A good article posted to the Tuesday, October 24, 2006 online edition of the Daily Inter Lake . . .
While the Flathead Basin’s water quality has plenty of local pollution to contend with, there’s also a distant, looming threat that has generated considerable concern.
Potential coal-mine development in the remote Canadian Flathead is in the hands of another country, another government with different environmental rules.
But Montana officials have engaged in the provincial process in an unprecedented fashion and there has been an effort to gather baseline water-quality information from the pristine headwater streams that feed Montana’s North Fork Flathead River.
“It’s probably one of the biggest threats to the Flathead system right now,” said Ric Hauer of the University of Montana’s Flathead Lake Biological Station. “The North Fork plays an incredibly important role in maintaining the water quality of Flathead Lake.”
Flathead Lake is as clean as it is largely because of the waters that flow from protected or undeveloped forest lands such as those found in the Canadian Flathead, where there are just a handful of summer cabins and outfitter lodges.
Read the entire article . . .
Posted by nfpa at October 24, 2006 09:37 AM