DEQ reports from site visit

Earlier this month, officials from the Montana Department of Environmental Quality Water Pollution Control State Revolving Fund (WPSCRF) made the trip to Whitehall for an Operations and Maintenance (O&M) site visit and Wastewater Facility Overview.

Following the visit, Terry Campbell with the DEQ Engineering Bureau reported back to Mayor Dale Davis with a report summarizing their findings.

Campbell thanked Davis and Public Works employee Kory Klapan for taking time to meet and go over operations and facility issues.

“I believe the biggest issues needing to be addressed are diversion of creek water into the storage cell for use in supplementing irrigation and the lack of enough flow into the lagoons to meet the irrigation site watering needs,” Campbell said in a letter to Davis.

Campbell stated the use of supplemental water is a good practice, but using the lagoon to store that water is not something that was approved within the design or contained in the O&M manual. He said it may be problematic from a water rights stand point and should be discontinued.

“The reduced flow since main leak repair work was completed may present a situation where you could consider operation as a ‘total retention’ facility, at least for a few years. There may currently be enough storage and evaporation to allow for no irrigation or discharge of effluent,” Campbell said. “We would not recommend giving up the irrigation site or equipment as the community could see growth that would necessitate having the irrigation site in the future. Also, there is the possibility of only irrigating a smaller portion of the field by reprogramming the center pivot to cover a smaller sweep area.”

Campbell went on to state, they recognize the agreement put in place for the management of the crop from the town purchased irrigation property has several pitfalls, and hopefully that arrangement can be revisited by the Town Council and Attorney to find an amicable way of resolving those issues.

“Landowner lease agreements can work for these farming/management arrangements, but most times we find it is best that communities maintain a strong hand in controlling the agreement, or just operate the irrigation and practice themselves,” Campbell stated.