Updating drought plan discussed in Havre

Lt. Gov Mike Cooney was in Havre Tuesday where he took part in a forum with area residents about measures the state and local communities can take to respond to or stave off drought.

The forum was held in the basement  conference room of Havre City Hall. Cooney, who is chair of the Montana Governor's Drought and Water Supply Advisory Committee, said it was the first of four such forums he will be taking part in throughout Montana to get feedback and encourage people and lcoal governments to take a proactive approach to the problem.

He said the other forums will take place in September in Billings, Bozeman and Missoula.

Information from the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, which also had a representative at the forum, showed nine counties in the central south and southwest sections of the state were experiencing drought in July.

Hill and neighboring counties have near-average levels of moisture. Those in the northeast corner of the state including Phillips and Valley have slightly moist conditions.

Cooney said during the forum that, while many parts of the state are not now plagued by drought, people need to be prepared for when it does occur.

"The bottom line is drought is gonna happen," Cooney said.

"Local people know what their priorities are because they understand the drainages in their areas and they are in a much, much better condition to make decisions or come up with those plans than the state and federal government coming down and saying one size fits all," Cooney said.

Ada Montague, a water resources planner for DNRC, said the state has a drought management program signed into law in 1995 that is outdated.

She said the council made changes to the plan in both 2007 and 2015, but they were never finalized.

Montague said most states in the Pacific Northwest have similar programs in need of revision. Interest in updating those plans, she said, has increased because of severe drought conditions in California and two years of dry conditions in Montana.

Montana experienced severe drought the first few years of the last decade, with some of the worst conditions centered on the Havre area.

The current plan relies on local advisory committees that function differently. It also calls for the aggregation, monitoring and distribution of data about drought conditions and prevention efforts.

Montague said the way the current plan was completed and continues to be implemented is through River Basin Planning areas. There are four such areas in the state: Upper Missouri, Lower Missouri, Yellowstone and Clark Fork Water basins.

"Each one of those watersheds has very different types of climatic conditions. They vary even within that planning basin," Montague said.

In 2013, President Barack Obama declared a drought initiative. Montague said this effort sought to bring together an array of agencies to address drought conditions.

Montague said that in Montana, there is a test pilot program taking place along the Missouri Headwaters Basin which is a more proactive approach focused on drought resilience.

She said the test program is being conducted by DNRC and other state and local collaborators.

They will seek to provide resources for monitoring and forecasting droughts, distributing information and developing local and regional plans.

These plans will include projects to store water, such as using water from flood plains.  

"If you have water basically stored in a flood plain through, like, wetlands or maybe underground storage or something like that, you can again provide a little bit of a buffer," Montague said.