from Alkali Creek below where produced water from the Moneta Divide Field is discharged. (Wyoming DEQ)

Click the link to read the article on the WyoFile website (Angus M. Thuermer Jr.):

March 20, 2024

Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality acknowledges years of built-up pollution from Moneta Divide field but has no plan to remove black sludge 6 feet deep

Two creeks tainted by decades of dumping from Moneta Divide oilfield drillers are officially “impaired” and unable to sustain aquatic life, state regulators say in a new report.

Parts of Alkali and Badwater creeks in Fremont County are polluted to the point they don’t meet standards for drinking, consumption of resident fish or sustaining aquatic life, a report by the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality states. The agency listed 40.8 miles of the creeks as impaired in a biannual report required by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The project is being developed by Aethon Energy Management and Burlington Resources Oil and Gas Company. Aethon Energy Management and its partner RedBird Capital Partners acquired the Moneta Divide assets from Encana Oil and Gas in May 2015. The environment impact assessment (EIA) process of the Moneta Divide field was commenced in 2011, while the final environmental impact statement (EIS) and resource management plan (RMP) for the project were released in February 2020. Photo credit: NS Energy

Parts of the creeks are polluted by oilfield discharges, including hydrogen sulfide, ammonia and chloride. The industrial activity is responsible for low levels of oxygen in the water, turbidity and a black sludge that critics say is up to 6 feet deep.

Arsenic also is present, but state monitoring couldn’t determine its origin.

The report catalogs pollution downstream of discharge points where produced water — effluent from natural gas and oil production — flows from the 327,645-acre energy field operated mainly by Aethon Energy Operating in Fremont and Natrona counties.

The “impaired” listings are a good thing that set the table for action, said Jill Morrison, who works on the pollution issue for the conservation group Powder River Basin Resource Council. But the listing comes only after years of badgering an agency that now should look to clean up the creeks.

“What we are saying is ‘thank you’ for stepping up to address these issues,” Morrison said. “We wish it was done sooner. You’ve got enforcement power; what steps are you taking to make Aethon clean this up?”

Wyoming rivers map via Geology.com

Environmental stewards

The DEQ issued a revised permit to the private Dallas company in 2020 allowing it to discharge oilfield waste into Alkali Creek, which flows into Badwater Creek and the Boysen Reservoir, a source of drinking water for the town of Thermopolis. The permit calls for monitoring and testing, among other things.

About a year ago, however, the DEQ sent the company a letter of violation for “reoccurring exceedances” of water quality standards for sulfide, barium, radium and temperature. That’s a violation of the Wyoming Environmental Quality Act, state rules and regulations, and the permit itself.

The April 28 letter states that the DEQ hopes to resolve the violation through “conference and conciliation.” DEQ wants Aethon “to show good faith efforts toward resolving the problem and to prevent the need for more formal enforcement action by this office.”

The alleged kid-glove treatment rankles Powder River’s Morrison. “They trade, back and forth, nice conversations and nothing happens,” she said.

An Aethon pump jack in the Moneta Divide oil and gas field east of Shoshoni. (Angus M. Thuermer Jr./WyoFile)

DEQ asked Aethon for a response within 30 days. WyoFile requested on March 6 that the agency provide a copy of Aethon’s response but had not received it by publication time. Aethon typically does not respond to media questions regarding regulatory enforcement and did not answer a recent request for comment.

The 2020 permit also requires Aethon to dramatically reduce the amount of chloride — salty water — it pumps onto the landscape. DEQ said the company is preparing to meet a late-summer deadline for that standard.

“Aethon continues to diligently work toward resuming treatment of effluent using the Neptune reverse osmosis treatment plant,” DEQ said in an email, “in accordance with the established chloride compliance schedule.”

Aethon’s website says the company has a “commitment to protect the environment and our people [and] operate responsibly.” The company is a “steward of the environment,” the website states.

Black sludge

The DEQ’s “impaired” listing addresses surface water in the two creeks through what’s known as a draft Integrated 305 (b) report. It is open for comments through March 25. 

But there’s another issue that rankles critics, including the Wyoming Outdoor Council and the Powder River group — black sludge.

DEQ surveys of the creeks revealed “bottom deposits” containing mineral deposits, iron sulfides and dissolved solids, all contributing to low oxygen levels that kill aquatic life. After a phone conference with DEQ in February, Powder River’s Morrison said she learned that the bottom deposit of black sludge extends for about three miles and is from 6 inches to 6 feet deep.

A retired University of Wyoming professor who worked with the Powder River group analyzing Aethon’s permit called the sediments “totally loaded.” Harold Bergman said “that contaminated sediment will be leaching out contaminants into Boysen Reservoir for decades to come.”

He and Joe Meyer, a retired chemist who also worked with the conservation group, wrote that DEQ’s Aethon permit did not require enough testing for deleterious substances, did not consider what impact the mix of substances together has on aquatic life, and allowed as much as five times the proper amount of dissolved solids to flow out of the oilfield.

“You would not have that black gunk sediment if it weren’t for the Aethon discharge,” Meyer said.

A report of monitoring between 2019-’22 shows that aluminum exceeded discharge standards up to 17% of the time. Other than that, there’s still a question of what else is in the sludge.

This image of Alkali Creek shows flows downstream of the Frenchie Draw oil and gas field discharge point in October 2021, according to the image title. The Powder River Basin Resource Council obtained this and other public records through a request to Wyoming DEQ. (DEQ)

“We don’t know about individual organic chemicals,” Meyer said. Reports only mention “the gross measures of organic compounds,” he said.

“That doesn’t tell us about individual chemicals,” Meyer said. How much, if any, BTEX chemicals — Benzene, Toluene, Ethylbenzene and Xylenes that are harmful to humans — are in the sludge “we have no way of knowing.”

He stopped short of accusing DEQ of avoiding the question. For now, “they just wanted to get an overview analysis,” he said.

DEQ said it has a plan for the sludge. “DEQ’s Water Quality Division is monitoring any sediment flow in lower Badwater Creek to determine if there are any sediments that may mobilize towards Boysen Lake,” an agency official said in an email.

For Morrison, “the big question is what DEQ is going to require Aethon to do to clean up this mess,” she wrote in an email. Meyer and Bergman say simply dredging up the sludge is likely too dangerous because such an operation would dislodge substances and send them downstream. A more complex plan would be needed, they said.

Morrison criticized what she sees as the DEQ’s priorities. “They’re not putting the health and safety of these streams’ water quality, fish and downstream water users above the interests and profits of Aethon.”

Yellowstone seeks to stiffen invasive species rules, ban some boats: To defend against troublesome mussels, large motorboats and sailboats would have to be dried for 30 days before being launched — @WyoFile #YellowstoneRiver #MissouriRiver #SnakeRiver

A motorboat on Yellowstone Lake. (NPS/Diane Renkin)

Click the link to read the article on the WyoFile website (Angus M. Thuermer Jr.):

March 12, 2024

To protect the headwaters of three major Western rivers from invasive, troublesome mussels, Yellowstone National Park wants to require larger boats to undergo a 30-day “dry time” before launching.

New rules up for comment also would ban any boat that’s once been contaminated by invasive Dreissena zebra or quagga mussels, regardless of decontamination cleaning.

The proposal builds on existing rules, including inspection of all watercraft, designed to protect Yellowstone and downstream waters from the fingernail-sized freshwater bivalves that cling to hard structures like boat hulls, docks and irrigation headgates. The proposal would help protect the ecological integrity of Yellowstone Park and the Yellowstone, Missouri and Snake rivers downstream in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.

Map of the Yellowstone River watershed in Wyoming, Montana and North Dakota in the north-central USA, that drains to the Missouri River. By Background layer attributed to DEMIS Mapserver, map created by Shannon1 – Background and river course data from http://www2.demis.nl/mapserver/mapper.asp, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9355543
Map of the Missouri River drainage basin in the US and Canada. made using USGS and Natural Earth data. By Shannon1 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=67852261
Map of the Snake River watershed, USA. Intended to replace older File:SnakeRiverNicerMap.jpg. Created using public domain USGS National Map data. By Shannon1 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=62294242

Under the proposed rules, boats with inboard, inboard/outboard and inboard jet motors — as well as sailboats — would have to be dried under a certified program for 30 days before launch. “Large, complex, trailered watercraft pose the highest risk of transporting and introducing invasive mussels … because they are difficult to inspect and less likely to … be fully decontaminated,” the park said in a release.

Manual cleaning is not 100% effective, the park said.

Mussels were recently discovered in waters within a day’s drive of Yellowstone, including the first found in the Columbia/Snake drainage last year near Twin Falls, Idaho. The year before, mussels showed up in Pactola Reservoir, South Dakota, not far from Wyoming’s eastern state line.

People can comment online through April 5 or to Yellowstone Center for Resources, Attn: AIS Proposed Changes, PO Box 168, Yellowstone National Park, WY 82190.

Spreading threat

The zebra mussel is native to the Black, Caspian, and Azov Seas and the quagga also comes from that area of Europe. They have infected the Midwest and lower Colorado River drainage.

Zebra Mussels in Lake Ontario. (John Manier/USGS)

They could threaten Yellowstone cutthroat trout, a species the park has spent more than two decades restoring. The mussels can also be destructive to water and power infrastructure, according to the U.S. Department of Interior. There are no known ways to eradicate the mussels. Any invasion would be expensive to mitigate.

Motor- and sailboats falling under the new rule would be inspected and sealed to a trailer for the 30-day dry period. Seals from Yellowstone National Park, Idaho State Department of Agriculture, Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks and Wyoming Game & Fish Department would be honored.

Once-infected boats would be banned because of the possibility they could, even if cleaned, cause a false detection during routine DNA monitoring and consequently waste resources.

Spawning cutthroat trout, Lamar Valley; Jay Fleming; July 2011. By Yellowstone National Park from Yellowstone NP, USA – Spawning cutthroat trout, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50246593

Over a century of #YellowstoneRiver streamflow measurements at Corwin Springs, #Montana — USGS

Click the link to read the release on the USGS website:

Measuring streamflow is critical for assessing the health and status of river systems. One of the longest continuous records of streamflow is just north of Yellowstone National Park, at Corwin Springs!

Sources/Usage: Public Domain. Map of SNOTEL snowpack telemetry sites (blue dots) and streamgages (red dots) in and around Yellowstone National Park.

Yellowstone Caldera Chronicles is a weekly column written by scientists and collaborators of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. This week’s contribution is from Blaine McCleskey, research chemist with the U.S. Geological Survey.

John Wesley Powell, the second Director of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) from 1881 to 1894 and explorer of the Colorado River and Grand Canyon, recognized that water availability was a significant challenge in the western United States. During Powell’s USGS tenure, systematic inventorying of streams and their flows in the USA began in earnest.

Embudo student hydrogrphers 1889. Photo credit: USGS

In January 1889, the first USGS streamgage was established along the Rio Grande near Embudo, New Mexico. Streamgages typically contain equipment to continuously measure the rate and volume of streamflow. Streamgages in the western USA are particularly challenging to install and maintain because the river stage (or height) and flow can vary greatly between the dry months (late summer-winter) and periods of snowmelt, and in many cases the riverbeds are soft and unstable. The equipment and techniques developed at the Embudo gage site became the foundation of USGS streamgaging methods. Since the establishment of the Embudo gage site, there has been a consistent increase in the number of established gages in the United States.

Currently, the U.S. Geological Survey measures discharge at approximately 8,500 sites across the United States. Most of the streamflow data are delivered in near real-time via the USGS National Water Dashboard(https://dashboard.waterdata.usgs.gov/app/nwd/en/?region=lower48&aoi=default). These flow data are used for planning, forecasting, and warning about floods and droughts; managing water rights and transboundary water issues; operating waterways for power production and navigation; monitoring environmental conditions to protect aquatic habitats; describing impacts to streamflow from changing land and water uses; assessing water quality and regulating pollutant discharges; determining if streams are safe for recreational activities; designing reservoirs, roads, bridges, drinking water and wastewater facilities; and many scientific investigations. Users of these data include water, utility, environmental, and transportation managers. More than 880 million requests for streamflow or water level information were fulfilled during the 2020 water year (which runs from October 1 to September 30 of the following year)!

There are currently 15 streamgages in and around Yellowstone that are used to monitor hydrothermal activityfrom the more than 10,000 thermal features, manage water supplies, and that are used to prepare for and investigate the impacts of floods.

Hydrograph showing discharge in cubic feet per second for Corwin Springs streamgage site on the Yellowstone River, MT, spanning 1889-2023.  The spike in 2022 is from the June floods of that year. Sources/Usage: Public Domain.

While the Embudo streamgage site in New Mexico was the first USGS gage site, the gage on the Yellowstone River at Corwin Springs, just north of the national park boundary, is nearly as old! Daily average discharge at the site was first reported on August 1, 1889 and continued through October 31, 1893. Discharge measurements started again in 1910 and continue today. The discharge record at Yellowstone River at Corwin Springs is one of the longest in the United States! The hydrograph, which plots the level of stream flow over time, from the site appears to be saw-toothed, with the peaks generally representing higher flows in the spring as a result of snowmelt.

Sources/Usage: Public Domain. Plot of specific conductance, discharge, and temperature measured at the Yellowstone River at Corwin Springs, Montana, during early-mid 2023. The anomalous spikes in temperature and specific conductance on May 23, 2023, are thought to be when a large sand and bar was deposited at the site. May 23 is also the peak flow in 2023.

The highest instantaneous discharge measured at the Corwin Springs’ gage was during the June 2022 flood, when the maximum discharge was determined to be 54,700 cubic feet per second (CFS) (1,549 cubic meters per second), compared to a median peak during snowmelt of 12,000 CFS (340 cubic meters per second). The June 2022 flood is estimated to be a 500-year flood event, meaning that an event like this is likely to occur only once in 500 years.

The gage house at Corwin Springs narrowly escaped serious damage from the 2022 flood, as the streambank about 164 feet (50 meters) downstream eroded away. However, the gage did not emerge completely unscathed. During the flood, monitoring equipment was washed away and the streambed changed its shape. In addition, the site continues to see changes to the bank and stream bed after the flood. During the 2023 spring high-flow runoff, a large unconsolidated sand and gravel bar migrated downstream and was deposited on top of the newly installed monitoring equipment at the gage! Approximately 2–3 feet (60–90 centimeters) of debris was deposited along the bank covering the piping that housed scientific monitoring equipment. The new gravel bar was probably deposited at the site on May 23, 2023, which corresponds to the highest flow in 2023, based on anomalous temperature and specific conductance measurements.

Streamgage site and profiling tool on the Yellowstone River at Corwin Springs, Montana.  The gage house narrowly avoided damage during the June 2022 flood, which eroded the downstream bank.  The river profiling instrument helps to map the river bottom to assess streamflow rates and conditions.  USGS photo by Mike Poland, July 31, 2023. Sources/Usage: Public Domain.

Clearly the riverbeds and banks are still unstable as a result of the June 2022 flood! But the Corwin Spring gage keeps on measuring, continuing one of the longest continuous records of stream flow in the United States!

The toxic mystery of #Wyoming’s backcountry cyanobacteria blooms — @WyoFile

Kelsee Hurshman, harmful cyanobacteria program coordinator for the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality, lunges to grab a sample of potentially toxic water from a cove of Upper Brooks Lake in September 2023. Seasonal blooms of dense algae plague the small subalpine watershed that’s butted up against the Continental Divide. (Mike Koshmrl/WyoFile)

Click the link to read the article on the WyoFile website (Mike Koshmrl):

SHOSHONE NATIONAL FOREST—Kelsee Hurshman stepped carefully into the shallows of subalpine Upper Brooks Lake high in the Absaroka Range. 

The lake bottom was muck, and the water looked nasty — pea soup colored, with a bunch of floating thingies. The green, detritus-filled cove was nothing a healthy person would think of drinking from, but a thirsty dog probably wouldn’t hesitate. And this is just what the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality employee from Cheyenne was looking for. 

The 9,100-foot-high backcountry basin has a history of harmful cyanobacterial — commonly called blue-green algae — blooms. Officials advised the public of a bloom, starting on Aug. 24. Wading in about a month later, Hurshman sought to see if the water contained enough cyanobacteria-associated toxins to warrant an additional advisory. 

“I’m collecting a few different samples,” said Hurshman, DEQ’s harmful cyanobacteria coordinator. Quickly and quietly, she bottled up the algae-choked water.

The remnants of a potentially toxic cyanobacteria bloom linger in a cove of Upper Brooks Lake in September 2023. (Mike Koshmrl/WyoFile)

It was Sept. 20, and Hurshman was sampling with a couple DEQ colleagues and Shoshone National Forest hydrologist Gwen Gerber. The team logged the species of cyanobacteria present, where it was in the water column (the surface) and its color (green). 

Over the course of the day, they’d hike by all the named lakes in the small watershed pressed up against the Continental Divide: first, Brooks Lake, then Upper Brooks, Rainbow and Lower and Upper Jade lakes.

Northwest expanse of the Absaroka Mountains as viewed from 15,000 feet (4,600 m) over Livingston, Montana By Mike Cline – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9869818

Rimmed by Sublette Peak, the Breccia Cliffs and the Pinnacle Buttes, the stunning chain of lakes lies entirely in the national forest. They are remote, usually free from human presence and appear pristine. At a glance, one would never associate these picture-postcard-worthy high-altitude lakes with contamination. Yet they are dogged by nutrient problems and cyanobacteria blooms. 

“All of the named lakes have had blooms over advisory levels,” Gerber said, “and two of them have had toxins over advisory levels.” 

Many unknowns

A mysterious environmental influence — or combination of factors — is believed to be triggering the blooms. There are theories, but DEQ employee Ron Steg, who leads the agency’s Lander office, is clear: There’s no saying exactly why cyanobacteria are striking this area every summer. 

“This particular watershed, the geology is high in phosphate,” Steg said. “It could be atmospheric deposition. We don’t know, and that’s why we are studying this.” 

Shoshone National Forest hydrologist Gwen Gerber and Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality staffers Kelsee Hurshman, Ron Steg and Jillian Scott check out the shoreline of Brooks Lake Creek just below the outflow from Upper Brooks Lake. Although the water flows through a remote, wild, high-altitude landscape, the watershed is plagued by potentially harmful algal blooms. (Mike Koshmrl/WyoFile)

The DEQ is specifically examining what’s going on in the Brooks Lake watershed in detail because its 234-acre namesake lake has struggled with algal blooms that, on the worst occasions, have been implicated in fish kills so severe that fish went belly up miles downstream in the Wind River. Since 2018, Brooks Lake has occupied a slot on the Wyoming DEQ’s “impaired list.” At one time, fingers were pointed at Brooks Lake Lodge and its formerly surface-discharging sewage lagoon, but problems with nutrients and cyanobacterial blooms higher in the watershed have led to a more holistic investigation. 

The Brooks Lake watershed, however, isn’t the only place in Wyoming where people and their pets are finding harmful cyanobacteria blooms in unlikely places.

Map of the Yellowstone River watershed in Wyoming, Montana and North Dakota in the north-central USA, that drains to the Missouri River. By Background layer attributed to DEMIS Mapserver, map created by Shannon1 – Background and river course data from http://www2.demis.nl/mapserver/mapper.asp, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9355543

Late last October, the Wyoming Department of Health issued a recreation advisory for the Wind River after a 10-pound puppy died within minutes of drinking flowing river water near the Upper Wind River Campground. Campers be forewarned: there are fall 2023 cyanobacteria toxin advisories in place for both the upper and lower Wind River campgrounds, plus in the Wind River immediately below Boysen Reservoir and two areas in the reservoir itself.

“It sounded like the animal wasn’t taken to the vet because the dog died so quickly,” Lindsay Patterson, DEQ’s surface water quality standards coordinator, said of the 2022 puppy death.

A species of cyanobacteria that resembles grass clippings floats in the water near the Brooks Lake boat ramp in September 2023. (Mike Koshmrl/WyoFile)

Those types of fast-acting cyanobacteria dog deaths can happen when canines ingest chunks of “mat-forming blooms.” Water quality specialists don’t know if one of the harmful mats came off Boysen Reservoir, flowed past the dam and stayed intact enough to still be deadly when the puppy encountered it a mile downstream, or if the mat formed in the Wind River itself. 

Late summer and early fall are typically when cyanobacterial blooms are most likely to occur, but that’s not always the case. 

In December of 2021, ice fisherman augering through a frozen-over Keyhole Reservoir came into a blue-green algae bloom. Three months later DEQ officials were still able to sample cyanobacteria in densities that exceeded the recreational standard. 

“We went back and looked at the satellite imagery from before and it looked really, really bad,” Hurshman said. “We suspect it may have persisted.” 

Then there’s the backcountry. Cyanobacteria blooms are often associated with abundances of nutrients, like fertilizer from agriculture, and warm water typically found at lower elevations. So why are blooms showing up in places like Togwotee Pass?

Shoshone National Forest hydrologist Gwen Gerber leads Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality staffers Kelsee Hurshman, Ron Steg and Jillian Scott past Brooks Lake on the hike to Upper Brooks Lake, part of a years-long investigation into nutrient imbalances and seasonal algal blooms that plague the high-elevation watershed. (Mike Koshmrl/WyoFile)

Reclamation celebrates 120th Anniversary with ribbon cutting event for the Lower #YellowstoneRiver Fish Bypass Channel

Photo of the Lower Yellowstone Fish Passage Project via USBR.

Click the link to read the release on the Reclamation website (Brittany Jones):

The Bureau of Reclamation will continue its celebration of its 120th Anniversary with a ribbon cutting ceremony for the completion of the Lower Yellowstone Intake Diversion Dam Fish Passage Project on July 26, 2022. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will co-host the ribbon cutting ceremony located on Joe’s Island near Glendive, Montana.

The U.S. Department of the Interior’s Assistant Secretary for Water and Science Tanya Trujillo, the Bureau of Reclamation’s Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton, U.S. Army Corps of Engineer’s Northwestern Division Commander Colonel Geoff Van Epps and the Omaha District Commander Colonel Mark Himes will attend the ceremony to commemorate Reclamation’s 120th year of providing water to the West and to celebrate the success of this, three-year, $44 million fish bypass construction project. The success of the project is due, in part, to the joint efforts and contributions of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Bureau of Reclamation to improve the fish passage structure for the endangered pallid sturgeon and other native species around the Lower Yellowstone Intake Diversion Dam.

Construction on the fish bypass channel began in April 2019 and was completed with the removal of the cofferdam on April 9, 2022. The 2.1-mile-long channel was constructed as part of the Lower Yellowstone Intake Diversion Dam Fish Passage Project that was designed to address fish passage concerns associated with the diversion dam.

President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law makes a $200 million investment in the National Fish Passage Program over the next five years to conserve fish habitat and advance projects like this one.

“We are excited to celebrate the success of this interagency project and recognize Reclamation’s major contributions to reclaiming America’s 17 Western states over the last 120 years,” said Brent Esplin, Missouri Basin and Arkansas-Rio Grande-Texas Regional Director. “In addition to bolstering conservation efforts of the prehistoric pallid sturgeon, Reclamation is committed to continuing the effective operation of the Lower Yellowstone Project for local irrigators who help feed the nation.”

Pallid sturgeon

In 1990, the pallid sturgeon was listed as endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under the Endangered Species Act. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Bureau of Reclamation worked in partnership to determine the effects of the Lower Yellowstone Project on the endangered species. Two primary issues were identified; fish entrainment into the Lower Yellowstone Irrigation District’s main irrigation canal and fish not being able to successfully pass over the Intake Diversion Dam to upstream spawning reaches. A new screened canal headworks structure was completed in 2012 that addressed the fish entrainment issue. The new weir in conjunction with the completed fish bypass channel will provide passage for the endangered fish and open approximately 165 river miles of potential spawning and larval drift habitat in the Yellowstone River.

While this portion of the project is complete, construction in the area is ongoing. The contractor, Ames Construction Inc., is still actively working on Joe’s Island to restore construction roads back to natural vegetation. The contractor will rehabilitate sections of Road 551, located off State Highway 16, and Canal Road, both on the north side of the Yellowstone River at Intake, Montana. Joe’s Island is expected to remain closed through the Fall of 2022 when all construction related activities will be complete.

“This is a momentous occasion more than ten years in the making,” said Col. Geoff Van Epps, commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Northwestern Division. “The collaboration on this project presented unique challenges and opportunities to meet conservation and recovery responsibilities under the Endangered Species Act while continuing to serve the needs of stakeholders that use the river. The professionalism and mutual respect of all involved provided a healthy, dynamic work climate in which to operate to achieve common goals and objectives.”

The Lower Yellowstone Project is a 58,000-acre irrigation project located in eastern Montana and western North Dakota. The project is operated and maintained by the Lower Yellowstone Irrigation District Board of Control under contract with Reclamation. The project includes the intake diversion dam, a screened headworks structure, 71 miles of main canal, 225 miles of laterals and 118 miles of drains, three pumping plants on the main canal, four supplemental pumps on the Yellowstone River and one supplemental pump on the Missouri River.

Media representatives interested in attending the ceremony should RSVP to Brittany Jones at (406) 247-7611 or bjones@usbr.gov, no later than Friday, July 22. For media unable to attend, photos, videos and a news release will be available following the ceremony.

Map of the Yellowstone River watershed in Wyoming, Montana and North Dakota in the north-central USA, that drains to the Missouri River. By Background layer attributed to DEMIS Mapserver, map created by Shannon1 – Background and river course data from http://www2.demis.nl/mapserver/mapper.asp, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9355543