Keepin’ It Clean
A local nonprofit works to protect our waters.
The Upper Missouri River Basin is a vast network of rivers, streams, and waterways that drains approximately 24,749 square miles of southwest Montana’s mountain landscapes. It includes the Madison, Gallatin, Jefferson, and Big Hole rivers, which together support hundreds of thousands of wild trout and a multimillion-dollar recreation industry. The basin is also home to a wide variety of animal and plant life, from towering cottonwoods to humble sage grouse; the water coursing through it providing the lifeblood for these rich ecosystems. It also marks the beginning of the longest river in North America, which eventually flows to North Dakota, down into Kansas, and meets the Mississippi River in St. Louis before rushing out to the sea.
The Upper Missouri River Basin is a vital natural resource, but it takes work to keep it that way. That’s where the Upper Missouri Waterkeeper comes in.
Founded in 2013 by Guy Alsentzer, the Waterkeeper is devoted to protecting fishable, swimmable, drinkable water in the Upper Missouri River watershed. And right now, with the threats posed by irresponsible development, population growth, and the erosion of legal environmental protections, the watershed is in dire need of safekeeping.
“I think we’re the model headwaters community,” explains Guy. “It doesn’t get any more clean than what comes out of Yellowstone National Park, and we need to do our part to keep it clean.”
Guy and the Waterkeeper want to stay ahead of the curve in this region, enacting proactive, preventative measures to keep the Upper Missouri River Basin relatively pristine instead of waiting until it’s too late. Already, one third of the assessed waterways in Montana are considered polluted, and environmental tipping points, like high river temperatures, are rapidly being approached. “We shouldn’t wait for crises to occur to create meaningful change,” Guy says.
With the threats posed by irresponsible development, population growth, and the erosion of legal environmental protections, the watershed is in dire need of safekeeping.
The Waterkeeper determines what’s best for waterway health and protects the watershed through a combination of government advocacy, community engagement, and strong science. Right now, it’s fighting battles on several fronts.
Nutrient pollution on the Gallatin River has led to noxious algae blooms that paint the river bottom green every summer, and the Waterkeeper is challenging polluters contributing to this problem. At the state level, the Waterkeeper fights for the enforcement of numeric water-quality standards—a set of agreed-upon criteria that limits the amount of nutrient pollution entering waterways—and trying to close loopholes for polluters. The Waterkeeper is also objecting to several permits, like one in Big Sky for a new residential and commercial development and another in West Yellowstone for a KOA campground, that would allow excessive nutrient-dumping into their respective ecosystems.
Guy says decisions that threaten waterways are often politically motivated, and the Waterkeeper wants to bring citizens into the decision-making process and hold government accountable. But he places emphasis on unity, not division.
“This has never been about saying any individual or entity is a bad actor,” Guy says. “It’s been about saying we all care about the same things and setting the bar high, because we as Montanans deserve a clean and healthful environment.”
The Waterkeeper determines what’s best for waterway health and protects the watershed through a combination of government advocacy, community engagement, and strong science.
Guy has been passionate about clean, healthy waters since polluted water threatened his own life. As a student at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, Guy didn’t yet know not to swim during a red tide, and he contracted a dangerous MRSA staph infection in his leg after a surf session in the Pacific. The infection had to be cut out, and he began to develop a greater interest in clean water.
After graduating from law school, Guy moved to Montana and fell in love with its “water, wildlife, and western way of life” while working for the Gallatin County Attorney’s Office and then the Western Environmental Law Center in Helena. Following the 2008 recession, he lost his job and moved back to Pennsylvania to help on his family farm. After several years there, during which he worked with the Lower Susquehanna Riverkeeper to protect the Chesapeake Bay, Guy made his way back to Montana, and armed with experience in science, water management, and law, he founded the Upper Missouri Waterkeeper.
The Waterkeeper, which includes program director Wade Fellin and outreach director Quincey Johnson, has grown since then, taking on a bevy of cases and amassing over a thousand supporters nationwide that share a concern for the future of the river basin.
“We’ve got people of all different stripes, colors, and interests,” Guy says. “The thing that unites us is that we’re all about protecting water resources for the future, and we’re against irresponsible decision-making that sacrifices that shared value. In the end, Montanans all need water.”
If we’re going to keep this landscape clean and healthy for generations to come, we need to act now.
With the support of its members, the Waterkeeper has accrued an impressive track record. In just the past two years, the group helped secure an impairment listing for the middle section of the Gallatin River (which requires the DEQ to create a plan to restore the river to health) and won a landmark case in Broadwater County that denied approval of a major trophy-ranch subdivision that would have harmed the local fishery and dewatered an area where water was already scarce.
The Waterkeeper doesn’t intend to let its guard down anytime soon. The future of the Upper Missouri River Basin is ours to determine, and Guy thinks if we’re going to keep this landscape clean and healthy for generations to come, we need to act now.
“If not now, when? If not here, in the Upper Missouri River Basin, where?” Guy asks. “Now is the time for us to seize the moment and make change happen. Now.”
To learn more about challenges facing the Upper Missouri River Basin, visit uppermissouriwaterkeeper.org.
