"1. Trace the water that you drink from precipitation to tap."
Ok, so the challenge I mentioned yesterday starts today. Question #1 is "Trace the water that you drink from precipitation to tap." On this side of the Continental Divide, our watersheds, including the valley's Ten Mile Creek and Prickly Pear Creek, flow into the greater Missouri River watershed. This is one reason why we in Helena are not part of the Cascadia bioregion, as Cascadia is described by the Columbia River watershed. Helena is part of the Missouri River system.
The Missouri River has great meaning for me because I was raised here in the headwaters region of the Missouri, and it was the river of my childhood. I floated the Wild and Scenic stretch of the river in my twenties. It also flows right by my tribal homeland where Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, and Missouri meet. My grandparents were raised on the banks of the Missouri, a thousand miles away. The Missouri River connects my family's past, present, and future.
I knew the generalities of Helena's water supply from attending elementary school here in the 1970s: that the water came from snowpack and rain in the mountains, down through various streams, primarily Ten Mile Creek to the west, then through the various ditches to the water treatment plant on Custer Ave., and then from there it was piped to storage reservoirs and to our homes. Since the 1990s there has been a new Ten Mile treatment plant which is supplied in part by the historic Chessman Reservoir which squats on the hill above Rodney.
But I found some details, some of them disturbing, while doing a little Internet research. The rainfall and snowpack in the mountains around the valley supply the valley as a whole, but the city of Helena itself has historically been primarily served by Ten Mile Creek which flows near the city from the area of Rimini, a small mining town. Unfortunately Ten Mile Creek's upper reaches flowed through Rimini's historic metal mining areas, and is the location of a Superfund Cleanup (http://www.epa.gov/region08/superfund/mt/upper_ten/index.html).
This is a 2009 photo of the Ten Mile watershed (http://www.helenair.com/image_43b5157a-b069-11de-a1fe-001cc4c002e0.html). Notice the orange areas which are the pines killed by the pine beetle.
There is a gradual shift going towards the Missouri source, though it is further away, due to the cleanup situation as well as increasing use from the growth in population (mostly in-migration, as Helena has been "discovered" like other places in Montana since the 1990s). And of course this population growth comes at a time of increasing drought.
A few more Helena water-related resources for my future reference:
The history of water treatment in Helena: http://www.ci.helena.mt.us/departments/public-works/water-treatment/helena-water-treatment-history.html
Flooding in Helena: http://mt.water.usgs.gov/cgi-bin/projects?B0F
Brown drinking water: http://www.helenair.com/news/local/article_7995a969-9a9c-548a-922e-b2c6ce94c9d3.html
http://www.helenair.com/news/local/article_8e1af9c9-6b19-54ae-a9ea-6fb217752a3d.html
Next time: "2. What sort of soil is predominant in this place? What "soil series" is it?"
The Missouri River has great meaning for me because I was raised here in the headwaters region of the Missouri, and it was the river of my childhood. I floated the Wild and Scenic stretch of the river in my twenties. It also flows right by my tribal homeland where Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, and Missouri meet. My grandparents were raised on the banks of the Missouri, a thousand miles away. The Missouri River connects my family's past, present, and future.
I knew the generalities of Helena's water supply from attending elementary school here in the 1970s: that the water came from snowpack and rain in the mountains, down through various streams, primarily Ten Mile Creek to the west, then through the various ditches to the water treatment plant on Custer Ave., and then from there it was piped to storage reservoirs and to our homes. Since the 1990s there has been a new Ten Mile treatment plant which is supplied in part by the historic Chessman Reservoir which squats on the hill above Rodney.
But I found some details, some of them disturbing, while doing a little Internet research. The rainfall and snowpack in the mountains around the valley supply the valley as a whole, but the city of Helena itself has historically been primarily served by Ten Mile Creek which flows near the city from the area of Rimini, a small mining town. Unfortunately Ten Mile Creek's upper reaches flowed through Rimini's historic metal mining areas, and is the location of a Superfund Cleanup (http://www.epa.gov/region08/superfund/mt/upper_ten/index.html).
This is a 2009 photo of the Ten Mile watershed (http://www.helenair.com/image_43b5157a-b069-11de-a1fe-001cc4c002e0.html). Notice the orange areas which are the pines killed by the pine beetle.
There is a gradual shift going towards the Missouri source, though it is further away, due to the cleanup situation as well as increasing use from the growth in population (mostly in-migration, as Helena has been "discovered" like other places in Montana since the 1990s). And of course this population growth comes at a time of increasing drought.
A few more Helena water-related resources for my future reference:
The history of water treatment in Helena: http://www.ci.helena.mt.us/departments/public-works/water-treatment/helena-water-treatment-history.html
Flooding in Helena: http://mt.water.usgs.gov/cgi-bin/projects?B0F
Brown drinking water: http://www.helenair.com/news/local/article_7995a969-9a9c-548a-922e-b2c6ce94c9d3.html
http://www.helenair.com/news/local/article_8e1af9c9-6b19-54ae-a9ea-6fb217752a3d.html
Next time: "2. What sort of soil is predominant in this place? What "soil series" is it?"