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Comparative Analysis
of Yellowstone River Cultural Inventory
2006–2018
Research Team:
Damon M. Hall
Kathryn R. Kidd
Madeline R. Emerson
Susan J. Gilbertz
Sponsored by:
US Army Corps of Engineers
Submitted: September 2021
1. Introduction|1
Acknowledgements
Without funding and endorsements our work in the valley might never have happened. We
acknowledge with appreciation the support provided by the US Army Corps of Engineers
(Award #W9128F18P0084 and #W9182F18Q0037), local Montana sponsors, Montana State
University Billings, and the University of Missouri. We also acknowledge the Yellowstone River
Conservation District Council’s endorsement of various efforts, which has facilitated contacts
throughout the valley.
The comparative analyses reported here were spearheaded by Dr. Damon Hall and his students in
the Sustainability Lab at the University of Missouri. Dr. Hall generously assigned two graduate
students, Kathryn R. Kidd and Madeline R. Emerson, the tasks of preliminary data analyses and
report organization. Dr. Hall’s lab was also supported by the USDA National Institute of Food
and Agriculture, McIntire Stennis, project 1021674.
Suggested Citation
Hall, DM, Kidd, KR, Emerson, MR, Gilbertz, SJ, 2021. Comparative Analysis of Yellowstone
River Cultural Inventory 2006–2018: Co-Sponsored by the Yellowstone River Conservation
District Council, with funding from the US Army Corps of Engineers. 468663 Planning
Assistance Study MT. 162 pages. DOI:
Acronyms
CEA Cumulative Effects Analysis
COE (US Army) Corps of Engineers
DNRC (Montana) Department of Natural Resources and Conservation
YRCDC Yellowstone River Conservation District Council
YRCI Yellowstone River Cultural Inventory
1. Introduction|2
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................................................... 1
Suggested Citation ........................................................................................................................................ 1
Table of Contents .......................................................................................................................................... 2
Section 1: Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 6
The YRCI and the Participants ................................................................................................................. 6
Structure of the Report ............................................................................................................................ 15
Limitations of the Findings ..................................................................................................................... 17
Overview of Findings ............................................................................................................................. 17
The Gorilla in the Room: Climate Change ............................................................................................. 23
Section 2: The Beautiful and Dynamic Yellowstone River ........................................................................ 25
Aesthetics: Home to Cottonwoods and Wildlife ..................................................................................... 25
It’s the Best—2006.............................................................................................................................25
It’s the Best—2012 and 2018..............................................................................................................27
The Powerful Yellowstone...................................................................................................................... 27
The Powerful River—2006.................................................................................................................27
The Powerful River—2012 and 2018.................................................................................................28
Major Flood Events as Lessons .............................................................................................................. 29
Major Events—2006...........................................................................................................................29
Major Events—2012...........................................................................................................................32
Major Events—2018...........................................................................................................................33
Controlling Erosion ................................................................................................................................. 35
Erosion as a Constant—2006, 2012, and 2018...................................................................................35
Erosion as a Problem—2006, 2012, and 2018....................................................................................36
The Meandering River—2006, 2012, and 2018
..................................................................................38
Section 3. Bank Stabilization: Should We, or Shouldn’t We? .................................................................... 42
Stabilize to Protect Landowners? ............................................................................................................ 42
Protecting Private Property—2006.....................................................................................................42
Protecting Private Property—2012 and 2018.....................................................................................44
For and Against Stabilization .................................................................................................................. 45
Pro Stabilization—2006......................................................................................................................45
Pro Stabilization—2018......................................................................................................................46
Opposed to Stabilization—2006.........................................................................................................47
Opposed to Stabilization—2018.........................................................................................................50
1. Introduction|3
Nuances Concerning Bank Stabilization and Other Controls ................................................................. 51
Nuanced Opinions of River Controls—2006......................................................................................51
Nuanced Opinions of River Controls—2012 and 2018......................................................................54
Section 4. Bank Stabilization: How We Do It ............................................................................................ 57
Riprap is a Known Strategy .................................................................................................................... 57
Riprap—2006......................................................................................................................................57
Riprap—2018......................................................................................................................................59
Alternatives Strategies to Riprap ............................................................................................................ 60
Alternatives to Riprap—2006.............................................................................................................60
Alternatives to Riprap—2018.............................................................................................................62
Riparian Health and Vegetative Alternatives—2006..........................................................................63
Riparian Health and Vegetative Alternatives—2018..........................................................................65
Older and Nonpermitted Strategies ......................................................................................................... 66
Other Things that People Do—2006...................................................................................................66
Other Things that People Do—2018...................................................................................................68
Section 5. Bank Stabilization: Decisions and Consequences ...................................................................... 70
Fixing Problems/Making Problems ........................................................................................................ 70
Unintended Consequences—2006......................................................................................................70
Unintended Consequences—2012 and 2018......................................................................................73
Infrastructure Protections ........................................................................................................................ 74
Public Infrastructure—2006................................................................................................................74
Public Infrastructure—2012 and 2018................................................................................................76
Beyond Us Little People ......................................................................................................................... 77
Cost and Durability—2006................................................................................................................. 77
Cost and Durability—2012 and 2018.................................................................................................79
Channel Migration and Easement Programs.......................................................................................81
Section 6. Dikes, Floodplains, and Development ....................................................................................... 84
Dikes Protect Towns ............................................................................................................................... 85
Our Dikes are Our Number-One Priority—2006, 2012, and 2018.....................................................85
It’s Hard to Tell People What to Do—2006, 2012, and 2018.............................................................86
Floodplains and Development ................................................................................................................ 89
Mapping Floodplains and Regulating Development—2006...............................................................89
Mapping Floodplains and Regulating Development—2012 and 2018...............................................92
Calls for Education and Long-term Planning.....................................................................................97
1. Introduction|4
Conservation Easements Protect the Land..........................................................................................98
Section 7. Intake and Other Dam Ideas ..................................................................................................... 101
Intake and Pallid Sturgeons................................................................................................................... 101
A Big Controversy............................................................................................................................101
Importance of Irrigated Agriculture..................................................................................................101
Is the Pallid Problem Over-Blown?..................................................................................................102
Questioning Motives.........................................................................................................................104
Aren’t Paddlefish Important?............................................................................................................105
There’s No Reason They Can’t Fix Intake.......................................................................................105
Yellowtail Dam ..................................................................................................................................... 106
Benefits and Harms of Yellowtail Dam............................................................................................106
Balance Interests and Work on Communications.............................................................................108
Water Storage ........................................................................................................................................ 109
Dam the Yellowstone?......................................................................................................................109
Off-Stream Storage...........................................................................................................................111
Section 8. Riparian Areas and Cottonwood Forests .................................................................................. 114
River Corridor ....................................................................................................................................... 114
Corridor Discussions—2006............................................................................................................. 114
Corridor Discussions—2012 and 2018.............................................................................................116
Riparian Areas ...................................................................................................................................... 118
Riparian Discussions—2006............................................................................................................. 118
Riparian Discussions—2012............................................................................................................. 120
Riparian Discussions—2018............................................................................................................. 120
Cottonwood Forests .............................................................................................................................. 121
Beloved Cottonwoods—2006...........................................................................................................121
Beloved Cottonwoods—2012 and 2018...........................................................................................124
Section 9. Understandings of Management .............................................................................................. 130
Navigating Regulations ......................................................................................................................... 130
“Oh, the hoops!”—2006...................................................................................................................130
“Oh, the hoops!”—2012 and 2018....................................................................................................136
Whose Rule? ......................................................................................................................................... 138
Experiences with Agencies—2006...................................................................................................138
Experiences with Agencies—2012 and 2018...................................................................................140
The “Ultimate Arbitrator”: The COE .................................................................................................... 141
1. Introduction|5
Talk about the COE—2006..............................................................................................................141
Talk about the COE—2012..............................................................................................................142
Talk about the COE—2018..............................................................................................................143
A Real Good Relationship with the COE.........................................................................................144
Suggestions for Management ................................................................................................................ 145
Suggestions—2006...........................................................................................................................145
Suggestions—2018...........................................................................................................................147
Section 10. Analysis of 15 Recurring Participants.................................................................................... 149
Fifteen Recurring Participants .............................................................................................................. 149
Analytical Foci and Approach .............................................................................................................. 149
Findings ................................................................................................................................................ 150
Floods as Anchoring Events.............................................................................................................150
Comments on Management..............................................................................................................153
Discussion of the Longitudinal Data Set ............................................................................................... 157
References ................................................................................................................................................. 159
Appendix: Interview Protocols ................................................................................................................. 160
1. Introduction|6
Section 1: Introduction
The Yellowstone River Cultural Inventory and the Participants
In 2006, our research team engaged in lengthy conversations with over 300 individuals from the
Yellowstone River Valley. Our project, the Yellowstone Cultural Inventory, was designed to
capture the many ways that the people of the valley explained their concerns regarding the river,
its resources, and its management. The original work was co-sponsored by the United States
Army Corps of Engineers (COE), the Montana Department of Natural Resources and
Conservation (DNRC), and the Yellowstone River Conservation District Council (YRCDC).
The design of the original work paid attention to geographic communities, which were defined
as: Segment I (confluence with the Missouri River to confluence with the Powder River),
Segment II (confluence with the Powder River to confluence with the Big Horn River), Segment
III (confluence with the Big Horn River to Laurel), Segment IV (Laurel to Springdale), and
Segment V (Springdale to Gardiner).
Figure 1. Yellowstone River Cultural Inventory Geographic Segments.
1. Introduction|7
Each Geographic Segment had defining characteristics:
Segment I: Working from the confluence with the Missouri River towards the west, the
first geographic segment was defined as Missouri River to Powder River. This
geographic segment included some of the least populated regions of the entire United
States. In this segment, the river is broad and relatively slow-moving, serving an
expansive farming community that blends the interests of Montanans and North
Dakotans. In 2006, this segment was grappling with concerns regarding habitat and fish
passage for paddlefish (Polyodon spathula) and Pallid sturgeon (Scaphirhynchus albus).
Prairie, Dawson, and Richland Counties of Montana were included in this segment, as
was McKenzie County, North Dakota.
Segment II: The second Geographic Segment, Powder River to Big Horn River, was
delineated to include the inflows of the Big Horn and Tongue Rivers as major tributaries
to the Yellowstone River and to include the characteristics of the warm-water fishery.
This segment was delineated to recognize the significant agricultural activities of the area
and the historical significance of the high plains cowboy culture. This segment included
Treasure, Rosebud, and Custer Counties.
Segment III: By 2006, Billings, known as a regional center for agriculture, business,
healthcare, and tourism, was notable for its loss of agricultural bottomlands to urban
development. Because of its complexity as the only segment with a rural-urban interface,
the third Geographic Segment, Big Horn River to Laurel, only included Yellowstone
County. A further consideration for limiting this segment in this manner were the
irrigation out-takes that divert water to projects east of Billings, especially in the
communities of Shepherd, Huntley, and Worden. Furthermore, this segment contains the
transition zone from cold-water to warm-water fishery.
Segment IV: The fourth segment, was defined as Laurel to Springdale, ending at the
northeastern edge of Park County. The river in this area was known as fast-moving and
supportive of cold-water fishes. While there was little urban development in this segment,
there were some rather obvious landscape transformations where agricultural activities
were being converted to amenity landscapes, home sites for retirees and vacationers. The
Geographic Segment included Sweet Grass, Stillwater, and Carbon Counties.
Segment V: The last Geographic Segment was defined as Springdale to the boundary
with Yellowstone National Park at the town of Gardiner. This segment was entirely
within the boundaries of Park County. This segment is noted for its tourism amenities
including recreation of fly-fishing and rafting. Severe floods in 1996 and 1997 had
caused this county to spend many hours in public debates concerning river management.
Within the Geographic Segments, individuals were recruited to represent four interest groups.
The interest groups were used to ensure the study had a diversity of perspectives and an evenness
of the voices represented in our analysis and the report. Rarely do people fit one category—for
example a mayor (civic leader) may also farm (agriculturalist)—but the categories helped recruit
1. Introduction|8
participants who represent a range of perspectives in the valley (Hall et al. 2012). Recruitment
was approached somewhat differently for each group. From the original report, recruitment was
explained as follows:
Agriculturalists: Individuals representing agricultural interests included farmers and ranchers,
who were identified and recruited from referrals provided by the local Conservation Districts,
the Yellowstone River Conservation District Council, and the Montana Department of Natural
Resources and Conservation.
Civic Leaders: Individuals holding civic leadership positions, including city mayors, city
council members, county commissioners, floodplain managers, city/county planners, and
public works managers, were identified through public records and recruited via phone calls.
Recreationalists: Individuals who use the Yellowstone River for recreational purposes—
including hunters, fishers, boaters, floaters, campers, hikers, bird watchers, rock hunters,
photographers, and others who use the river for relaxation and serenity—were identified and
recruited from referrals provided by members of the YRCDC Resource Advisory Committee.
Participants were also identified and recruited by contacting various non-governmental
organizations such as Ducks Unlimited, Trout Unlimited, and the Audubon Society and by
contacting local fishing and hunting outfitting businesses.
Residentialists: The names of property owners holding 20 acres or less of land bordering the
Yellowstone River, or within 500 feet of the bank, were obtained through a GIS search of
public land ownership records. Twenty acres was used as a screening threshold to separate the
people who lived along the river corridor but whose incomes were from something other than
agricultural practices (residentialists) from those who were predominantly farmers or ranchers
(agriculturalists). The names were sorted by county and randomized. Recruitment proceeded
from the randomized county lists. Other people living very near the river, and whose primary
incomes were not generated by agriculture, were also recruited. These additional participants
may not have had property that technically bordered the river and/or they may have owned
more than 20 acres. In all cases, the recruits did not consider agricultural as their main source
of income.
For the purposes of the 2006 study, American Indians from the Crow and Northern Cheyenne
tribes were included. They were recruited primarily by means of referrals from state agency
personnel and Yellowstone River Conservation District Resource Advisory Committee members.
The 2006 efforts yielded interviews with over 300 individuals (see Table 1).
1. Introduction|9
Table 1. Participants in Yellowstone River Cultural Inventory–2006
GEO SEG I:
Missouri
River to
Powder River
GEO SEG II:
Powder River
to Big Horn
River
GEO SEG III:
Big Horn
River to
Laurel
GEO SEG IV:
Laurel to
Springdale
GEO SEG V:
Springdale to
Gardiner
TOTAL
IN
GROUP
Agricultural 22 22 16 12 14 86
Civic leaders 14 14 18 14 8 68
Recreation 15 16 16 13 16 76
Residents 15 11 16 15 19 76
Geographic Segment
TOTAL 66 63 66 54 57
Crow & Northern
Cheyenne Tribes 7
PROJECT TOTAL 313
The 2006 interview protocol employed open-ended interview questions that encouraged a
conversational atmosphere and that allowed participants to put their thoughts into their own
words (see Appendix A). Comprehensive summary reports of the 2006 data are reported
elsewhere (Gilbertz, Horton, and Hall 2006a-e). Overall representation by Segment and Interest
Group are illustrated below (se Figure 2).
Figure 2. YRCI 2006 participant distribution by segment and interest group.
1. Introduction|10
Importantly, the initial 2006 approach has since served as the foundation for two follow-up field
seasons. In 2011, the spring high water resulted in flooding and an oil spill near the town of
Laurel. The research team returned to the field in the early spring of 2012 to gather additional
interview data, hopefully data that would reveal any shifts in the local conversations since 2006.
The original structure of participants was maintained, albeit in a much-abbreviated scale (see
Table 2).
Table 2. Participants in Yellowstone River Cultural Inventory–2012
GEO SEG
I: Missouri
River to
Powder
River
GEO SEG
II: Powder
River to Big
Horn River
GEO SEG
III: Big Horn
River to
Laurel
GEO SEG
IV: Laurel to
Springdale
GEO SEG
V:
Springdale
to
Gardiner
TOTAL
IN
GROUP
Agricultural 1 3 2 2 2 10
Civic leaders 1 1 2 1 1 6
Recreation 3 1 1 1 2 8
Residents 2 1 1 1 2 7
Geographic
Segment TOTAL 7 6 6 5 7 31
Some new participants were recruited in 2012, especially individuals impacted by the oil spill.
The protocol was adapted slightly so that conversations about the floods and oil spill could
emerge as natural elements of the interviews (see Appendix A). Lacking formal linkages to tribal
communities, follow-up interviews with American Indians were not included in the 2012 effort.
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
SegISegII SegIII SegIV SegVTotal
YRCI 2006 Participant Distribution
Agricultural Civic Recreational Residential
1. Introduction|11
Even though the 2012 effort engaged many fewer people, attention to Interest Group and
Graphical representation was maintained (see Graph 2).
Figure 3. YRCI 2012 participant distribution by segment and interest group.
The summary reports of the follow-up 2012 findings are also available to the public (Gilbertz,
Emerson, and Hall 2020).
By 2018, the context had changed yet again. Ice had scoured the river bottom near Glendive
causing another pipeline rupture in 2015. In 2016, a fish-kill in Paradise Valley was thought to
be the result of higher-than-usual river temperatures. And, even though spring flooding in 2017
impacted several communities, a few weeks later the valley entered one of the driest years on
record. More than 100 participants were interviewed in 2018 (see Table 3).
Table 3. Participants in Yellowstone River Cultural Inventory–2018
GEO SEG I:
Missouri
River to
Powder
River
GEO SEG
II: Powder
River to Big
Horn River
GEO SEG
III: Big Horn
River to
Laurel
GEO SEG
IV: Laurel to
Springdale
GEO SEG V:
Springdale to
Gardiner
TOTAL
IN
GROUP
Agricultural 5 7 5 8 5 30
Civic leaders 4 2 6 5 7 24
Recreation 6 6 7 4 7 30
Residents 6 4 4 7 4 25
Geographic
Segment TOTAL 21 19 22 24 23 109
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
SegISegII SegIII SegIV SegVTotalinGroup
YRCI 2012 Participant Distribution
Agricultural Civic Recreational Residential
1. Introduction|12
Again, follow-up interviews with American Indians were not included in the 2018 effort. The
protocol was slightly adapted again (see Appendix A). Interest Groups and Geographical
representation were attended (see Graph 3), and the summary report of the 2018 data is
completed (Gilbertz, et. al. 2021, forthcoming).
Figure 4. YRCI 2018 participant distribution by segment and interest group.
Taken as a whole, participation in the three field season efforts resulted in 453 interview
participants (see Table 4).
Table 4. Participants in Yellowstone River Cultural Inventory–2006, 2012, & 2018
SEG I:
Missouri River
to Powder
River
SEG II: Powder
River to Big
Horn River
SEG III:
Big Horn
River to
Laurel
SEG IV:
Laurel to
Springdale
SEG V:
Springdale
to
Gardiner
TOTAL
2006 66 63 66 54 57 313
2012 7 6 6 5 7 31
2018 21 19 22 24 23 109
TOTAL 94 88 94 83 87
453
Some individuals participated in more than one interview over the three field seasons. Below, we
show the 61 individuals who were interviewed in 2006 and 2018 (see Table 5). We refer to
individuals who participated more than once as Recurring Participants. Below we illustrate the
distributions of the Recurring Participants per Interest Group (see Graph 4) and per Geographic
Segment (see Graph 5).
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
SegISegII SegIII SegIV SegVTotal
YRCI 2018 Participant Distribution
Agricultural Civic Recreational Residential
1. Introduction|13
Table 5. Recurring Participants in Yellowstone River Cultural Inventory–2006 & 2018
GEO SEG I:
Missouri
River to
Powder River
GEO SEG II:
Powder River
to Big Horn
River
GEO SEG III:
Big Horn
River to
Laurel
GEO SEG
IV: Laurel
to
Springdale
GEO SEG
V:
Springdale
to Gardiner
TOTAL
IN
GROUP
Agricultural
3 4 3 6 1 17
Civic leaders
1 0 4 2 1 8
Recreation
3 5 4 1 5 18
Residents
5 2 2 6 3 18
Geographic
Segment TOTAL
12 11 13 15 10 61
Figure 5. Recurring participants per in 2006 and 2018, by interest group.
Figure 6. Recurring participants per in 2006 and 2018 by Geographic Segment.
Agricultural,17
Civic,8
Recreational,18
Residential,18
61 RECURRING PARTICIPANTS
PER INTEREST GROUP
2006 & 2018
1. Introduction|14
The field efforts also resulted in 15 participants who were interviewed in 2006, 2012, and 2018
(see Table 6, Graph 6, and Graph 7). We refer to this group as the 15 Recurring Participants.
Table 6. Fifteen Recurring Participants, Yellowstone River Cultural Inventory–2006, 2012, & 2018
GEO SEG I:
Missouri
River to
Powder
River
GEO SEG II:
Powder
River to Big
Horn River
GEO SEG
III: Big Horn
River to
Laurel
GEO SEG
IV:
Laurel to
Springdale
GEO SEG
V:
Springdale
to Gardiner
TOTAL
IN
GROUP
Agricultural
1 2 0 2 1 6
Civic leaders
0 0 2 0 1 3
Recreation
0 1 1 0 1 3
Residents
1 0 0 1 1 3
Geographic
Segment TOTAL
2 3 3 3 4 15
Figure 7. Recurring participants per in 2006, 2012, and 2018 by Interest Group.
SegI,12
SegII,11
SegIII,13
SegIV,15
SegV,10
61 RECURRING PARTICIPANTS
PER SEGMENT
2006 & 2018
1. Introduction|15
Figure 8. Recurring participants per in 2006, 2012, and 2018 by Geographic Segment.
Structure of the Report
The effort reported here explores the longitudinal character of the data generated over the three
field seasons: 2006, 2012, and 2018. The analysis required considerable reading and re-reading
Agricultural,6
Civic,3
Recreational,3
Residential,3
15 RECURRING PARTICIPANTS
PER INTEREST GROUP
2006, 2012, 2018
SegI,2
SegII,3
SegIII,3
SegIV,3
SegV,4
15 RECURRING PARTICIPANTS PER SEGMENT
2006, 2012, 2018
1. Introduction|16
of approximately 4,000 pages of interview transcripts to identify patterns and themes useful to
river management and riverfront life. In each of the YRCI reports (Gilbertz et al., 2006, 2020,
2021), we aimed for the voices of the participants to speak louder than the researchers’ voices.
As such, we evidence each theme with participants’ verbatim quotes and arrange the order of
those quotes based on what we most frequently heard to least often heard. In our previous field
season reports, we located common themes, topics, and representations for each interest group
focusing on one geographic segment at a time. Here, we put them together in a comparative and
synthetic report organized by theme. The aim is a comprehensive report useful to water resource
and natural resource managers, civic leaders, state policy makers, and Yellowstone River
enthusiasts. While comparative points are endless in their possibilities, we have focused our
attention on comments regarding 10 vital aspects of river management.
Section 2: The Beautiful and Dynamic Yellowstone River. This section includes comments
about the power of the river, comments about flooding, and comments about erosion.
Section 3. Bank Stabilization: Should We, or Shouldn’t We? This section begins an in-depth
analysis of discussions of regarding attempts to control the river. We illustrate that there is no
consensus regarding bank stabilization projects, as some participants explain that stabilization
efforts might not be a good idea.
Section 4. Bank Stabilization: How We Do It. Section 4 continues the analyses of
conversations regarding bank stabilization by highlighting comments about the various
stabilization methods. Riprap is an important topic of conversation, as are Bendway weirs, and
vegetation as an alternative.
Section 5. Bank Stabilization: Decisions and Consequences. Section 5 completes the review
of stabilization by illuminating additional factors that individuals consider when deciding if they
will attempt to stabilize a riverbank on private property. Expressed understandings include
discussions of potential unintended consequences.
Section 6. Dikes, Floodplains, and Development. This section illustrates how dikes, levees,
floodplains, and riverfront development are intertwining conversations among locals. These
topics are especially important in communities that are protected by levees and/or where
riverfront development was, or is more recently, prevalent.
Section 7. Intake and Other Dam Ideas. Section 7 presents comments regarding the Intake
irrigation facility, Pallid sturgeons, and worries about water storage.
Section 8. Riparian Areas and Cottonwood Forests. Here, we include comments that
illuminate local understandings of riparian areas. These conversations were prompted, at times,
by questions about the river corridor. In 2018, interviewers put extra effort into finding out how
the participants described the cottonwood forests.
Section 9. Understandings of Management. Section 9 exposes locals views of various
governing agencies and regulatory processes.
1. Introduction|17
Section 10. Analyses of 15 Recurring Participants. Lastly, Section 10 provides a detailed
examination of the data derived from a select group of participants:15 Recurring Participants
(individuals who were interviewed in each of the three field seasons: 2006, 2012, and 2018). Our
discussion at the end of Section 10, explains the value of longitudinal cultural data for river
managers.
Limitations of the Findings
Qualitative investigations have a very distinctive character which defines how the findings can
be used. By allowing participants to put their concerns in to their own words, we illuminated and
approximated conversations that were likely being held in backyards, local coffee shops, grain
elevators, and city council chambers. In a sense, the interviews functioned to “overhear” what is
being talked about and what is being said in the local communities. Importantly, the participants
were not randomly selected. They were targeted as individuals who we believed were likely to
offer good insights and/or who were known to be actively involved in commenting on river
issues. Further, the participants were self-selecting—they had to agree to spend at least 30
minutes with one or two people from our research team (Hall et al. 2012, Horton et al 2016).
Thus, the findings should not be construed as representing public opinions writ large. Instead, the
data reveals patterns of conversation, among and across interest groups, Geographic Segments,
and time. As examples of the local vernacular (Jackson, 1984), the comments are reported in the
following sections in terms of topics and themes.
While reading the upcoming sections please remember the differences in the amount of textual
data from season to season cannot be interpreted as meaningful in and of itself. The varying
scales of the field efforts were a function of funding and the availability of team members.
Clearly then, with over 300 participants in 2006, those interviews resulted in the largest data set.
However, meaningful comments were gathered from the 31 individuals interviewed in 2012 and
from the 100-plus individuals who participated in 2018. In presenting the findings we have
sometimes gathered a few comments from all three field seasons together, thus allowing a quick
glance at how the conversations change or remain the same over time. In other cases, we have
created sub-sections for each field season. Most often, we have combined the few available
comments from 2012 with comments from 2018 to serve as a comparative set to the 2006
comments.
Overview of Findings
Section 2: The Beautiful and Dynamic Yellowstone River
Over twelve years, some perspectives remained consistent, especially ones regarding the
aesthetic qualities and the power of the river. Through the years and across groups, participants
mention the trees, the wildlife, and the peacefulness of the river environment as favorite
characteristics. In each field season, the dynamic nature of the river was commented on by
participants from every Geographic Segment and Interest Group.
1. Introduction|18
The data also exposed the importance of specific flood years as reminders of the river’s power.
In 2006, the floods of 1996 and 1997 were generally rolled together as one episode, and later the
flooding of 2011 was discussed as another important event. Compared to data from 2006, the
major flood events of 1996 and 1997 were spoken of less in 2018.
Across all three filed seasons, there remained great disparity of opinions in terms of describing
the river as an entity that could be controlled. When erosion was spoken of as a “natural
process,” participants might also explain that the river should be “left alone.” Agriculturalists,
across all field seasons, were most likely to explain erosion as a “problem,” yet some were not
willing to “fight” the river.
By 2018, a few people used the term channel migration to describe what they witnessed.
Notably, this term was not discovered in local vernacular descriptions prior to 2018.
Section 3. Bank Stabilization: Should We, or Shouldn’t We?
Across all field seasons, there was no consensus regarding which bank stabilization technique—
riprap, bendway weirs, jetties, barbs, bank sloping, and others—is most effective or appropriate.
Many landowners near the river expressed desires for better “rights” when deciding how to
manage their properties. People in favor of bank stabilization projects explain that they place a
high value on the assets such as farmland, infrastructure, houses, and recreation. They further
explain that they hope to “protect” these assets, and they question whether the people against
bank stabilization understand the consequences.
Others describe stabilization as simply causing more problems, and they believe it is best to let
the river flow naturally. These folks sometimes explain that those who do not appreciate the free-
flowing river should not have property along it. They argue that living near the river is best,
when we allow the river room to “rampage.” Some participants described projects that they
questioned were legal based on current permitting requirements. These projects included using
construction debris, mostly discarded broken concrete slabs. Many explained that car bodies
work exceptionally well for stabilization, and some did not see a problem with their use. In 2006,
some participants were against bank stabilization simply for aesthetic reasons. They indicated
they preferred “subtle” solutions. Similarly in 2018, some of those opposed to stabilization
explained if stabilization projects looked more “naturally appealing,” they would object less to
stabilization practices.
Nuances in the conversations regarding bank stabilization were found in each field season,
meaning that more than a few of the participants suggested they could see tensions between
desires to protect properties and the need to protect public interests. They were quick to indicate
that there was not a simple answer when considering how to balance those competing needs.
Section 4. Bank Stabilization: How We Do It
Among landowners, and across all field seasons, it was easy to solicit comments about bank
stabilization practices. From riprap to jetties and barbs, to natural vegetative solutions,
landowners had clear opinions about effectiveness.
1. Introduction|19
In 2006, many landowners simply described what they have done to their property, and several
explained that using the large rocks had been the most effective and longest lasting method.
Some landowners spoke highly of Bendway weirs. They explained the weirs were less expensive
and more aesthetically pleasing. Some mention that weirs are good for fisheries. However, they
cautioned that they must be installed correctly and can still disappear during high water. Some
claimed that vegetative alternatives are better in terms of the health of the system and that they
work well. Others claimed these “soft” alternatives did not work, especially because beaver can
easily destroy years of efforts. Finally, some attributed erosion problems to stabilization and
development projects upstream.
In 2018, participants similarly claimed that they had mixed results using vegetation for
stabilization. Some said that the best solution was to use a mix of riprap and vegetation. They
explained this technique was able to protect nature, and they believed it to be a more long-term
solution as compared to other methods.
Throughout the three field seasons, civic leaders and recreationalists added to the comments.
They often mentioned projects that were likely done without permits, or projects that would no
longer be permitted (car bodies and scrapped concrete slabs). At times, it is a comical
conversation that emphasized a “can-you-believe-it” interpretation of what people have tried to
stabilize banks. At the other times, the participants were more matter of fact, leaving
interviewers and analysist to wonder if the descriptions are subtle endorsements. More often,
participants expressed their disdain for these “out-of-date” approaches, and they said they were
supportive of regulations that resulted in “natural” bank stabilization solutions.
Notably, in 2018, one participant claimed a lack of understanding regarding why concrete blocks
were no longer allowed.
Section 5. Bank Stabilization: Decisions and Consequences
Participants identified several concerns and complications that must be considered when
contemplating bank stabilization activities. The concerns focused on these questions: Will it
work as intended? How long will it last? How much will it cost?
Many participants stated it was extremely difficult to predict how the river would react to
different projects. They often cited their own experiences of how bank stabilization projects
apparently caused a negative impact down river.
Bank stabilization projects designed to protect public infrastructure—mostly roads and
railroads—along the Yellowstone River were identified as the main culprits when discussing the
impacts of bank stabilization. Others viewed these large projects as necessary to protect
community interests. Some explained that large stabilization projects seemingly happen without
the same permitting constraints and timelines experienced by smaller landowners, even though
the large projects apparently alter the river in significant ways.
1. Introduction|20
Two concerns were often tied together: costs and longevity. Participants who considered
stabilization projects often stated that these two factors were their primary reasons for not
pursuing bank stabilization, despite needing such projects to protect property. In 2006 and
20018, stabilization projects were often deemed too expensive.
Another way to “live with” river bank erosion was explained as learning to simply accept it and
allow it to happen. Comments in 2012 and 2018 revealed the topic of channel migration
easements was becoming of interest among participants; some explained the specific pros and
cons of implementing such a program. In each field season, a few participants noted that the only
the “wealthy” folks coming to Montana had enough resources to engage in conservation-minded
practices.
Section 6. Dikes, Floodplains, and Development
Over the years, the towns of Glendive, Forsyth, Miles City, and Livingston have been faced with
increased flood risks related to the conditions of the levees, locally called dikes, that protect
these towns. Especially for the local Civic Leaders, problems concerning dike maintenance,
integrity, and certification are high priorities. Restoring integrity is understood to be costly, as is
flood insurance. Moreover, it is “hard to tell people what to do with their property.” Some
residents have come to understand that when trees grow on dikes, they degrade dike integrity.
The quotes demonstrate a progression from “Why can’t you leave the trees?’ to a better
understanding of the need to protect integrity. Yet, a persistent sense of security is expressed
regarding local levees.
In each field season, civic leaders expressed strong opinions about the floodplain maps and
regulations. Floodplain maps are controversial due to uncertainty. Several participants indicated
they were “not sure” if they lived in a floodplain. Civic leaders were the mostly likely to discuss
the maps as necessary and—when accurate—useful for the purposes of designing regulations.
Some called for better maps. Framed as governmental interference with private property rights,
some participants question why the maps change and why the rules seem to be getting stricter.
Many were concerned about the security associated with dikes and levees under new regulations.
Since 2006, locals discussed the changes in their local landscapes throughout the valley.
Participants reported that new landowners, many from out-of-state and apparently “wealthy,”
were building homes and subdivisions closer to the river and on ridgelines. In 2006, these trends
were mostly discussed by participants from the upriver Geographic Segments. By 2012 and
2018, those trends were discussed throughout the valley. Ironically, some of the “newcomers”
were now concerned about too much development near the river. Some in the local communities
were concerned how new residents would advocate for policies that impede local economic
development. In 2012 and 2018, the changing landscape and changing notions about how to live
with the river continued to generate a wealth of comments. Some thought maybe it was “too
late” to control development.
Consistent themes dominated these discussions, including linking levee issues with local
economic development, concerns about insurance expenses, private property rights, and
governmental intervention. Many advocated a “builder beware” philosophy that would let people
1. Introduction|21
do as they wished, even if the potential for a bad outcome was likely. Others explained that the
regulations were needed, and a “win-win” approach was doable.
In 2018, evidence of increasingly positive evaluations of relationship with the COE emerged. By
2012 and 2018, there was a growing understanding that regulations could not move forward as
“one size fits all.” Also, in 2018, some conversations are quite specific to local projects and
agendas. In Yellowstone County, there are local groups hoping to create a connected trail system
to run along the riverfront. These projects are not universally supported among riverfront
landowners. As the years passed and changes were noted, locals further understood a need for
information and education concerning the river and how regulations could protect resources. By
2018, conservation easements were seen as a way to protect land from development, but the tax
deductions were viewed as insufficient compensation and the program “too permanent.”
Section 7. Intake and Other Dam Ideas
Discussion concerning diversions dams and water storge were common during all of the field
seasons. In Segments I and II, the controversies associated with federal project to build a fish
bypass around Intake irrigation diversion dam for the endangered Pallid sturgeon near Glendive
were frequently discussed. In 2006, the controversy was relatively new, and reactions were quite
visceral as farmers felt threatened by the push to secure passage for the endangered Pallid
sturgeon and any associated uncertainties to irrigation and land use. Many in the area felt there
was not a clear understanding of the importance of agricultural activities. Others wondered if the
Paddlefish, popular with anglers, had been given enough attention. Many questioned the motives
of “outsiders” involving themselves in local concerns. By 2012, concerns about shutting down
irrigation had mostly faded due to the rebuilding of the Intake facility. By 2018, many felt a
balanced, even “win-won” solution was in the making.
Interviews in Segments I and II also included discussions of Yellowtail Dam (completed 1967)
and it impacts on the river downstream from the confluence with the Big Horn River. While
communities acknowledged benefits of less-intense flooding, many discussed how regulated
flows have changed the fishery. The dam produces electricity for some rural areas, and those
participants involved in managing that service discussed balancing the needs of the river with the
needs of those who are dependent on the power.
Many in the valley are attentive to the drought cycles. They often explained that while putting
dams on the Yellowstone River had once seemed a somewhat viable option, in the 21st Century,
the free-flowing river would generate resistance to any serious consideration of dams on the
river. Participants wondered aloud how to store “Montana’s” water. Off-stream storage was
discussed by some.
Section 8. Riparian Areas and Cottonwood Forests
In designing the original protocol, efforts were made to engage the participants in conversations
regarding riparian areas, however it was assumed that the term was not a locally used vernacular
term. We attempted to elicit comments that might answer these questions: Was “riparian” a term
1. Introduction|22
local residents would introduce into the conversation? What do participants use to express
understandings of riparian areas? Moreover, did they attach any value to riparian areas?
To avoid using the term riparian, we decided to solicit conversations about the “river corridor.”
The results were not always successful in terms of soliciting discussions about riparian areas.
Indeed, for some, the term “corridor” had political connotations. Participants worried about how
wide the corridor boundaries might be: A quarter of a mile? Five miles? They offered opposing
opinions concerning whether or not restricting activities in the corridor was a good idea. By
2018, the conversations concerning corridors were much the same, however a few people
described the corridor as an interface, or as an expanse where the river could migrate.
In 2006, discussions that could be categorized as fitting a riparian theme were obvious, and some
participants introduced the term into their explanations. There was much attention to wildlife,
birds, and some mention of ecosystems. Some of the participants explained that livestock grazing
was detrimental to these areas. In 2012 and 2018, the conversations were not much different;
however, once participant explained that the riparian area could filter water.
During each of the field seasons, the cottonwood (Populus spp.) forests, in riparian areas, were
described as beloved. In 2006, participants claimed that livestock and wildlife inhibit cottonwood
growth. In 2012, some blamed reduced cottonwood health on other factors, such as human
impacts, temperature changes, and disease. In 2018, the team put extra effort into soliciting
comments regarding cottonwood forests, and found that out of love or worry for, there was a
general awareness that the cottonwood forests were “aged.” Some speculated that grazing,
beavers, squirrels, and erosion were detrimental to cottonwood health. Participants explained that
cottonwoods need “a lot of water.” Some noted that sapling cottonwoods appeared after flood
water recede, yet no one suggested more flooding as a means of enhancing cottonwood
regeneration.
Section 9. Understandings of Management
Concerns about river management regulations and the administering thereof were quite common
across field seasons. For acquiring bank stabilization permits, many participants explained the
permitting process as time-consuming and extensive. Participants voiced concerns and some
confusions about the various agencies that needed to be involved, but the COE was noted as the
“ultimate arbitrator,” with a great deal of power.
Even so, in 2006, some participants described positive experiences with the regulatory process as
well. While they found the permitting process lengthy and expensive, their overall experience
dealing with the various agencies was positive. Some expressed gratitude that they were
grandfathered into their stabilization projects. Other 2006 participants, made specific comments
about their understanding of new regulations requirements expressing dismay with the lack of
information concerning new rules.
In 2012, participants from Segment V commented on their confusion with the Special Area
Management Plan (SAMP) and the Governor’s Task Force, and in 2018 some described a shift,
noting that the COE was a lot more involved in general river management than previous years.
1. Introduction|23
Despite the grumblings from some participants, in each field season, there were other
participants with positive, or at least neutral, things to say about the COE. Participants offered
suggestions for improved management. In 2006, many participants described gaps in
management or a lack of understanding. By 2018, comments from participants had shifted
toward wanting proactive programs.
Section 10. Analysis of 15 Recurring Participants
Having gathered data during three different field seasons, spanning 12 years, we had the
opportunity to explore these data via an additional mode of analysis. Fifteen individuals
participated in the project in each of the field seasons: 2006, 2012, and 2018. We refer to these
participants as the 15 Recurring Participants (RPs), and we approached their interview data as a
unique sub-set of the 12-year effort as a longitudinal panel interview study.
Although we used the same interview protocol during each field season, the open-ended
questions allowed participates to shape the conversations in light of recent events. The findings
echo and reinforce trends identified in the above sections. Here, though, an important additional
insight is disclosed. Namely, when place-based/experience-based stories anchor individuals’
understanding of river processes and management, those stories can function to hinder or
enhance the individual’s ability to incorporate new information into their personal discourse.
The Gorilla in the Room: Climate Change
In 2006, the research team agreed to never use the terms “climate,” “climate change,” or “global
warming” during the interviews for fear those terms might cause participants to react to the
interview as “political” in nature. Yet, by 2018 these terms were introduced by participants,
typically when asked, “Have you noticed any changes?” There were few such moments. Yet,
their appearance in the 2018 interview texts suggested that each interest group had begun to
incorporate these terms into vernacular conversations. Recreationalists from Segments IV and V
offered these comments in 2018:
The other thing that has probably been the biggest change that I’ve seen in those 30 years
has been the effects of climate change. That kind of the gorilla in the room that almost
everything else kind of seems to fall, follow from that. I think one of the things we’ve
seen in terms of the fishing certainly, the changes that we’ve seen is certainly, I guess in
technical jargon, the flow regimes. We’re just seeing real changes, and typically over
those 30 years, you know, smaller runoffs, earlier runoffs, so certainly the seasonal
changes. (Recreationalist, Segment IV, 2018)
Back in those days, lots and lots of phone calls from people saying, ‘When should I come
to Montana?’ And the answer I gave them in 1995, is not the answer I would give them
now. We certainly, typically, have more dependable fishing in the spring and the fall,
[but] now, in the last few years, it’s been pretty typical for runoff to be starting early…. I
1. Introduction|24
think the major thing in terms of climate change on the river is we’ve just had overall less
water, we’ve had less snowpack, you know, the runoff is shifting earlier. The PKD
outbreak in August in 2016 was certainly the most extreme event…. I only lost three days
of work… I certainly didn’t anticipate the PKD outbreak… but I anticipated low water
and warm water and slow fishing… [Due to the] Hoot Owl Closures…. we book March,
but we don’t book August. So that’s, you know, that’s a pretty dramatic change.
(Segment V, Recreationalist, 2018)
By 2018, climate change was used to explain personal experiences and recollections of physical
feature changes and events.
2. TheDynamicYellowstoneRiver|25
Section 2: The Beautiful and Dynamic Yellowstone River
Over twelve years, some perspectives remained consistent, especially ones regarding the
aesthetic qualities and the power of the river. Through the years and across groups, participants
mention the trees, the wildlife, and the peacefulness of the river environment as favorite
characteristics. In each field season, the dynamic nature of the river was commented on by
participants from every Geographic Segment and Interest Group.
The data also exposed the importance of specific flood years as reminders of the river’s power.
In 2006, the floods of 1996 and 1997 were generally rolled together as one episode, and later the
flooding of 2011 was discussed as another important event. Compared to data from 2006, the
major flood events of 1996 and 1997 were spoken of less in 2018.
Across all three filed seasons, there remained great disparity of opinions in terms of describing
the river as an entity that could be controlled. When erosion was spoken of as a “natural
process,” participants might also explain that the river should be “left alone.” Agriculturalists,
across all field seasons, were most likely to explain erosion as a “problem,” yet some were not
willing to “fight” the river.
By 2018, a few people used the term channel migration to describe what they witnessed.
Notably, this term was not discovered in local vernacular descriptions prior to 2018.
Aesthetics: Home to Cottonwoods and Wildlife
It’s the Best—2006
Well, it’s probably the best part of the United States. Probably one of the best rivers in
the United States…. The brush, and the trees, and the things along the river that…I grew
up with…. I guess, I take them for granted, maybe. But it’s the best part of the river, you
know. (Segment I, Agriculturalist, 2006)
It is pretty spectacular in terms of what you can see. You will have stretches from here to
the confluence, and…it is back-to-back cottonwoods…. [Then] there are some really nice
cliffs by Pompey’s.…The Missouri is considered wild and scenic, but it doesn’t change
as much…. [The Yellowstone has] much more diversity. You can see agricultural things,
pretty farm fields, islands, and trees…You get out here, and you can look for miles. At
Terry, and by the Powder River, with the history of Custer camping there, you can look
up in the hills and damn near see it. (Segment I, Recreationalist, 2006)
For me, the river is just nice to look at. And, in the fall of the year, I drive too slow
because I’m always looking, watching the trees change. And there were times I drove too
fast [because] I was looking at trees changing. And then, I looked in the rear-view mirror
and I saw these flashing lights…. When he comes up, he says, ‘You’re going too fast.’
And, I said, ‘Where did you come from?’ He said, ‘I met you, didn’t you see me?’ I said,
“No, I was ‘in the fall.’” …. The trees are beautiful along the river about that time. When
2. TheDynamicYellowstoneRiver|26
the ash are starting to turn gold, and the cottonwood are still green, and then you got the
yellows, and I was just…gawking. (Segment I, Agriculturalist, 2006)
It’s…where all the life is. There’s pelicans, deer, blue heron. Oh, there’s little dippers,
killdeers, horned toads. Just a lot of things to see, especially this time of year. Pretty soon
the yucca plants will be blooming because it was kind of a wet year. In the spring, quite a
few wildflowers come out.…[And] there’s an asparagus patch…. I think there used to be
more of the…blue herons. There used to be quite a few of them right across from where
that asparagus patch is…. And then, the hawks, you know, the red-tailed hawks…. When
you get near their territory, they’ll take off and they’ll circle, and they’ll screech at you. I
always like to hear that noise. The geese are always talking. So, it’s just an alive place.
(Segment I, Recreationalist, 2006)
I don’t like Billings and all of the box stores and the pavement. Bottomland is the most
important thing for agriculture. You see all this bottomland being paved over and you
know it is going to impact the river. It seems like poor design to me. (Segment II, Civic
Leader, 2006)
In fall, you have the colors of the trees…like you do in town, but [by the river] they are
all natural…. There are trees that are 100 years old. There are willows and wild grapes.
Those are fun. (Segment II, Recreationalist, 2006)
I like the fact that for the most part [the river] is left open to function naturally, that there
is still a lot of floodplain left, realizing that it’s heavily armored in places…. The
floodplain is essentially storage for flows that are above normal flows. Without adequate
storage, it would be discharged downstream and have to go somewhere and force itself
into places that would probably cause a lot of destruction. So, if you can maintain natural
floodplains, then you can pretty much protect property from inundation. (Segment III,
Civic Leader, 2006)
Those who are interested in the future of this urban area should be interested in the
calling cards to the area, one of which is the river. If you allow a few to own it, you’ve
lost that calling card. Would it suffice for the ecosystem if it were a park? Absolutely, it
would, because it’s a huge area. Riverfront Park is a pretty good example. It needs a lot
more extensions. You can go to many cities—Boise is a good example.…and fair
amounts of Missoula’s Clark Fork are in public ownership…. Their urban area is right on
top of it…. The Yellowstone is a beautiful possibility for an open wildlife corridor.
(Segment III, Civic Leader, 2006)
Paradise. It’s just great, great living. Private and beautiful. We are so lucky and
privileged to live here; it’s just wonderful. We have about two and a half miles of
riverfront, so we don’t have any neighbors close, and it is just great…. The river is the
reason we are here. It’s the whole thing. There is constant action going on at the river,
whether it’s birds, or fishing, or deer, or whatever. There is always wildlife around which
is our great love. We cultivate our land for wildlife. (Segment IV, Residentialist, 2006)
2. TheDynamicYellowstoneRiver|27
I’d say we’ve lost…about a half a section…. I’ll bet we’ve lost seven acres, at least, from
that little pretty bottom area down there…. Probably six acres. It was only aesthetically
valuable, agriculturally it didn’t cost anything. (Segment V, Agriculturalist, 2006)
We have deer, whitetails, muleys, an occasional moose, occasional bear…. Lots of
eagles, lots of ospreys; …the river holds all that here…it’s kind of a nature preserve right
there that keeps a lot of game close by…An unofficial nature preserve. (Segment V,
Recreationalist, 2006)
It’s the Best—2012 and 2018
It’s peaceful, and it’s tranquil, and there’s no place you ever feel closer to God. You
realize how much beauty he’s put in this world. And that’s... To me this is a little piece of
paradise. (Segment IV, Agriculturalist, 2012)
But by and large, I would say living next to a river is a wonderful thing. You get a
diversity of wildlife out there, it’s a peaceful environment. (Segment III, Agriculturalist,
2012)
You cuss it out, and then you love it. (Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2018)
They graze down on the river bottom... it provides continuous water and usually the
water is almost always open. We don’t have to break a whole lot of it. We have sloughs
running down there, which are from the river. Lots of protection and cover verses calving
and wintering out in the hills with all the trees and the brush. The feed down there is
unreal, like grasses waist high. Yes, it’s just a nice, the location is nice for us, and we
don’t have to worry about drifting snow because it’s just so protected. Just a nice, natural
environment for cows down there. (Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2018)
I don’t know about money-wise value of it, but you could run more cows down there than
you can in the hills. The grass is better, the soil is better, um more moisture. Obviously,
the trees and everything grows so much better down there that you can run more cows, so
it’s more valuable than the hill country—definitely. (Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2018)
The benefit… is that that the islands are created, they wash away regularly, they are very
ephemeral, they come and go, and that siltation and that channel building and channel
taking away is how the various species of wildlife evolved along the river and in the
river, so the ecological systems really depend on that being a free-flowing river. It also
makes it a good fishing river… It requires a free-flowing river to build these channels,
yep. (Segment III, Recreationalist, 2018)
The Powerful Yellowstone
The Powerful River—2006
[The course of the river] is always…changing…. [It] could change drastically
2. TheDynamicYellowstoneRiver|28
from one year to the next. Every year, it’s a change. (Segment I, Recreationalist, 2006)
I noticed that the river has probably come in 100 feet, and I’ve lost property down
here. I have the river coming in, and it’s sort of making another channel. It’s taken
quite a little property, the erosion. But I haven’t got any qualms about that. I know
living here that we’re going to have to put up with some of that. (Segment I,
Agriculturalist, 2006)
The Yellowstone River hasn’t changed much since it formed. It isn’t like the Missouri
that can cut 400 to 500 yards out of a bank in a year. You don’t see that here. (Segment I,
Residentialist, 2006)
This Yellowstone is a mean, mean river during flood time. I live right on it. I know all
about it. It’s mean. It runs fast and it runs deep. (Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2006)
That river is a powerful force. It is a powerful, powerful thing. I don’t care what
man does, if [the river] decides it is going to go, it is going to go. (Segment IV,
Agriculturalist, 2006)
That river can do hell. The culvert there could blow tomorrow, and then we’d really be in
trouble. (Segment V, Agriculturalist, 2006)
The Powerful River—2012 and 2018
The Yellowstone River is... a meandering, ordinary body of water going through our
community... In six years, the Yellowstone River has not changed its course going
through Glendive. (Segment I, Civic Leader, 2012)
Very dynamic… up and down the river... the force of the river and the dynamics... Pretty
hard to stop water. You can put a fire out, but pretty hard to put a flood out. It’s very
difficult. So yes, there has been dynamic changes in that river. (Segment III, Civic
Leader, 2012)
It’s just changing. I think it’s pretty fascinating… it’s just interesting… to see what that
river does. We all know it’s got that power. But it just changes, and if you don’t cry about
it, you know, the loss or anything and just look at it as being kind of amusing as long as
nobody loses their life over it, I think it’s kind of fascinating. (Segment IV,
Agriculturalist, 2012)
I can’t remember, it was in the thousands of years, that the river used to flow basically in
this valley… And then the river finally moved over here, and it’s been here… I’ve lived
here for seventy years now. You say the river is changing patterns, minor adjustments
here and there, but in seventy years it’s been in the same pattern. I have a fishing spot
again down on my brother-in-law’s… I can tell you the river hasn’t changed there in
seventy years at all, and that’s in a big curve. You’d think that it would really change, but
no… [And] I did a little bit of research on it [our property] and again, thousands of years
2. TheDynamicYellowstoneRiver|29
ago or whatever the river flowed through here, and then it moved about two hundred
yards that way. That’s where it stayed for a long time. (Segment I, Residentialist, 2018)
A river is a live thing a sense, so uh, you know, it erodes from one side and gives to the
other side. (Segment III, Recreationalist, 2018)
You know it always moves a little bit, but right here, I don’t expect it to move a lot it
right here. There’s nothing forcing it to move. (Segment IV, Residentialist, 2018)
It hasn’t hardly changed since we’ve been here for 14 years. It really hasn’t. If the water
gets high then it runs down on this channel right here, and then when the water goes
down then that channel… there’s no water running down it. (Segment IV, Residentialist,
2018)
I would say that the Yellowstone River is mighty. It always has been. It’s kind of like
fire; water is that way. It’s got a lot of power.… (Segment IV, Civic Leader, 2018)
So, you know, the river is constantly changing. It’s interesting, and it’s fun. To me, it’s
fun to see the power of water and nature changing. (Segment IV, Recreationalist, 2018)
The river changes itself; it’s got its own brain; it goes where it wants. (Segment IV,
Residentialist, 2018)
I don’t know that we can mitigate flooding, because it is going to happen. And when we
get a year like this with all of that snow up there and all the runoff, my goodness, what
are you going to do with it? You can’t capture it. And we don’t put in dams and things to
hold it anymore. It wouldn’t do any good anyway, there is too much water. (Segment IV,
Civic Leader, 2018)
She’s a beast. Just keeps moving back and forth, getting wider, more gravel and stuff.
(Segment V, Agriculturalist, 2018)
The river changes every year… The bottom changes probably more than the edges, just
gravel moves… but every year you have to re-learn the river fishing, because some
banks, they just change, may be minuscule, may not… Yeah, it’s a living river… We
haven’t killed it yet… Don’t think we’re gonna either. (Segment V, Recreationalist,
2018)
Major Flood Events as Lessons
Major Events—2006
I have places along the river where I see [erosion], but, to me, it is a characteristic of the
river and I realize it’s a natural thing. So…it’s not a problem for me because I think it’s a
natural thing…. I see the river going up. I see the river coming down. I see the ice jams. I
see all that stuff…. I’ve lived along here for a long time and you’re not going to
2. TheDynamicYellowstoneRiver|30
do…[anything] to stop it. The more you do to stop it, the more it’s going to erode.
(Segment I, Agriculturalist, 2006)
The ’97 flood took out the riprap and 500 yards of dike. I lost about seven or eight acres
of irrigated ground. Ice jams are another one. It can go from a nice mild river and within
about 30 minutes it will be running over the banks….When it flooded in ’97 it deposited
gravel over 18 acres of irrigated ground four feet thick of just gravel….We had to get the
trees and debris off….[It took] two weeks….We used a tractor, a loader, a Cat, and a
dozer. There were a lot of real sandy piles…. We had…to spread it out or push it into a
hole. It was so fluffy it was hard to get around with it.…I suppose that took a week or ten
days. Then we went in with a disk and disked it and chisel plowed and took our own level
and leveled the land. We spent a couple of weeks at that. We spent most of the summer
getting it so we could plant it the next spring…. You don’t realize all of the things that
happen when you lose that much of a crop…. I suppose [it took] ten years to [pay off the
expenses] …. Of course we lost seven to eight acres of ground that is totally gone. At
today’s prices, that is worth between $15 and $20 thousand. You still own it, and owe on
it, and still pay taxes, but it is in the middle of the river. (Segment II, Residentialist, 2006)
The ’97 flood forced us [in Laurel] to become more flexible….Our present day intake…is
on the south side of the river and it was on the north side….And [now we] have that
ability on both sides of the river….I don’t know how many different times we tried to
change the channel, and once the river has made its mind up, it…[doesn’t] make any
difference how much limestone you put in there, it’s going to go where it wants to go….I
believe it was right at…3.2 million to put that intake in there, so it was quite an
investment. (Segment III, Civic Leader, 2006)
In ’97 we had the highest flood on record…. [It] was a 500-year flood.... [The] REA was
afraid it was going to…flood their new unit…. They riprapped it perfect [for] a half
mile…and there has not been one piece go out of place. There’s always a hole or
something that may have been done better originally, but if you throw…riprap [in the
hole] it just makes it better….To do it right, you want [there] to be about 16-foot width at
the base, so you have a big strong base for the other to lock with, and then bring it up to
about a three-foot width at the top….The weight crushes it down….You’ve got the dirt
walls behind it that are packed and it doesn’t seep very well. (Segment III,
Agriculturalist, 2006)
After the ’96 and ’97 floods, there [were]…multiple projects…. The Corps approved
some, didn’t approve too many, but as the pressures build, we will have ourselves a canal
instead of a river. There’s a 404-permit process [and] sometimes it works, sometimes it
doesn’t. It depends on the Conservation District…. They can, depending on who [sits on]
the Conservation District board, be very rigorous…. I think there ought to be some basic
principles that have to be satisfied, and I think that those are conservation of the riparian
zone, and conservation of the hydrologic character of the river. (Segment III, Civic
Leader, 2006)
2. TheDynamicYellowstoneRiver|31
It is meander-land, and nobody can own that….There were river changes in that ’98
flood, and, of course, some islands were created, and it washed down banks….Some
people lost acres and acres of land….I know of one group who ended up with an island,
and they claim it’s theirs, because the river ran right through their property and created an
island….Nobody pays taxes on it….For example, if this is a lake, and the water comes up
in high water years to cover most of [the land], you wouldn’t think that would reduce
your taxes, [and] it doesn’t. Or, if it goes down, and you can farm this for a while, you
still don’t pay taxes on it. But you can’t claim it either… Its no-man’s land…. [It] used to
be that the Corps of Engineers could come in and just change things at will, and that
caused its own set of problems, here and there. I don’t like the idea of changing the
direction of the river…. It has its own set of problems that come with it. It might help this
guy who lost some acreage to reroute the water away, but it ultimately, someplace else,
will cause a problem…. I think rivers should meander wherever they naturally go.
(Segment IV, Civic Leader, 2006)
Well, it was about ’96 or ’97 when it flooded…. All of this was under water because it
was up about 30 feet. We couldn’t get into our buildings or anything over here; it was all
under water. We had about four feet of water…. It damaged the trees in the meadow. It
took three years to get it back in shape…. We have probably lost 30 acres in that flood,
and it is still taking ground. (Segment IV, Agriculturalist, 2006)
The flood of 1996 took out Armstrong’s Spring Creek. I was the one that said they
couldn’t do what they wanted to do. It was bad…Then it hit the press and they finally
brought in experts. The landowner spent $800,000 [on riprap] and it washed down the
river in four days. I lost a lot of business because I stepped on the fishermen toes. They
wanted it back at any cost. My family has been involved in stuff a long time and people
hurt, because it was $100 a day to fish the spring creeks. (Segment V, Recreationalist,
2006)
We did have a flood those two years, ’96 and ’97…. It did tear away a lot of my
bank.…The topsoil that is gone…. It’s done so much damage to our property out there in
those two years of floods we haven’t been able to get picked back up again…. We’re not
millionaires; we couldn’t get it all done. (Segment V, Residentialist, 2006)
1996 and 1997 were historical record flood years and…conversations have really been
stark because of those two major floods…. I think people got scared about protecting
their properties and some properties were lost. And so, with the protection of property
and living on the river, there’s controversy. And I think, before the [floods, the]
controversy probably wasn’t as strong…. I think we can be good stewards to the water
and the river ways but also [we can] protect our homes…. Somehow, we have to come up
with a balance instead of just saying, ‘Oh, you can’t do this, and you can’t do that.’
Somehow, we have to work together to come up with what is the best thing for the river
and [the people]. (Segment V, Residentialist, 2006)
The ’96 and ’97 [floods] were so refreshing, in many respects, because the river was just
huge, and nobody had ever seen it like that. And it was rampaging all over the place and
2. TheDynamicYellowstoneRiver|32
doing wholesale channel changes down there in Livingston. (Segment V, Recreationalist,
2006)
Major Events—2012
In 1997 we had a high-water event that moved several hundred thousand cubic yards of
sediment, forcing the river to go to a more southern channel. And in the subsequent years,
’97 to ’03, we put into the river various weirs and diversions, trying to keep water into
our northern [municipal water supply] intake. And we were fairly successful, but it was
quite evident that the river was not to be changed, and the fact that the Corps, Army
Corps of Engineers, had made an edict that you will not put in a substance that will cause
a diversion of the river in its natural boundary. So, we got together with the Corps…
Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks… EPA, and I think there was a conclusion by all
parties present that the City of Laurel had one major option available, and that was to…
put in a southern intake, which would allow us to capture water on the southern channel.
(Segment III, Civic Leader, 2012)
In 1996 the river got extremely high… and it cut me off from about three or four hundred
acres of property… plus the fact that it was damaging spring creek considerably…
[which is important for] spawning ground and fish habitat. I tried to work with the Army
Corps of Engineers, and the powers that be, and the EPA, and Fish Wildlife and Parks,
and I wanted to shut the channel off. And they were very much opposed to doing that.
They wanted to let the river run wild and free. And so eventually, the Army Corps did…
assess the situation and see if there was not something we could do to… so [a consultant]
put together a plan to move the river back into its original course… And I said, “That
can’t happen.” And he said, “Well, why not?” And I said, “Because the regulatories [sic]
will not allow it to happen. Will you?” And they all stood around and said, “Yes, it can
happen” .... And I had to go through an environmental assessment of some sort, it took
about 60 days in such a manner, and a public hearing… There was some fishermen that
formed a Spring Creek Foundation, and they were very supportive of me and what I was
trying to do, and morally, it was a local deal… so I put in root wads along the bank… and
we closed up the channel… And we planted willows, and we planted grass, and I did a
tremendous amount of work that cost pert near three-quarters of a million dollars… Then
’97 came along, and we had another high event, and I lost the whole thing… It all blew
out. It all blew out… I saw my stuff being destroyed, and it was so devastating… The
root wads and the willow plantings and the sod deal, it just was not aggressive enough to
take care of the running of the river through this area at all… So, I built a dike along the
river and put in some heavy riprap. (Segment V, Agriculturalist, 2012)
That was ’97 that I did that [put riprap in] ... during the flood. Because it came in a gush
that year, and it was overflowing so bad. That was real low. And we brought in truck
loads and a big crane, and the crane placed it where we were having trouble there… We
didn’t [get permits] at that time. But then after that we were told that nobody would be
given a permit anytime anyway, so. (Segment V, Residentialist, 2012)
2. TheDynamicYellowstoneRiver|33
In ’96 and ’97, they went on a huge deal there, and they put in a big dike along the river
there to protect the lower part of Livingston, the high school and the golf course and the
grade school in there and the fairgrounds, then after that they paid a bunch of money and
took it out, and then they had to put it back in. I think last year they put in a bunch of
dike, and now they are taking it out again… It is an ongoing thing. (Segment V,
Agriculturalist, 2012)
[During the ’96 flood] the road broke in half… So once that went, it hit the island over
there… and my next-door neighbor did not riprap. We were all riprapped… Well of
course, the force, it hit there, came back, found here a weak spot and came right in my
house… So, you know, it just breaks my heart… Then of course, the heavy equipment
came down… they built a concrete wall clear across the front of the house. Then they
brought in all of these rocks, all these big rocks… It is not as beautiful now as it was
when we first came, because I have lost 100 feet of lawn in ‘96… Now of course, I have
got a rock pile. (Segment V, Residentialist, 2012)
I think the real reaction we had against what happened in ’96 and ’97 was that when
property owners saw big chunks of their land being washed away in the river, then they
wanted to protect those properties so that they started building whatever kind of
protective structures they could to keep the river out. (Segment V, Recreationalist, 2012)
Some participants also discussed how they were personally affected by the 2011 floods. One
participant claimed this was the worst flooding event they have experienced since living here.
[The river] changed a lot during last year’s floods. The high water moved a lot of stuff
around, changed the flow of the river. The deep holes, some of them have been filled in
with gravel and rocks because of the high water… There were some huge trees floating
down, and it just moved a lot of debris around. It has changed… the flow in certain areas.
The river has moved over… maybe 15 or 20 feet [in some places], maybe more… I think
that [movement of the river] is the way it is supposed to be… that is what happens.
(Segment IV, Civic Leader, 2012)
Each year we’ve been here, it’s taken a certain amount of the bank. But that was the
worst… last year by far, any one time, took away the most… it took anywhere from, last
year I’d say anywhere from 40 to 100 feet of land, 12, 14 feet deep. And on the average, I
would say it’s probably 30, 40 feet straight through for three-quarters of a mile… Last
year, it was just going out at the rate of three or four feet a day, sometimes more. Hard to
stop it. (Segment IV, Agriculturalist, 2012)
Major Events—2018
The biggest change in the river is ice… That’s what changes the course of the river.
Because this house here next to us was down at the river… They had to move it… In ’90-
something. We had a really bad ice year, and well you couldn’t see it but there used to be
a little island there, and the main channel came around and just made a sweep and came
by. Then it got jammed up and it came this way, and then it was coming in right into his
2. TheDynamicYellowstoneRiver|34
property… [And] our land, we used to be able to go down and there was a little island
and a little stream that kids could play in that was shallow. And the island, it wasn’t big,
but we could put our boat there and everything, but it all got washed away… That
hundred-year, I watched it disappear in two weeks. And I mean it had trees 6 inch in
diameter on it. It was a big island… That kind of did away with our boating too. We lost
interest. (Segment III, Residentialist, 2018)
Back in ’97 when we had the tremendous flooding deal here that was before the wall we
put in, the steel wall, and that river was cutting into the bank here. I have got 46, 47 now,
truckloads of rocks behind the wall, big stuff, big rocks. So, we feel real secure with that,
but it’s a challenge at times. (Segment IV, Residentialist, 2018)
It wouldn’t be, you know, cost-wise, even if the government would pay 80%… at our age
it would never pay out. Because I really don’t think you can stop the river through our
section here… And according to what I saw from the guy that saved his RV park or
something out of Livingston after the big flood in ’98 or something like that… I think I
remember hearing it cost him $600,000… And according to that along here, you’d
never… You’d have to have some valuable like a park or something. (Segment IV,
Agriculturalist, 2018)
We’re on the cutting bank… Took half [of the lost 150 yards of land] in ’96 and half in
’97… This year [2018] we lost a couple of feet. (Segment IV, Agriculturalist, 2018)
When we moved here, the ’97 flood took out an island that was registered out here. This
was a backwater, where the channel is now. The island was about a half mile long… and
he said inside of two weeks it was gone completely. And there was 60-70 ft. cottonwoods
on there. He said he’d come home from work and a portion would be gone, a portion
would be gone, pretty soon, he had to go for a week or something and came back and
there was nothing, it was gone completely. The channel had changed and come all the
way over here and taken it all that off. The people used to drive out on the island and
barbeque and have picnics and stuff, because there was a land bridge down here… [And
the] ’97 flood took that whole island out. (Segment IV, Residentialist, 2018)
Of course, we were worried about the Spring Creek [in 97], and at that time they hauled
riprap up there for days… Subsequently that year, of course we built this wall that’s
notorious, if anybody has floated up there, they’ve floated by that wall that has all those
granite rocks, huge layers of it. That’s the protection. We were quite concerned this year
again, but we got through another year. It’s a huge issue. What’s scary is the river is
about ten feet below the spring, the main spring that feeds the spring creek and this
irrigation. So, if it captured it, it would be bye-bye. You wouldn’t see it again… And
then you guys can interview me, and I would have riprap [laughs] … Come back in ten
years and it might be different. (Segment V, Agriculturalist, 2018)
It was lovely [living on the river] at first because I had 100 feet of lawn and trees. My
side of the river was just a little trickle from the main one. Well, when we had the flood
in ’96, it cut the island in half… all that water came through, hit the island opposite, came
2. TheDynamicYellowstoneRiver|35
back, and… came right at my house… It just washed out the foundation is what it did, so
the front of the house fell down. (Segment V, Residentialist, 2018)
There were comments referencing the 2011 flood in 2018, perhaps because it had not affected as
many people as the 1996 and 1997 floods.
The city’s got a problem in town here where the river park along there, it’s eroding, the
bank’s been sloughing off. It started in 2011 when we had big flow and boy, the channel
has really changed after that. And that’s when the bank started sloughing off there.
(Segment I, Residentialist, 2018)
Controlling Erosion
Erosion as a Constant—2006, 2012, and 2018
Here, the river changes a lot. It will move, in 20 years, from one side to the other. It will
take up private land, and it will erode 600 to 800 feet of property per year. People on the
other side of the river will acquire property. The river is dynamic. You can’t control this
river. (Segment I, Civic Leader, 2006)
Anybody that lives along the river has to have problems with bank erosion. Five years
ago, there used to be one of the best cornfields in the whole area, upstream about five
miles…. [Then the] river took one of its classic loops way off to the other side…[and] it
went right through the middle of that cornfield. It took out 40 acres of that field and
abandoned 120 acres where it had run before. And [now] if you look at that abandoned
section, occasionally in high water [the river] will move through there, but there are
young trees in there, and there’s shrubs and bushes. (Segment II, Civic Leader, 2006)
The time that the river changed course drastically, and started moving into our property,
it was just horrific…. There was a big island out there, and it was full of trees…. You
would hear the trees…. It sounded just like bowling pins going down…. It literally lifted
those trees every which way out into the river…. It was just unbelievable. [Then, the
fallen trees were] knitted and packed with mud just like somebody had created it by hand,
but it was just the force of nature…. [The fallen trees] diverted the water…which brought
it into our place…. It just basically changed overnight. (Segment III, Agriculturalist,
2006)
When we first came… [the barn would] probably be just about 100 feet [from the bank]
...In a period of about a week or ten days it just kept working back.… Then, within less
than a week, about 20 feet of the shed is hanging out in the river, the rest of it is all gone,
washed out underneath… And then the one day I went out and… it broke off exactly,
almost like you’d sawed it off. And the end was laying there in the water. The rest was
gone, down to Glendive, I guess. (Segment IV, Agriculturalist, 2006)
I see a lot of change in the river structure, bottom, you know, from year to year,
especially from high water. Sand bar that is there one year might be gone the next and so
2. TheDynamicYellowstoneRiver|36
on, so it changes a lot… To me it shows that it is pretty wild and it’s dangerous, because
a lot of places where the banks wash out there’s big trees in the water and things like that
until the next run off, and then the trees are gone, and it starts over again and spreads out.
(Segment II, Recreationalist, 2012)
This five week-long pounding here was incredible. It was something to behold. It made
me feel very, very small, very small in the big scheme of things. Two acres I lost… It
was amazing… nothing really anymore surprises me, but that did. (Segment III,
Residentialist, 2012)
The river changes a lot on us – we used to have an island around here in front, a small
island. That’s gone. Now big islands build up over there a little ways. And now this, it’s
starting to build another island over there. The river does some crazy things. (Segment I,
Residentialist, 2018)
The river is its own, and it's no stranger, and it is no weakling. It is strong as all. It is
amazing what that river can do. And we have seen the channels change every year, every
year. (Segment IV, Residentialist, 2018)
In the years when exceptional high water… a couple of the channels at different times
have actually switched places; one was going against the rims at one time, and then after
a flood year then they had cut back… making another channel. So… just about every
time you had high water there was a change of some sort there with the channels… We’re
kind of excited this year to see how far it’s changed… the water is just starting to back
out of there because it come clear up in our pasture. We’ve got some corrals and an old
barn down there, and it came up to them. We’re just waiting to let everything recede and
then we’ll go down to… see what’s going on… But that’s what happens, how it changes.
(Segment IV, Agriculturalist, 2018)
It’s just the nature of the beast, the river changes constantly. (Segment III,
Recreationalist, 2018)
Erosion as a Problem—2006, 2012, and 2018
I understand that the Yellowstone River is the longest free flowing river in America, and
I used to think that was a great deal until I lived on it. Now I don’t. (Segment III,
Agriculturalist, 2006)
Erosion of the river is probably the biggest problem we have with the river. (Segment I,
Agriculturalist, 2006)
The first thing I’ve got to get across to them is they’ve got to stop the erosion on the
river. The second thing…I’ve got to make them understand [is that] I’m not against the
wildlife--I’m for the wildlife. Farmers try to keep the water clean… [by] not putting [in]
pesticides and fertilizers, [and] we like to see the wildlife. I like birds and…everything,
2. TheDynamicYellowstoneRiver|37
but there does have to be a balance, and the farmer is feeding the people. (Segment I,
Agriculturalist, 2006)
It [the river] cut a big hole in one of our fields, you know. Our ditch would come down
and irrigate off to the side. Well, it cut through the ditch area, so those lands of hay are
going to be dryland. You know, they won’t be able to water again. So, it’s done a sizable
amount of damage. The bad part of it is it took some of our prime ground… You know,
we lost a lot of production. (Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2012)
With so much rainfall, it flooded a lot of our timber pastures, took the fences out, and
took a dike out above us and it washed through our place…So we had trouble, we
couldn’t use any of our pasture until probably October. We had to come back, put the
fences in, remove the trees, a lot of holes in our pasture. So, we had to take everything
[livestock] to the hills… and then in September all grass was out because we took the
cattle and put them down here, so then we had to hurry up and fix the fences and get the
trees off, and then move everything back here. So, it was really a trying year. (Segment
II, Agriculturalist, 2012)
I’m not saying that the Yellowstone is a bad thing, but it can do a lot of damage to
agriculture. Not just me, I mean you take from one Yellowstone Park clear to the end,
you know, it can tear a lot of things up... We’ve probably lost, give or take since I’ve
been here… probably lost 60 acres of our south boundary… The high water. At our
turnoff, I could just see the Yellowstone River when I moved here. Now it’s right by it.
(Segment IV, Agriculturalist, 2018)
I remember when we talked before, the trailer house hanging conversation we had, it
went down the river… kept cutting, it went down, couldn’t get it out, cut it again the next
year and it was gone. And it’s still cutting that field out more and more every year. The
guy who used to own that little chunk of land just about doesn’t have that land anymore,
it’s gone. Railroad right-of-way is on one side of it, and his neighbor, he was like in the
triangle, and that whole triangle is just about gone. And it’ll keep going, and eventually it
will cut like this field out here did. (Segment II, Recreationalist, 2018)
To me, being along the river is a detriment, not an asset. It’s just a big pain in the ass to
me. But he [my brother] doesn’t want to sell and I do. So, I always tell him, well, your
part of the farm was right there, it went down the river. So, there’s your part [laughs].
(Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2018)
[We hope] to keep [the farm] going down the family. But if that river don’t quit, we’re
going to have to sell it or something. I don’t know what our pump site looks like now,
that one up there. We branded here a couple weeks ago, and some guys were up there out
on the main road and come into it, and they showed me a picture of it, and he are my two
pumps with water running around them. So, I don’t know what… I hate to go up there
and look at it. But I’ll get to deal with it and we’ll do something. We don’t quit. (Segment
II, Agriculturalists, 2018)
2. TheDynamicYellowstoneRiver|38
It’s [the river is] not an asset… because of the destruction that it does… We’ve had…
since 2006 there’s been quite a bit of land go away since you were last here… So, I
would say it’s not an asset when it takes your land away… Because again, there’s no
monetary return from having the river there… but it’s what we got, so. (Segment IV,
Agriculturalist, 2018)
We had a couple features downriver from here that have gone away because they flood
out. Some of these waves will flood out. It will push that rock out of the way and then our
great big wave that we have been surfing for years is gone… It is kind of temporary. And
we had a really super, super awesome wave on the Stillwater that went away, they called
it Mr. Bubble. And it was just an incredible place to go play, I mean just ridiculously fun.
And it got flooded out, and… that went away. (Segment IV, Recreationalist, 2018)
The Meandering River—2006, 2012, and 2018
I never know where my property line is at…. The river takes a little every year. In real
high-water years, it’s more aggressive. It takes fertile soil real fast…. I’m not whining,
I’m resigned…. I’ve resigned myself to this in sadness. (Segment IV, Agriculturalist,
2006)
I wouldn’t say it is any abnormal erosion…. It is the natural way. It needs to change and
move where it wants to move like it does. (Segment III, Residentialist, 2006)
I don’t think that floods should be controlled. And the reason is [because] it cleanses the
river. It provides sanctuary for the birds; it is a natural process. It is almost like a flush. It
cleans off the gravel. It helps the spawning [and] provides a nesting habitat for
particularly the geese on these big islands because the debris and junk will come down
there, so it will protect them. (Segment II, Recreationalist, 2006)
I think erosion is a natural thing, and that we should live with Mother Nature. I mean, the
river’s supposed to meander, so we’ll have to live with it. (Segment II, Residentialist,
2006)
Sometimes it’s heartbreaking to see [erosion]…. But, on the other hand, it’s a wild river
and it’s expressing itself in such a way that it makes it what it is. It’s a living entity that
gobbles up one bank one year and might turn around and gobble up the other bank the
next year. That’s what’s uncontrollable and that’s what makes it wild and adventurous for
those of us who like to get on that sort of thing. (Segment III, Recreationalist, 2006)
I noticed that the river has probably come in 100 feet, and I’ve lost property down here. I
have the river coming in, and it’s sort of making another channel. It’s taken quite a little
property, the erosion. But I haven’t got any qualms about that. I know living here that
we’re going to have to put up with some of that. (Segment I, Agriculturalist, 2006)
What do I do about the erosion? Stand back away from the bank. (Segment II,
Agriculturalist, 2006)
2. TheDynamicYellowstoneRiver|39
Without any dams on the river, it goes through a normal cycle like a river ought to, but
the channel changes a lot because of that, a lot of new gravel bars come and go, and the
river channel moves and changes. I put a boat ramp in here and five years later it’s sitting
on a gravel bar. So, you can’t blame anyone for that, it’s just the way it is. (Segment II,
Recreationalist, 2006)
I don’t know if you’d call it a problem or not. That river is very active; it moves a lot so
it’s always cutting banks and moving things around a lot. The ranching part, the farming
part of me looks at that as, ‘OK, what’s it going to take next?’ I don’t particularly worry
about it. I don’t see it as a problem…. It does what it does…. I look at a cut bank here,
and [know it] deposits something down there. It gives and takes. (Segment II,
Recreationalist, 2006)
That is [the river’s] own renewal. Yeah, it does eat away at the bank, but that’s the nature
of that. Again, nature is the operative word; it’s natural. I guess I don’t see a benefit to try
to control something that is that big and powerful. (Segment II, Recreationalist, 2006)
There was a time when a property owner was at a loss but to just accept the influence of
the river and they just accepted it…. I guess there is a certain communion with owning
the land and understanding how it works and knowing you take the good with the bad.
The river changed course and I lost that bottomland but at some point, I will regain it. It
might not be my generation; it might be through my kids. (Segment V, Recreationalist,
2006)
We’ve seen really dramatic changes [in the river channel] .... This is a river that migrates
from bank to bank… as a fishing guide… sometimes your favorite spots go away and
sometimes they change, but… that’s kind of fun to see a new river. (Segment V,
Recreationalist, 2012)
This is of course, as you know, this is the only undammed river in Montana. So, it is
nature. The river is changing all of the time. There is nothing we can do about that.
(Segment I, Recreationalist, 2012)
I mean it is all just a natural occurrence on a river that is not dammed. It’s just the way it
is [laughs]. (Segment IV, Civic Leader, 2012)
It [flooding] has kind of purging effect on the countryside, you know. While there can be
obviously tragic effects of those kinds of things… looking at it in big picture, you know,
over generations and decades and hundreds of years, it’s just kind of part of what
happens, you know, cyclical. And that’s kind of part, again we’ve got a free-flowing
river, you know, it does that. (Segment IV, Recreationalist, 2012)
Building along the banks too close to these rivers is really a mistake. Certainly, a free-
flowing river like this, it cuts a wider swath then anyone would think. And so, you need
to allow that to happen. (Segment V, Recreationalist, 2012)
2. TheDynamicYellowstoneRiver|40
I guess I accept the Yellowstone. I just accept it and expect it. And it’s just been here all
my life, and I guess it’ll be here all the rest of my life too. (Segment II, Agriculturalist,
2018)
Growing up out at Kinsey was an awesome opportunity, and we had farm ground right
along the Yellowstone River. We got to see the beauty of the river and basically what it
can actually do as far as soil erosion, too. We had a field that we’d lose a little chunk of it
every year when the water come up. But as far as the Yellowstone River goes, we take it
for granted until we get to see other places… then you understand it, and you realized it’s
an awesome thing to be living along the river, especially the Yellowstone River.
(Segment II, Civic Leader, 2018)
Several years ago, it flipped. It cut out a small channel. It used to come along the cliff and
aim at the west side… but then it blew out a channel, and it now it aims on the east side.
And the river is almost all over there now. It’s fascinating. The river does what it wants
to do. It’s an interesting… it’s a living river. (Segment V, Recreationalist, 2018)
This river is a little bit more volatile, it’s ever-changing… the Yellowstone River has its
own mind so to speak, you never know when it's going to change. Which, causes, well
you better be on the spot. (Segment I, Civic Leader, 2018)
I’ve lived along the river all my life, and I know when that river goes, it’s going to go
where it wants to go. (Segment I, Civic Leader, 2018)
It was interesting, again as we’ve gotten older and taken a look at things, the original map
of what’s there and what the map is now, and we’ve lost land, but we’ve also gained
some acreage. So that’s been interesting, and we’ve gotten in on what is ownership of
what land. And my grandfather would be amazed of the waxing and waning of the land
on the river, I think. (Segment II, Recreationalist, 2018)
Of course, living by the river, you really couldn’t ask for a better place to live. But it does
present its own challenges, especially when you are doing farming… I love it… [but] we
lose bank every year… it kind of depends on the year. In some spots we’ve probably lost
a good 20 feet, you know. We’re in a spot where the river kind of bends, and its hitting
that south bank with a lot of force in the spring, and so we always lose some there. But…
what we lose we kind of make up for, too… as we lose ground to the west, it’s been
sedimenting into the north and the east… So, you know, we lose ground, and we pick up
ground, I guess. (Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2018)
It’s lost over thirty feet wide by almost the entire width of the property here… I think
along the river it’s 500 or 600 feet... That is all gone, it’s all out. It’s nonexistent here
anymore. I still have a bridle path but it’s underwater [laughs]… You just have to accept
it. You can’t sit there and whine and carry on because it took the bank away. (Segment
IV, Residentialist, 2018)
And I know it has changed course a lot, an awful lot… I used to work on a ranch… and I
watched the riverbank erode. It was probably 25 acres of hay ground. It was awful
2. TheDynamicYellowstoneRiver|41
good—right on the edge. Good soil, and good growth, and everything. And every time
the high water would come, it would take another 5-10 feet, and now that’s just a sliver.
But it’s been kind of fun to watch some of the change. But you’re not going to change it.
Man isn’t. Nature is going to make the changes. (Segment V, Civic Leader, 2018)
3.BankStabilization:ShouldWe,orShouldn’tWe?|42
Section 3. Bank Stabilization: Should We, or Shouldn’t We?
Stabilize to Protect Landowners?
Across all field seasons, there was no consensus regarding which bank stabilization technique—
riprap, bendway weirs, jetties, barbs, bank sloping, and others—is most effective or appropriate.
Many landowners near the river expressed desires for better “rights” when deciding how to
manage their properties. People in favor of bank stabilization projects explain that they place a
high value on the assets such as farmland, infrastructure, houses, and recreation. They further
explain that they hope to “protect” these assets, and they question whether the people against
bank stabilization understand the consequences.
Others describe stabilization as simply causing more problems, and they believe it is best to let
the river flow naturally. These folks sometimes explain that those who do not appreciate the free-
flowing river should not have property along it. They argue that living near the river is best,
when we allow the river room to “rampage.” Some participants described projects that they
questioned were legal based on current permitting requirements. These projects included using
construction debris, mostly discarded broken concrete slabs. Many explained that car bodies
work exceptionally well for stabilization, and some did not see a problem with their use. In 2006,
some participants were against bank stabilization simply for aesthetic reasons. They indicated
they preferred “subtle” solutions. Similarly in 2018, some of those opposed to stabilization
explained if stabilization projects looked more “naturally appealing,” they would object less to
stabilization practices.
Nuances in the conversations regarding bank stabilization were found in each field season,
meaning that more than a few of the participants suggested they could see tensions between
desires to protect properties and the need to protect public interests. They were quick to indicate
that there was not a simple answer when considering how to balance those competing needs.
Protecting Private Property—2006
I think we like to be left alone…. Don’t come in and try to take it away from us. I have
heard some stories from up at Billings where they come in and actually run farmers off
the riverbank…. The regulations said he could not be on the riverbank even though it was
his private land. He could not dump his rocks down there because he was messing up the
river. (Segment I, Civic Leader, 2006)
I just feel like landowners should have the ability to stabilize banks, you know. You’re
farming along the river and it doesn’t do any good to have that water on your fields. And
I don’t really think it does the river any good either. (Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2006)
Allow the landowners to protect their property.… [Allow them to] do whatever they can
afford to do. I wouldn’t say, ‘Go get 35 or 40 car bodies, run a cable through them, and
anchor it to the bank.’ I don’t like that. I’ve seen it done. It’s not effective. (Segment II,
Civic Leader, 2006)
3.BankStabilization:ShouldWe,orShouldn’tWe?|43
But it’s like they’re taxing people that live along the river…because they happen to make
their living there…. I’m not saying…there doesn’t have to be some regulation, because
there will always be that case where somebody’s being 100 percent neglectful and
harmful to it. But, for somebody to just do something like put a barb in to preserve what
he has.… I don’t think you ought to begrudge that or make that system as tough as it is.
(Segment II, Recreationalist, 2006)
Some comment on new development being the source of over stabilization and claim that
these new-commers should have to live with the consequences of building so close to the
river. Encroachment of people into the river valleys, you know…. That’s where I think,
maybe, you’re getting more of the demand for people to stabilize those riverbanks
because, of course, you’ve just bought your 100 acres or 50 acres and the river runs
through it and you don’t want to see it washed down to Billings. (Segment II,
Recreationalist, 2006)
I really think that the authorities should be more flexible in allowing landowners to
protect their property. It’s such a hassle to go through all the steps it takes to put riprap on
your property.…There has been hundreds and hundreds of acres lost here…. I feel for the
larger landowners that have a lot of river frontage that lose a lot of property every year
and really can’t do too much about it. (Segment III, Residentialist, 2006)
Farmers and ranchers protect their soil. It takes too long to regenerate an inch of soil to
have it wash down the river. In this part of the country, 100 years will build an inch, and,
depending on where it’s at, it may take 500 years. (Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2006)
Bank erosion is concern to the agriculture producer because it’s taking away land. And
then the free-flowing river advocates say the agricultural land should be a buffer…so the
river can go where it wants to. But…different parts of the river have different erosion
factors…. The erosion is not really a big issue until you get below Pine Creek Bridge.
Where the river tends to be flatter and it tends to erode, and if I had land on the river, I’d
be very concerned about it and I’d want to protect my property… [People use] riprap or
the hard facing…Soft facing is where you lay the cottonwood logs down and bury the
cottonwoods, so the roots face out upstream. That typically doesn’t work here in a major
flood. (Segment V, Civic Leader, 2006)
So, what’s our puny little efforts to control the river and keep it from your house? Your
house should not be built in those floodplains, or if you’re going to build it there, you
have to be willing to let it go. And letting it go has some consequences too because
you’re putting all that stuff in the river if your house goes downstream, besides being
expensive and stupid. (Segment V, Recreationalist, 2006)
As far as a residential house, if the guy wants to build it there, ok, it’s his land. Build it.
But I don’t think he should be allowed to say, ‘I’m going to armor the riverbank’....
[And], like I said, nobody does that around here, because it floods. But I know that
further up the river that’s done all the time. And [on the] lower river too. You go down
3.BankStabilization:ShouldWe,orShouldn’tWe?|44
below Bismarck, North Dakota [and] there are a lot of big homes built right on the river.
And they’re all rock and everything…. It’s beautiful. But let’s say something happens,
and it washes…[those] people away. Then, to me, too bad. I mean, that’s the way we
should look at it. (Segment I, Civic Leader, 2006)
Protecting Private Property—2012 and 2018
We were talking about that…I said, “I just don’t know what a guy would really do.” He
said, “I do. You move out in the dryland hills.” [All laugh] “You get away from the river.
While you live on the river, you gotta fight it.” (Segment IV, Agriculturalist, 2012)
I think it was more the Corps of Engineers fighting them about the riprap… just a little
bit north of Savage. They were dumping rock, regular rock rock, off the bank, and the
Corps come along and said they can't do it. And the guy said, “Hey, it's my property.”
And we said, “Yeah, but the Corps has got control of the river. That’s the problem, or
situation.” (Segment I, Civic Leader, 2018)
I mean there’s a lot of good that can come from work along the river… I know a lot of
people think that it should be able to meander anywhere it wants to go, but when you’re
the guy that owns the ground and is trying to raise a family there, etc. I think people just
really need to look at landowner rights as well, because as a landowner we really need to
protect those rights. (Segment III, Residentialist, 2018)
I’m not trying to hurt anybody. All I’m trying to do is hang onto my land and save my
crop… What gives people the right to come along and say you can’t do that when it’s not
costing them a penny? … My grandfather would never spend any money on the
riverbank. He didn’t, he says, “Oh, it’ll be fine… It takes, and it gives back… Right now,
it’s taking.” Well, we lost forty acres down there in the trees… And when high water
went down… I told my dad, I said, “We’ve got two choices… We can either stop this
now… Or we might as well put a for sale sign on this place… It’s going to come right
through… It’s going to cut off thirty, forty acres.” … So, we just made up our minds we
were going to stop it. And we stopped it. And it hasn’t moved since… And, um, I think
we did a marvelous thing, but I’m sure there’s somebody, somewhere… I call them the
tree-huggers [that say] the river should be allowed to meander wherever it wants to go.
And I’m like, that’s fine if you don’t own the land along the river, and it’s not your
livelihood. (Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2018)
Hindsight is real good foresight…. If I [had known] it was going to be that much of a
deal, I guess I wouldn’t have went there in the first place. But once you’re there, you do
what you have to do, so… I would say one thing: do not build your house right by the
river. And if you put in a basement, put it basically above ground because it will get
water in it… That would deter them [future generations], I think… the trouble with the
river is it’s got a mind of its own, and it can change so much… And flood insurance, it
may be very expensive if they’re close to the river… be prepared. (Segment III,
Agriculturalist, 2018)
3.BankStabilization:ShouldWe,orShouldn’tWe?|45
It can be bad, but that’s nature, that’s kind of the course of things. It gives and it takes
away… I think landowners should have that right to… protect themselves… you’ve got
extremists that want everything to be wild and everything, to leave it how it was before
man got here, but man’s here and we’re not going away, and you know, as far as the
whole ecosystem, we are part of that ecosystem now…. There’s got to be a balancing
act…. People, I think, should be able to protect their property, but at the same time you
can’t turn the river into a big ditch. (Segment IV, Recreationalist, 2018)
And a lot of people want to think of natural boundaries. Well, they don’t own property,
and it would take our pivots out and everything. So, there’s kind of a fine line there.… I
mean, I’m not against the Yellowstone River… don’t get me wrong… But right now, the
saying is, “What the Yellowstone takes, the state gets.” So, if it takes his and forms an
island, that’s a state property as I understand it. (Segment IV, Agriculturalist, 2018)
If [erosion] is affecting a person’s livelihood, if it’s affecting a person’s home, um, I
believe they should have the right to protect that. Um, but… I have mixed feeling I guess
you would say about it. Because I also believe that it should be left alone. But then again
if you try to change it, it’s going to. (Segment I, Civic Leader, 2018)
For and Against Stabilization
Pro Stabilization—2006
I would like to see us get to the point where we could work better with all the players….
You have your environmentalists that say, ‘Don’t you touch that river. That is a wild, free
flowing river.’ But, at some point in time, the people that live along-side the river should
have a little bit better say about what happens….If they would allow us to define the
course [of the river] better, to do a little bit of work up there, maybe do some more
riprap,....it seems to me…it would be really helpful….At some point in time, I think, the
people’s needs should have a little bit more importance than the ducks. Hell, the ducks
will land in the river, wherever. (Segment I, Civic Leader, 2006)
I’m no longer in favor of the free-flowing river. You can have a free-flowing river, but
you’ve got to protect some of the assets. One of the assets is this irrigation ditch that
waters a lot of farmland in Yellowstone County…. I think we’ve swung too far on the
pendulum [toward] the free-flowing river. You can still have a free-flowing river but
protect some of the assets that have been there, like this irrigation ditch [that has been
here] since 1890. (Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2006)
Riprap in key locations in the river is really important for landowners. If they’re not able
to riprap, they’re going to lose land. (Segment III, Residentialist, 2006)
Free flowing at whose cost? The people who want the river to run where it wants to run
don’t pay for it…. I should be getting an award from the free-flowing folks because I’ve
contributed a half-million in the form of lost land. (Segment IV, Agriculturalist, 2006)
3.BankStabilization:ShouldWe,orShouldn’tWe?|46
When we’re talking about the Yellowstone, we’re not talking your normal Montana river.
I mean…there’s a lot of power in this bad boy…. It will do what it wants. So…to keep it
from eating stuff up, you’ve got to get pretty tough with it. (Segment IV, Residentialist,
2006)
We’ve got a bunch of riprap that we got put in before all of the environmental
regulations…. I don’t know…if we can even riprap now or not. It’s a touchy
situation….A lot of these…environmentalist seem to have a problem with it….They said
it can create sediment problems….I think it all boils down to they think that if the stream
wants to move, it should be able to,…even [if] some guy’s paying the taxes on the
land….If the river wants to take it all out, they don’t care. I think that’s the way they look
at it. (Segment IV, Residentialist, 2006)
People that work in those types of positions in government are so far removed from the
reality. They think that if you drive a bulldozer in that river, and you change something it
completely upsets the ecosystem. That is bull. You can’t begin to hurt it because it
changes itself. In a day that river can move more gravel from one side to the other than
you could in a lifetime with ten bulldozers…. Experience, and working around the river,
and doing that sort of thing—I don’t have a degree—but it is just common sense. I have
watched that river for years, and I have seen what it can do, and what it does do…. I
don’t see how you can really hurt anything in that river with those machines. You don’t
want to bulldoze it out like a bowl, all the way down.…but I know dang good and well
the fish are going to be swimming, and you aren’t going to kill them. They will tell you it
is harmful. I don’t believe that…. The fish are fine. (Segment IV, Residentialist, 2006)
Pro Stabilization—2018
I think the riprap is great. Otherwise, I guess we could just turn the whole state from hills
to hills back to the state and forget about it because you might as well not have land there
then. I mean you might as well not have private enterprise on it at all. Billings should go
away if you’re not going to riprap in some shape or form. Don’t you think? … Our
railroad should go away, you know [hypothetically] (Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2018)
I’d like to see them leave some of the control of the riverbanks, be a little bit easier in
some ways, but maybe that’s from an agriculture standpoint that would make it cheaper
to do something… Probably some of our riprap has caused trouble over the years. I
guess I don’t see… to me, the riprap has been good for the river where they let us put it
in… And there’s been several farmers I’ve watched just from the highway that just lost
whole fields from the river because they’ve… put so much emphasis on the ability to
riprap, they won’t let them do it… I don’t know whatever transpired, but I just know that
he had that trouble on the high water the same year that the train fell in the river down
here between here and Forsyth… And they went right to business putting riprap in the
river. That was… it kind of makes you wonder about it, you know? Why are we holding
up on agriculture land? (Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2018)
3.BankStabilization:ShouldWe,orShouldn’tWe?|47
It’s a necessary thing, yeah… and they did do some here this year or last year to protect
the road over here… to kind of push the river back this way, and I think they did a good
thing… It definitely is a necessity. (Segment IV, Agriculturalist, 2018)
It requires riprap… It’s the only option I have. (Segment V, Agriculturalist, 2018)
There’s a lot of opposition to riprap. And they say it changes the flow downstream, but if
you let the bank erode, it also makes changes downstream because the gravel and sand
that comes out has to go somewhere. (Segment V, Residentialist, 2018)
If they were ranch owners themselves, I think they would be a lot more heartsick about it.
It’s recreational land to them. They lease the land, and they’re great stewards in that they
want it grazed correctly and all that kind of thing, but on the other side of the river is a
ranching family and they just religiously are up-keeping those banks all the time.
Whether you feel that’s right or not, they do practice a lot of bank stabilization. (Segment
V, Agriculturalist, 2018)
Opposed to Stabilization—2006
I prefer it not to be stabilized because I think we need that floodplain to be utilized by the
river. It’s there for a purpose; even though floods impact a lot of people, it has a lot of
benefits too. It recharges the soil. It spreads out water so that floods aren’t as severe
downstream. So, the more we stabilize our banks, the more we armor them, the more
intense the flooding will be downstream. So, that needs to be managed. There must be a
master plan for managing bank stabilization. (Segment II, Recreationalist, 2006)
I don’t see that the erosion itself is a huge problem, unless you are a farmer that is losing
ground, which is big. I don’t think there is much fighting [erosion]. I think riprap is a
mistake. I think riprap is almost an arrogant way that man tries to control a force much
bigger than himself. (Segment IV, Recreationalist, 2006)
Everything along the river has been affected by erosion because it’s either cutting or
adding to, you know. Well, see, it’s always trying to slow itself down…. I think, as we
make it straighter, we’re going to create another problem, where it’s just going to keep
going down, down, down, and it’ll keep getting deeper. Then it will fill up Lake
Sacagawea with all the silt. That’s what I think will happen if we all got our way and we
ended up lining our banks with concrete, we’d end up having to dredge the river.
(Segment I, Agriculturalist, 2006)
I’ve seen where riprap has been put in, and the river just takes it down after a while. Then
you’re altering things. I guess, personally, I think it should be left alone because it’s still
a natural river. (Segment I, Recreationalist, 2006)
The river is going to take its course. I don’t think man is smart enough or huge enough to
change it. They have poured millions of dollars into riprap on the Missouri, and it has
failed. I hope they never do it in the Yellowstone…. Let Mother Nature do its thing, and
3.BankStabilization:ShouldWe,orShouldn’tWe?|48
it will be fine. It always has been. Don’t try to change it. (Segment I, Residentialist,
2006)
Landowners put riprap or whatever…. You just cause the problem to shift somewhere
else. I think if you are fortunate to own land on the Yellowstone that you ought to take
what it gives you. (Segment II, Recreationalist, 2006)
This is a coldhearted thing. You bought…[land] next to the river, and stuff happens…. It
is kind of cold, but, dependent on how they were looking when they bought it, [they were
as likely to] gain some acres as they were to lose some. The idea of putting in riprap or
doing a lot of monkeying around in the river, I don’t think it’s a good idea. You can save
that small piece of acreage, but when you start pushing that current around somebody
else is going to be affected by that, and you don’t know who downstream is going to lose
their piece of heaven that they bought. (Segment II, Recreationalist, 2006)
If the guy across the river has enough money to put in all kinds of riprap…and the next
guy is just struggling to survive, all the erosion goes over to him. That’s not right. Let the
river be the river. Nobody’s forcing anybody to live here…. I think that’s something
people should consider when they’re buying a place. Look at the way the meander is
going. (Segment II, Residentialist, 2006)
The riparian zone along the river is altered as soon as you channelize the river. You don’t
have the over-bank flows…that renew the riparian zone along the river. And that’s
habitat for wildlife of all kinds…. If left natural it can actually help alleviate flooding
problems downstream. So, a lot of the times, the channelization of the stream just creates
more problems…. [And] there’s a loss of values in terms of recreationists being able to
enjoy…a viable fishery. (Segment III, Recreationalist, 2006)
The non-control of sprawl along the river system, in flood zones, [is a problem]. [The
river] needs to be protected in my opinion. Number one, it’s a wildlife corridor, and
number two, it allows the river to act as a living organism. In a sense, it is—it might
migrate a little bit. Now, if you’re a guy who owns a farm and you see 30 acres of your
property move into the river, and your property line…is now across the other side on a
sandbar, that irritates you a lot. So, you want to do something about it. But what you’re
doing is screwing the river downstream for somebody else. To me, that’s a problem.
(Segment III, Civic Leader, 2006)
Channelization is a problem because the river loses its ability to cleanse itself, it increases
flooding, it does a lot of things in the long run that could be disadvantageous to a system
like this….A river that no longer has any of its own storm controls—oxbows and a nice
riparian zone—doesn’t attenuate extremes….Riprap destroys the river environment, and,
from an outdoorsman perspective, it’s awful….It channelizes the river, it moves the
flood…events down the river. I think there are points on the river where you have to
[protect the banks] because of our historical practice of locating facilities that are almost
impossible to move. If I had my druthers, would I druther those refineries were away
from the river? Yeah. But we can’t move them today. (Segment III, Civic Leader, 2006)
3.BankStabilization:ShouldWe,orShouldn’tWe?|49
[As] a hydrologist, I studied river mechanics and fluidal geomorphology and from that
perspective, the channelization really changes the character of the river. [Channelization]
creates…an artificial river system, really. Often times the so-called channel protection
work that’s done in one place, causes impacts immediately down the stream. The river is
not allowed to meander and shift as a mature river like the Yellowstone wants to do. It
can cause unnatural artificial areas of degradation and aggradation, or deposition, or
erosion of stream materials, or loss of streamside vegetation. We’re losing the
cottonwood trees and much of the riverine environment is changing as a result of man’s
uses and developments. (Segment III, Recreationalist, 2006)
Keeping the river from meandering is like stopping a natural process. The river
meanders. Rivers do that. Particularly mature rivers, like the Yellowstone, that are not
constrained by the geology. In other words, it’s not a rock canyon, it’s a meandering
river. Keeping it like it is means allowing it to perform its natural function. It doesn’t
mean locking it in, channelizing it, holding it in the same channel forever and ever. That
won’t work. It simply won’t work. (Segment III, Recreationalist, 2006)
I’m not sold on whether we should try to engineer the river with riprap…. I think that’s
very unnatural. And, yes, [the river] will eat your property. It was eating into our land….
but we never riprapped it. It’s a natural thing. And I guess that’s another thing: you got to
let these streams be natural. I think you got to let them have their natural habitat, if you
will. It’s like an animal; a stream has a habitat, doesn’t it? (Segment III, Agriculturalist,
2006)
Riprap is what I am afraid of…. It is just taking away the wetlands, side edges, the
rearing ponds, the place where a lot of things happen in the ecosystem. And the riprap is
like building a ditch. You don’t have…the little wet spots, the things for the little fish to
hide in and rest…. The otters, and everything else, comes in through there. When you
riprap like that, you increase the force of the river coming down, and it will move stuff
and it will keep moving. It will force the guy down below to riprap if it changes the
course the little bit…. [Now] he’s got to riprap, too, so we are losing all these side
wetlands that is really important to the ecosystem. (Segment IV, Recreationalist, 2006)
It’s not great for riparian areas when you have a riprap bank. That wrecks it. (Segment V
Recreationalist, 2006)
Our attitude is that we’d be more than willing to move the fence ten feet than screw with
the river. (Segment V, Agriculturalist, 2006)
I noticed…up by Miles City, the river was coming in really tough, onto their [railroad]
tracks. And they did a lot of work there, and they’ve got that all lined up. To me, it looks
good. I mean, I don’t have a problem with that—it’s pleasant to look at. It isn’t big, old,
massive iron and rock sticking out. It’s just nice. It’s like a blanket of nice rock. They
used a good granite rock…[that] is reddish looking, it blends in with the landscape.
That’s another thing.… If you’re going to do anything, make it pleasant to the eye…
because most people, [when] they can look at something camouflaged in there, they
3.BankStabilization:ShouldWe,orShouldn’tWe?|50
won’t say a word. But, as soon as you got a big, red, thing sticking out, they’ll say, ‘What
is that? Why is that there?’ Same way with irrigation pumps, you know there…[are]
pumps up and down this river, and nobody will mess with them. But [as] soon as
somebody’s muffler gets loud, they’d say, ‘Oh, what is that.’ (Segment I, Civic Leader,
2006)
I don’t know if there should be some riprap that should go in there…. You don’t want it
to look ugly from the river…. It’s just an eyesore, it just looks bad. (Segment I,
Agriculturalist, 2006)
Higher up the river, I see more of the weirs…a little more subtle stuff. But there is a
tendency to dump rock in the river.… [and my objection] depends on what it is. If it’s
natural stone—not really. If it’s concrete, it doesn’t look nice, and [the] goofballs who
leave the rebar sticking out of it aren’t too nice. (Segment II, Recreationalist, 2006)
The riprap is unsightly, and [when] they dump rebar…it is dangerous for the animals.
(Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2006)
Riprap [is used for erosion], but that’s not pleasing as it is so unnatural looking. (Segment
III, Recreationalist, 2006)
I like [big rocks] better than using old concrete, and stuff like that. Keep it as natural
looking as you can. And you know, barbs and everything, they end up not looking
natural. If you can do some landscaping, in turn with the riprap, you can have a pretty,
nice-looking bank…. [Use] willows and trees to create a stable bank rather than creating
an armored bank…. The river’s a moving, living thing, so you’re always going to have an
instability…someplace. (Segment IV, Recreationalist, 2006)
Opposed to Stabilization—2018
We should respect the natural force of the river... The river itself is like a wild animal,
you can’t control it; it’s been tried since the white man moved here by… the shoring of
the riverside with junk cars and rocks and trees and old tires. And the river usually just
does what it wants to do… (Segment III, Civic Leader, 2018)
We’ve sat through some very contentious meetings with landowners… Certainly there's a
hardship. You're talking to people that don't have a lot of financial resource to stabilize
their land, and I guess, not to sound heartless, but at the same time there's a different level
of responsibility by owning property with a resource like a waterway…. So, it's very
difficult conversation, I think. And I feel for these people… I understand those issues and
what they’re up against, but at the same time you live on the river, and that’s kind of the
thing, you know. So that’s kind of my feeling anyway. (Segment III, Residentialist, 2018)
These prairie rivers were meant to, well "meant to" is a strong word I guess, but they
expand, and they retract from their riverbeds, and that shapes everything around them. So
that dynamic of natural change is part of what I would consider the integrity of the
3.BankStabilization:ShouldWe,orShouldn’tWe?|51
landscape. The landscape staying true to what it is. And we don’t want to do anything to
block that, because at the end of the day I don’t want to say I’m totally self-interested, but
there is a lot of self interest in this, it's just like that keeps the ground healthier, that keeps
the animals healthier, that keeps me happier and doing less work. But also, maintaining
the wildlife populations is super important to us too. And, allowing the river to behave
how it’s behaved for thousands of years, I think helps with all the wildlife that have
evolved to depend on that river for the same amount of time. So, you know allowing
things to happen as much as they can like before we were here, I think, and I hope is
better for the ecosystem as a whole. (Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2018)
You can’t divert your rivers, you can’t dam them, you can't create problems with the
flow. Every time you try to straighten a river out, you create more problems. (Segment
IV, Residentialist, 2018)
I mean this is a wild river, and you can’t stop it. You’d have to put pilings down to stop
it. I wouldn’t want to see that anyway on this river… I even hate to see the riprap, really,
because that alters the bank. (Segment IV, Residentialist, 2018)
It’s a wonderful river. And I just… I was always afraid that somebody would mess with
to the point where we would ruin it. And it’s such a healthy stream, just kind of left
alone. (Segment IV, Civic Leader, 2018)
I have got actually a little bit of a soap box… one of my pet peeves I guess… the use of
concrete on the riverbank. And I was really outspoken… about how horrible I think that
is, aesthetically… My point with that is that we have local rock; we don't have to truck it
in or train in in from thousands or hundreds of miles away. Its right here; it’s actually on
the river. We can mine it and we can use it and really make it much more naturally
appealing than having these big chunks of concrete laying all over the river... we should
be utilizing this resource, this rock in this case, that is natural, that satisfies Corps
requirements. That should be a requirement… [And] I think that as we become more
sophisticated as landscape architects and as stewards, that the bio-riprap or the ways that
we could do more sensitive armoring of the river… They’re starting to take hold. I think
that the patience level of we, as a society, is probably not quite there to sustain it at this
point, but we try to promote that, and we’d like to see more of that, and try to use more
vegetative solutions versus the rock solutions… (Segment III, Residentialist, 2018)
Nuances Concerning Bank Stabilization and Other Controls
Nuanced Opinions of River Controls—2006
People would say that in order to be environmentally sound I need to let that river come
rip-roaring through my property and it will be fine in 500 years. I don’t have 500 years.
There is benefit to man being here. We do good things here. Man does need to manage,
but he needs to manage softly. (Segment V, Agriculturalist, 2006)
3.BankStabilization:ShouldWe,orShouldn’tWe?|52
You need to riprap the corners of the river but leave the straight-aways alone. The river
can meander, and it has…. It has probably been all over this valley. (Segment II,
Agriculturalist, 2006)
Riprapping is highly controversial because agriculture is such a big part of Montana. If a
rancher loses a huge hay field, that’s irreplaceable to him; he’s out of business. If he’s out
of business, then Montana doesn’t get that. The Yellowstone River is a free-flowing
stream that brings huge amounts of recreational dollars to Montana. Fly fishermen come
from all over the world to fish this river. So, what is right, what is wrong? I think that the
riprapping should only be in areas that would protect the spring creeks and the rest should
not exist, unless it is a highway or a bridge, or something that we need to protect them for
public safety and access.…You see tons and tons of rocks dumped in there, forcing the
river off to another direction. And some riprapping will force the river [to be] somebody
else’s problem. They have to, in turn, address that problem.…We don’t want a
Yellowstone River that is all channelized all the way down to Miles City. I mean, we just
don’t do that. (Segment II, Recreationalist, 2006)
You should see the springs; they are a national treasure you have to protect. I’ve seen
riprapping, maybe along a quarter mile on the Yellowstone, in order to protect the field. I
don’t know if that is right. Personally, I think that is wrong, but in order to protect the
springs, I think that is probably the right thing to do…. If the Firehole River was
threatening Old Faithful, would they riprap it? (Segment II, Recreationalist, 2006)
Pretty soon you have a ditch, you know, rather than a river. In some cases [riprap] is
legitimate, in other cases it’s probably overdone. (Segment III, Recreationalist, 2006)
The erosion issue is a tough issue….Are we going to armor the whole [river]?...What’s
the right thing to do if it’s your 100-acre farm that you’re going to lose?...If you look at
the old maps,…that river moves….If I was a landowner along-side of [the river,] erosion
would be a huge issue for me….If you’re the City of Billings and it’s at your intake for
your water system, riprapping near that might be a pretty important issue. Where do we
go with that?... I’m sure that armoring the whole river is probably not the answer,
because if you armor one spot, that force is going somewhere, somebody else is going to
deal with that. (Segment III, Civic Leader, 2006)
Certainly, I understand the people that have property, and they want to try to preserve
their property, and I respect that. But the fact is, the Yellowstone is a wild river, and,…to
me, it sort of comes with the territory….[We should] try to achieve [a] balance, and not
be overly regulatory with citizens [as far as]…what they can and can’t do with their
property, but, on the other hand, realize that, hey, you’re not just doing something that’s
going to perhaps impact a little piece of property; you’re doing something that could have
potential impact on a resource that has significant economic impact, [and] social
impact…on a whole bunch of people. So, people need to understand [it is] a lot broader
than their little piece of property on the river. (Segment IV, Recreationalist, 2006)
3.BankStabilization:ShouldWe,orShouldn’tWe?|53
It’s a real fine balance, in my opinion. I have the utmost respect for other interests…. I
know we have to work together. So, I think that’s why it’s important that we do strike a
balance in terms of some of the things people are looking at. For example, putting the
riprap on the banks…may prevent erosion of their property and their interests, but, if it’s
not done properly, it could have some sort of adverse impact on the fishery, which
concerns me. And then it takes away from that pristine environment…. I like the fact that,
[in] very few places do I see any man-made changes to the river. It meanders, it’s pretty
natural, and, as you can see [today], it’s really roaring…. When it starts to lower itself
down, some new side channels will [form], there’ll be new obstructions, new fish habitat,
and so on. (Segment IV, Recreationalist, 2006)
I’ve seen the devastation that took place south of Livingston on the Yellowstone because
[the river] got behind the riprap, and then it took acres and acres away. And, to me, it
took a lot of the beauty.… [The river] takes a long time to heal, but it will. A free-flowing
stream is one thing, but…there’s no more erosive practice than nature itself. And if you
want to see [a free-flowing river], and you’re not interfering with private property, that’s
okay, but I think we still need to help people protect their property from over-extension
of the river. (Segment IV, Recreationalist, 2006)
I don’t know, at this point, what you can do other than encourage responsible
planning…and really being careful if you allow somebody to riprap. You have to think
about the consequences…Some of the biggest problems here are these old bridges that
constrict the river. They need to redesign those bridges, of course it would be millions
and millions of dollars. (Segment V, Civic Leader, 2006)
Some of it was riprapped before we came. I know it is a controversial thing. You riprap
here, and the water hits it and sends it across the river, and it does more damage to the
guy that lives next door. You are sending the problem further down the river. I am slowly
learning that… [but when] you see your own land disappearing, it is hard. (Segment V,
Agriculturalist, 2006)
If there are some artificial ways that we can replicate the positive impacts of flooding, but
still be able to mitigate the damage, then I’ll try to implement them. (Segment V,
Agriculturalist, 2006)
I would armor the banks only in extreme cases of emergency…. Otherwise, we will be
like the rivers in Oregon where it is armored all the way, on both sides. It is bad…. I am
against modifying the banks in any way except in extreme cases like to protect a bridge
or somebody’s house. I think that is the way it should be done. (Segment V, Civic
Leader, 2006)
In terms of long-term health of those spring creeks…any time we clean the gravel no
matter how we do it, the fish respond, the insects respond, and the fishing is better….
What would be nice is if we could mimic the natural flooding and wash all the silt out
and that appears to be the natural cycle on a spring creek. Instead, we have armored the
3.BankStabilization:ShouldWe,orShouldn’tWe?|54
banks and done everything possible to keep the river out. (Segment V, Recreationalist,
2006)
Nuanced Opinions of River Controls—2012 and 2018
That is such a tricky issue. I don’t know… On one hand there is what I just said that
when you are trying to stabilize your banks, you’re creating problems for other people
downriver, but… it’s easy to say from a 30,000-foot view that you shouldn’t be able to
do that, but when you’re sitting there with somebody that just lost their house and
probably could have made minor modifications there that would have saved it, I don’t
know… but there obviously is a place for stream setbacks. (Segment III, Agriculturalist,
2012)
If people have… such values like a railroad or highways or a particular landowner has
such values that they feel that they must do something, then we need to have two things.
One is… insist that they get the finest engineering done that mitigates as much of the
impact of that project as the possibly can on the river… And two, they have to
compensate or citizens and other landowners for the damage that they’re going to do
because of their project... And the mitigation fund should be acquiring some of these
areas that have been riprapped in the past that need to be opened up for the river… [and]
compensating people to allow the river to erode away their land… for their ability to live
with the river in a way that’s good for the river and the rest of us… Our best shot is to do
as little tinkering with the river as we can, and to try to figure out how to make it easier
for landowners to face the reality that some of their land is going to be taken away, and
that’s where I see a mitigation fund and flood erosion easements being a tool we need to
try to bring into place on the Yellowstone River… and it could be private; it doesn’t have
to be government. If people don’t want government, there’s different ways to do that.
(Segment III, Recreationalist, 2012)
My in-laws…used to have to buy a new furnace about every two or three years. It
flooded their basement. But [then], KOA and the next campground down built some
levees, and so [my in-laws] don’t get that anymore…. [It’s ok] as long as you’re not
building a dam completely across the river and impeding the flow. They’re directing the
flow when they build a levee like that…. I can see their point, having been flooded
umpteen times. You know, you’re gonna want to do something. And I’m sure they were
permitted. (Segment III, Recreationalist, 2018)
You could probably control certain areas by backfilling with large rocks and stuff if it
bothers the landowner enough. Other than that, it’s just… It is a live river, and it flows
where it flows. And people just happen to get in the way sometimes. (Segment IV, Civic
Leader, 2012)
That’s a thorny one. One thing that comes to mind, as far as cropland goes is, where
there’s a deposit of sediment on one side of the river, there could be a channel change
that cuts into the other side. You can’t really trade land across the river when the useful
stuff moves from side to side. Well, it’s a thorny issue. On the one hand it’s private
3.BankStabilization:ShouldWe,orShouldn’tWe?|55
property rights and the ability to make a living, and that doesn’t seem like that’s ever
been easy, or ever going to be easy for ag and livestock producers. But the tragedy of the
commons is kind of the flipside of that, where if you don’t give the river what it needs by
armoring the river to protect the cropland, there are consequences downstream and at
other times for that sort of thing. (Segment III, Recreationalist, 2018)
I know that they’re paying people not to riprap, I know they’re taking some riprap out…
It’s a little dangerous for boaters... But as far as an opinion on whether it’s good or bad…
I, I, I see the people’s side of the story, they want the river to take the land as it always
has. And then if you own the land, I can see their point, where they’d like to kind of keep
their land, so. So, um, I do not have a personal opinion on whether that’s something that’s
right or wrong… The bass like the riprap… actually, there are riprap banks that we do
catch a lot of fish on… bait fish and, uh, crawdads and stuff like that… So…
sometimes… the deeper water makes for some pretty good habitat. (Segment III,
Recreationalist, 2018)
My personal opinion is, we’ve got to have a good balance. The City of Billings sits on the
Yellowstone River. There is no way we can let the channel of the Yellowstone River
migrate through the City of Billings. Can’t happen. It’s just economically, feasibly,
impossible. When we get down the river a-ways, and we get out of population, I think it’s
healthy for the river to migrate. So, taking those two snapshots that are very small,
considering the whole river basin, there’s just got to be a good balance between armoring,
riprapping, or whatever you want to call it, and channel migration. There’s got to be a
good balance. (Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2018)
A lot of people are…thinking it’s uncontrollable, and it should be free and just roam
wherever it wants to…. And that’s not my way of thinking. I think that…the Yellowstone
needs [some control] …. [At one location] they weren’t allowed even a permit to go
touch it because of new-aged thinking… “Let the river go where it wants.” … “It’s wild
and free; let it be wild and free.” … that’s the general consensus of the people that are
younger than us…. They don’t want to see the Yellowstone look like the LA River, and I
totally agree. You don’t want to see the Yellowstone or any of these rivers become just
cement troughs. I really think that’s people’s perception of what we’re trying to do, you
know, [as if] we would just cement it and call it all good. (Segment IV, Civic Leader,
2018)
There are some places that should have riprap. Of course, they’ve done some they
shouldn’t do too… Once in a while, someone will riprap theirs and then water has got to
go somewhere, so it goes across the river and over on someone else… when we lost a
bunch… somebody riprapped the other side of the river, and the water had to go
somewhere so more of it came over on us. (Segment V, Agriculturalist, 2018)
There’s huge chunks in the valley here where… maybe about 10% of any given float,
you’re going to be along a not natural bank… In a way, it’s hard to say whether that’s
really that bad or not. I don’t know. I have no idea. I mean, if the river ran up against the
cliff, you know… I mean you can see areas where the river would go up against the hard
3.BankStabilization:ShouldWe,orShouldn’tWe?|56
riprap, then ricochet back off other way and start to erode that bank rather than that one.
There’s an area here where it actually went behind a couple of barbs and dug out behind
the barbs, and now you’ve got this hard rock island kind of out in the middle of the river,
this riprap island that’s not even close to the bank anymore because the river just went
around it. So, I don’t know. (Segment V, Recreationalist, 2018)
The sad thing with these rivers is… there’s no room to roam…In the perfect world you
would let the river have enough area to swell and be itself…. We’re basically trying to
keep the river in a certain channel. You know, Paradise Valley is not very wide… That
river can affect a lot of things. You know, we basically work hard to keep it in the same
channel… It’s that same channel that hits the railroad bridges and the highway bridges to
go under the highways, and so it’s just not… it’s not allowed to swell and be natural…
Like I say, if it was a hundred years ago and we had better planning and understood that
better, then we probably could’ve done some things to mitigate that. (Segment V, Civic
Leader, 2018)
4.BankStabilization:HowWeDoIt|57
Section 4. Bank Stabilization: How We Do It
Riprap is a Known Strategy
Among landowners, and across all field seasons, it was easy to solicit comments about bank
stabilization practices. From riprap to jetties and barbs, to natural vegetative solutions,
landowners had clear opinions about effectiveness.
In 2006, many landowners simply described what they have done to their property, and several
explained that using the large rocks had been the most effective and longest lasting method.
Some landowners spoke highly of Bendway weirs. They explained the weirs were less expensive
and more aesthetically pleasing. Some mention that weirs are good for fisheries. However, they
cautioned that they must be installed correctly and can still disappear during high water. Some
claimed that vegetative alternatives are better in terms of the health of the system and that they
work well. Others claimed these “soft” alternatives did not work, especially because beaver can
easily destroy years of efforts. Finally, some attributed erosion problems to stabilization and
development projects upstream.
In 2018, participants similarly claimed that they had mixed results using vegetation for
stabilization. Some said that the best solution was to use a mix of riprap and vegetation. They
explained this technique was able to protect nature, and they believed it to be a more long-term
solution as compared to other methods.
Throughout the three field seasons, civic leaders and recreationalists added to the comments.
They often mentioned projects that were likely done without permits, or projects that would no
longer be permitted (car bodies and scrapped concrete slabs). At times, it is a comical
conversation that emphasized a “can-you-believe-it” interpretation of what people have tried to
stabilize banks. At the other times, the participants were more matter of fact, leaving
interviewers and analysist to wonder if the descriptions are subtle endorsements. More often,
participants expressed their disdain for these “out-of-date” approaches, and they said they were
supportive of regulations that resulted in “natural” bank stabilization solutions.
Notably, in 2018, one participant claimed a lack of understanding regarding why concrete blocks
were no longer allowed.
Riprap—2006
The best way to fix the erosion is to slope the bank and put rocks on it, or cement, or stuff
on it. I’ve done a stretch of it, probably 500 to 600 feet, and it doesn’t budge. But down
in front of the jetty, and behind the jetty, where they had one of these rock piles, they’ve
been kind of washed off, too. They’re not as severe now as when they first put them
out…but they kind of make the water go out and circle. So that creates wash, too, in the
back of it, and that’s what happening by my place. (Segment I, Agriculturalist, 2006)
4.BankStabilization:HowWeDoIt|58
I know of a spot down here, close to the state line, where years ago they tapered the bank
down, sloped it and put gravel down on it, and had trees grow. And it’s stabilized it pretty
well. (Segment I, Agriculturalist, 2006)
I guess, directly, we do not deal with [erosion]. We have some tributaries that we have to
deal with due to erosion.… [W]e have had to do some bank stabilization on [some of our
major creeks] …. We use rock, approved rock by the Corps of Engineers….It is all native
cottonwoods all along the Yellowstone bank…[and] the root systems help stabilize the
banks. (Segment I, Civic Leader, 2006)
We have some tributaries that we have to deal with due to erosion.,… [W]e have had to
do some bank stabilization on [some of our major creeks]….We use rock,…approved
rock by the Corps of Engineers….It is all native cottonwoods all along the Yellowstone
bank…[and] the root systems help stabilize the banks. (Segment I, Civic Leader, 2006)
The only riprap I’ve really seen that works is when they went down and [bull]dozed the
gravel out of the river and pushed it up…sloped it…If you keep it nice and smooth, the
ice doesn’t seem to bother that…. It’s got to be sloped so that it’s smooth. But we’ve got
the full force of the river because we’ve got a 90 degree turn. (Segment II,
Agriculturalist, 2006)
You slope the bank, then you cut a two and a half key down into the gravel [and] backfill
that with large rock. We put, I think, eight inches of gravel on the side slope and on top of
that, we put a yard and a half of big rocks per foot. It was just riprap. (Segment II,
Agriculturalist, 2006)
I planted grass along there and it’s kind of sodded-up now. And we have one spot where
it makes the curve, and the water hits it pretty hard. And I’ve had to put a couple of big
rocks in there now and then, because it’s trying to eat a hole into the riprap. If it would do
that, it would just wash it out, like water. I watch that pretty close, [and] when it looks
like it’s pretty weak, we get another rock or two down there…I suppose maybe in 50
years [it] might disintegrate. I can see a little bit of that on that now. It’s okay. (Segment
II, Agriculturalist, 2006)
It worked. The place is still there. The river has changed and actually it has gained
because the river went back north. So, I guess [the riprap] was a worthwhile project for
us. (Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2006)
Years ago, we did a lot of rock work and that is the only thing that has saved half of the
farm. (Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2006)
I don’t know where he got those boulders from. He put some money into it, [and] he was
able to get a pretty good tax break when he put those big boulders in the river down
there….You’ve got to use rocks big enough to withstand heaving force of water,
especially ice….[The rocks are] aesthetically pleasing….In fact, you’ll hardly see them
because the vegetation has covered them up now….If it hadn’t been for that riprap, I
4.BankStabilization:HowWeDoIt|59
wouldn’t own the land that I own now,…because the river would be in the middle of this
field down next to the river. (Segment III, Residentialist, 2006)
You know, there is a lot of agriculture that is being affected by what the river is doing….
If it takes its course, it moves all over the place…It is going to do what it well pleases,
but maybe we can stabilize it…. We put a lot of riprap in since [the flood] I have been
here. Probably close to 500 to 1000 feet worth of riprap and we have applied for more.
(Segment IV, Agriculturalist, 2006)
The riprap and the ironclad are the most effective if it is done right…. I am more for the
agriculture and saving your property. (Segment IV, Agriculturalist, 2006)
You need to use big rocks. You don’t want to put in small stuff, or it will wash away. It
has to be done according to soil conservation specifications and all that. Big rocks on a
bank are the best way. (Segment V, Agriculturalist, 2006)
Something that will work is hard riprap and barbs…None of that [soft riprap] has ever
worked on the Yellowstone. I can see where it might work on a river or stream that is not
as violent. (Segment V, Agriculturalist, 2006)
Riprap—2018
I think they’re just going, “Well, we’ll just go riprap the river at that point.” But that it’s
not just that point, you need to do the whole area if you’re going to stabilize it.
Otherwise, it does just what happened to the railroad down here. They put all these
structures in to stop the river from meandering and it washed behind them. And once it
does that, it makes it 2 or 3 times worse or more. Yeah. It really takes it out and it forms a
rock island for a while. Yeah, you can still see remnants of that down below Intake.
There’s some of those jetties that they made, and they didn’t maintain them. And they got
behind them and now it just went… They’re out in the middle of the river… That’s why
you say, if you’re going to do anything like that, it takes constant monitoring and
maintenance if you’re going to keep those things working. And sometimes they don’t
even work at all. They don’t understand. It’s pretty hard to design for anything that can
happen on this river. If you get a 200-year flood like we had in 2011, that’s not what you
designed for. (Segment I, Residentialist, 2018)
He had a bunch of riprap… [Later], instead of the old riprap.… [they used] water bars
kind of downstream at an angle so they’re angled downstream… but you got to really
have the bank riprapped. That last high water… cut in behind it. And they only let him go
so far, you know… is it three hundred feet… He lost all that. That rock was out in the
river, and it cut worse, you know. (Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2018)
My folks lost a lot of nice farmland in the river bottom from erosion, and it was hard to
dike those days. And money wasn’t there, and they didn’t know how to do it. But now
it’s all riprapped, the whole ranch pretty much, but it still bothers out there… When it all
got riprapped… my dad had been doing it off and on for years in certain spots, but when
4.BankStabilization:HowWeDoIt|60
the hillside slid in as you turn up the canyon, they took all that debris and threw it along
the river and diked it for him. They had to have a place to put it… [this was] probably in
the 1960’s. (Segment V, Residentialist, 2018)
We’ve added riprap… Just rocks, big boulders… [but] but I have seen places on the river
where people have tried to riprap, and it seems like they just hauled a bunch of rocks in
and dumped them there. And eventually the rocks kind of erode down into the river,
which I don’t think is all bad, but at the same time it, you know, defeats the purpose of
riprap if it’s going to wash back into the river… We also… own the land against the
tributary, which is Mill Creek… And we have done just minor things in high water
season… once in a while, we’ll have to maybe cut a tree out or something just to allow
the water to go where it needs to… I’ll just hook onto it with a tractor or use a chainsaw.
(Segment V, Recreationalist, 2018)
And we are very concerned… with the erosion that we’re having on the river… But the
river rocks that Pete put in place to make a small barrier—and it was simply river rocks
because we don’t want something foreign either there—did a good job. But we feel like
we’re going to probably have to put more there in the spring, because this year was a
good test. We lost a couple more trees, but they were on the verge of being lost anyway,
were hanging there… I don’t worry about the house so much. It’s just loss of property
and erosion… You know, common sense told him to place the rock there, the river rock.
And we may have to get another load in this spring and get the tractor out and plant them
there, because the University, like 10 years ago, whenever, they stuck sticks in… All of
that was full of twigs… It never did work… the water came and took them away again. It
wasn’t effective… If we need to take more action… just putting those natural river rocks,
you’ll see them, it did control it… but it was $10,000. I mean, it’s money, where you’d
go out with dirt and rocks and build a tree system, but that river is forceful. It’s powerful.
And there’s no guarantee after that work that it’s going to be sustainable… So, we are
trying to use our head. (Segment V, Recreationalist, 2018)
Alternatives Strategies to Riprap
Alternatives to Riprap—2006
The jetty is a quicker solution. It doesn’t take as much rock or cement. (Segment I,
Agriculturalist, 2006)
They seem to be having pretty good luck with the jetties…. They are a little less
expensive than completely riprapping the bank…. They seem to kick that water out, and
it will silt back in-behind the jetty. (Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2006)
The barbs, they’re looking to be very effective. We have one over here, [but I] haven’t
had time to get in the river with the boat. I wanted to take another look at it, to see how
well it’s working. It worked well last year. I think it’s a good approach as long as it
doesn’t wash out the neighbor on the other side. (Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2006)
4.BankStabilization:HowWeDoIt|61
I kind of like the idea instead of armoring the banks, use barbs or jetties to try to move
the velocity of the stream…you got to take into account the nature of the force you are
dealing with, the water. Some techniques are just going to be less impacting, dealing with
that hydraulic force, and they are going to be more effective. (Segment II,
Recreationalist, 2006)
I’ve seen a lot of different things. In my mind, the riprap is the worst that there is because
it just protects the bank at that location. Generally, it gets eroded behind it. You see those
old riprap trails in the middle of the river eventually. I’ve seen the river barbs that come
out and they’re oriented upstream, and basically it diverts the flow away from the bank.
These are navigable. You can still go over them in low flows or avoid them in low flows.
They don’t go across the river. (Segment III, Civic Leader, 2006)
The Conservation District encourages people to put the barbs out…. The barbs seem to
be working pretty good, and then plant vegetation there…. I think [those methods] cause
less impact downstream. (Segment V, Residentialist, 2006)
We actually looked at using riprap. We used to do a lot of riprap work.…And it was just
lining the bank…[to] keep the bank from eroding, but you don’t…really do anything
about that. The weirs…actually slow the water down next to the bank and you don’t have
to line the entire bank with rock or concrete…. So, it will fill back in with grass and
trees…. It looks much better when it’s done and matures. And it is less expensive than
lining the bank in its entirety. We just felt that was the best option. (Segment III,
Residentialist, 2006)
We put weirs in…. [They were] incredibly successful…. If it is done right, it works very,
very well. We spend a lot of money and time and energy enhancing wildlife on a property
like this that we are not compensated for. We do it because we like to…. I spent hundreds
of thousands of dollars doing the project we did on the river, doing the weirs the way we
did it, engineered right. (Segment III, Residentialist, 2006)
[Weirs] are a good idea. A guy…just put some in a while ago. They seem to be helping a
lot…. In some cases, [weirs are preferable to riprap] …. [Now,] putting a weir in still
causes an eddy behind it that I think would cause some erosion when the water gets that
high.…You can see some kind of scalloped areas behind it. But it does push, helps push
the current out away from the bank. (Segment III, Residentialist, 2006)
Bendway weirs…[can] angle the river 20 degrees and they gently move it across to the
other side…. It’s moving the river…. You can just see how it hits the first one…. Then it
subtly moves it out to the second, third, fourth…. My experience has been the weirs
create habitat. There’s more fish behind the weirs…. The weirs are a blessing that’s not
intrusive, creates growth, creates fisheries. (Segment III, Residentialist, 2006)
We used Bendway weirs. I think we put in six of those…. We have had very good
success with the weirs except one…. They simply keep the power of the water away from
the bank. They don’t wash out the side of the river. You don’t ruin anything downstream,
4.BankStabilization:HowWeDoIt|62
which is a common belief. They don’t seem to be like the hard stuff where you throw the
current to the other side. They are gentler…. DNRC had some money a few years ago
and they funded 75 percent of the weirs for the ditch company. (Segment III,
Agriculturalist, 2006)
The Yellowstone is so powerful that we get water behind the weirs, and it washes behind
them…. The placement of the very first one is critical. If you don’t get it right, it will
wash behind it…. That is the hard part…. The person designing those spent an entire year
on that…[and] the next spring the river washed away 20 feet of river, and we were back
at square one…. These were the most highly engineered weirs on the Yellowstone. They
must have spent 200 hours on the planning, and they had two people on site watching the
placement of every rock. So, there couldn’t have been any more scrutiny on a set of
weirs. It is not an exact science, but they work most of the time. (Segment III,
Agriculturalist, 2006)
[I heard about] a new idea and in some places it really works. What they do is build a
rock weir on an angle out into the river. The Canyon Creek Irrigation District has put
some of those in, and they work very well. (Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2006)
Bendway weirs. They go into the upstream about a 45-degree angle maybe. You dig them
in, and you run them back into the bank…. When the high water comes, it flows over the
top actually, and it pushes that stream [away from the bank].… [The weir] doesn’t cause
that scouring effect on the edge. Where, if you put riprap out on the edge of the bank, it
tends to scour and get deeper and deeper next to the bank… [the weirs are] much better
than armoring. We’ve had experience with it—made a believer out of me. And these are
high, pretty fastmoving waters. Yeah, it’s been used a lot over the years. I think a lot of
people weren’t really thinking they would work, but they do. They actually do work. If
they’re put in correctly, and you have a big enough rock, and they’re dug in so they’re in
deep, and the angle is correct on them, [then] they sure do work.… [And they are]
cheaper than armoring…. You only have to have them every 150 or 300 feet, whatever it
might be. So, you just build them, and we put in three or four.... The first year, high water
actually ran over them, but they survived. It worked good. It worked just the way it’s
supposed to. You know, everything doesn’t work the same everywhere, but a
combination maybe—I was sure impressed with them. (Segment IV, Civic Leader, 2006)
Alternatives to Riprap—2018
We did until I put a big dike up there in ’67 06 ‘68… I put a big dike where it washed
out. I didn’t dam the slough; you can’t dam a slough up. But I put a dike where it washed
out. And it used to flood 60, 70 acres out here. And then… we put a big dike in it, but it
still comes down the slough but not enough where it will flood it…. It was on my land
[so I did not need a permit]. (Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2018)
We’ve lost about probably a hundred feet along the river, but we did a bank
stabilization… and now it’s [doing] pretty well… weirs… There’s a series of them that
start up around that curve, go all the way down… every neighbors’ got one [laughs]…
4.BankStabilization:HowWeDoIt|63
It’s like fifteen hundred feet, I think. Don’t hold me to that, but I know it’s close… They
didn’t work as well at first when they weren’t put in properly. You have to get the angle
right… but we redid them one time and they seem to be working. (Segment III,
Residentialist, 2018)
They are developing things like weir systems that have a better effect, that don’t do quite
as much damage to the riverside and to the flow of the stream (Segment III, Civic Leader,
2018)
We did a bunch of weirs and armoring on the bank… Oh, it’s been twenty years ago
probably. When we bought the place, we knew it needed a lot of work and pretty much
started working to get the permits right after we got the place. It’s been quite a process…
We were losing a lot of land. And the previous owner had done some work, we had it re-
engineered and just wanted to try and do it right so that it held up well and didn’t affect
anybody downstream as well… [but] we lost probably forty acres right after we had
bought the place, and we had some pivots and the house that would have been in
jeopardy… [in] 2011… We los[t] a little bit, but most of it we had done the weirs and
armoring to where it worked pretty well… we have a bunch of weirs and then there’s
some rock and size concrete armoring in between the weirs…. There were some [older]
jetties that were put in on the other side of the river that obviously shot it straight across
to us. (Segment III, Residentialist, 2018)
Riparian Health and Vegetative Alternatives—2006
We do have erosion. This riverbank, where you noticed all the brush, if we hadn’t been
putting [brush] over that bank for thirty to forty years, that bank would be over here in the
middle of the street. [The brush] stops the erosion…. They will have to do something
about the bank, down here. [With] another big, heavy rain…it is going to wash it out.
(Segment I, Residentialist, 2006)
I don’t want that bank to wash away…. So, I put in a lot of Daylilies, to hold the soil.
They are real good to hold the soil…. Most of these people cut the trees down and put in
grass, but the tree roots hold it so that is why I wasn’t about to have my trees cut down.
(Segment I, Residentialist, 2006)
We had a hole starting in the bank. I took some Russian olives and set them over the
bank. I set the root on the next tree on the limbs and kind of stacked them up. We raise
hay barley and wherever we plow a ditch, we would have to swath through there, because
you have this hay barley in the ditch. I baled off the hay barley when it was green with no
twine. I dumped that big green bale on the Russian olives and spaced them out. The next
year I came back [and] it was all silted up and kept it from washing away. It was building
and [it] protected the bank…. If they could take the Russian olives, which are basically a
weed, and clean them out [it would help]. All of the limbs and leaves collect debris in the
water…. I think they should take a stretch of water and try it. What if it worked? It would
be a cheap fix. Look at a beaver dam; parts will wash out and they repair it. This system
here, you may have to have Russian olives or willows sitting there to put back in, but you
4.BankStabilization:HowWeDoIt|64
could repair it. If it doesn’t work, then figure something else out. I think it is worth a shot.
(Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2006)
We converted it all to grass and in order to conserve the banks. We’ve let [the] creek
grow wild and planted trees along there and planted shrubs and bushes to hold [the
bank]…. Those [cottonwoods] are just seven years old….And these guys are 70 years
old, these big ones here….They just do so well down there and anything that grows on
the bank I just encourage it’s growth because it holds the bank. (Segment III,
Residentialist, 2006)
We sloped, with a little bit of dirt, and put some grass clumps in there—some snake grass
[and] Bermuda grass, and then we put willows in there. Last year, we had one of the
biggest floods we had ever had, and it held up just fine. I have done some on my
property, but I put small sandstone, small, and [I] mixed dirt in with it, and it held
tremendously. (Segment IV, Recreationalist, 2006)
I don’t know that there is a whole lot you can do [about erosion]. The river starts to move
and…you can plant trees. That is probably what is holding the dike together right now.
Tree roots are a great thing. (Segment V, Civic Leader, 2006)
[Riprap] can divert water. It can shift the problems up or down….The reason that I
probably might not do the riprap is I’d lose ten years of vegetation that’s out there since
the last flood and the vegetation is as good or better than hard riprap…[and] once I talked
to some people who explained that to me, I don’t really want to tear it up to put some
rock in…but [the information] didn’t come from any of the [government agencies.]
(Segment V, Residentialist, 2006)
They have some new things they are trying. It’s a blanket thing, and they plant willow
trees in it. [It is] working on small streams, but it won’t work on the Yellowstone. The
beavers come along and eat the willows off that. (Segment V, Agriculturalist, 2006)
Try to use natural solutions first as far as planting things…. Layering the bank, anchoring
root wads in the bank. (Segment V, Recreationalist, 2006)
I think you have to have rocks. If you do it right with vegetation, I think you could do a
pretty fair job. I could show you on our place…one place where it has worked very well
with vegetative growth, but [it doesn’t work] in every place…. I think vegetation with
rock would be a great way to go, so long as it’s done in a way that you’re not going to
cause damage downstream from you. (Segment V, Residentialist, 2006)
Don’t be too hard on the people that live on the river. I don’t have the money to make big
changes…. I had a bunch of cottonwoods growing and the beavers came and ate every
one of them. There went my stabilizing…. [The beavers] are really destructive. I am
trying to keep this place.… [even though] the moose come, and they eat everything they
see, I am not going anywhere. I am going to stay here. (Segment V, Residentialist, 2006)
4.BankStabilization:HowWeDoIt|65
Vegetation is one of the key factors [in helping with erosion,] if it’s done…right.
(Segment V, Residentialist, 2006)
There is only a certain amount of [stabilization trees will] do. You try and get willows
started in a sand bar…sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn’t. (Segment V, Civic
Leader, 2006)
[The river and the riparian areas are] less healthy for two reasons. One, there’s been a lot
of development taking place—I’m talking the entire river, not just around Billings. And
[two]…miles and miles of channelization of the river…that very seriously compromises
the riparian zone. So, sure, it’s gone downhill a lot in the last 30 years. (Segment III,
Recreationalist, 2006)
I think that the erosion problem….is a result of stream straightening. You don’t have the
cottonwood growth to hold the banks and keep the erosion down. (Segment III,
Recreationalist, 2006)
I think good riparian management is probably the major way that we keep erosion down.
There is a lot of shrubs and grass. (Segment V, Agriculturalist, 2006)
Riparian Health and Vegetative Alternatives—2018
There’s been erosion on the river. Some of it has been our fault as farmers, and some of it
we have learned to… well, I leave a buffer zone now between fields and the river for
willows and trees… Approximately a hundred yards, maybe 75 yards between the fields
and the river… I suppose [I’ve been doing that] for the last 40 years probably, just
because early years, you know, we didn’t know better. We leveled the ground right close
to the river and it started going away so the field went away. And we spent money to
level it, so I decided well, this isn’t any good. So, we started leaving an area and try to
leave it there… It does [help with erosion]. There’s enough roots and things there. It isn’t
the total answer, but it’s better than leaving it bare and sandy…I just want to do try to do
what I think is good for the long term… for the future, there’s a riverbank down there
that’s accessible and is holding the water kind of in the river instead of making a marsh
out of the whole area here. I don’t know… I mean I’m not involved in any practices
maybe not even very firm on the ones that I believe in, I mean that I believe in just for
myself. I arrange it so that it’s convenient for me. (Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2018)
We have places where we literally cut down all the trees and got rid of the shrubbery
along our river to make it a beautiful deal, we can’t be doing that anymore. We have to
transplant stuff back in there to stop the erosion that we get from Mother Nature… And
I’m sure there are other ways of doing it but helping Mother Nature along by planting
shrubs and trees back along the river, that would do a lot of it. (Segment III, Civic
Leader, 2018)
4.BankStabilization:HowWeDoIt|66
I’m sure it limits the erosion with the good grass, and even the Russian olives. The more
vegetation, the less erosion I believe, so that’s all good, I think. (Segment III,
Residentialist, 2018)
There is a lot of rock, a lot a lot of rock in there, thank goodness. And the rock as kept
some soils intact, and I have planted more trees in order to stabilize it. As things go away,
I keep planting something back in place… it helps. (Segment IV, Residentialist, 2018)
We did put in quite a bit of riprap, and they said, oh, plant willows and this and that. High
water will tear all that stuff to pieces. It will take trees this big around. So, what’s a little
willow going to do? … You can plant all the trees you want to; it just don’t work. And I
know that’s part of the criteria. When you do riprap, you are supposed to plant trees and
all this or willows, but it’s a waste of time. Gives somebody a job [laughs]. (Segment IV,
Agriculturalist, 2018)
It seems like there’s been a little bit of an increased use of sort of smart bank
stabilization, you know, where they’re sticking the root balls of trees out and the trunks
way back into the bank. And that seems to work better. (Segment V, Recreationalist,
2018)
The other thing we’re doing nowadays, we’re not doing as much riprap, like I don’t do it
at all. My parents’ place, they’ve had some erosion due to the last flood, and we’re doing
a more natural-based bank stabilization, you know, planting and buildup, that sort of
stuff. Of course, that costs a little bit more and it doesn’t necessarily last as long, so that’s
an ethic question, right? Not everybody is going to do it. Some people are... I think we
can solve for channel migration via allowing people to do that sort of stuff. (Segment V,
Recreationalist, 2018)
Older and Nonpermitted Strategies
Other Things that People Do—2006
There isn’t too much to do about [erosion]…. They piled debris from the old high school
right here on the riverbank and that is what protected our riverbank. It stays…permanent.
And when the water comes down, it keeps it out. (Segment I, Residentialist, 2006)
When Grandpa was actively farming, we had this one spot that would always want to
erode. And, he’d just go get cement, or iron, or anything—just a bunch of junk car bodies
and throw it in there—and it’d stop.... You have got to have something solid, like
concrete, or lay down a bunch of rebar…to where it isn’t going to move. I don’t really
know what the answer is, but I know that’s just we’d do. Grandpa would say, ‘Go get the
cement, and put it in that hole that always washes.’ It, really, never did get any worse.
(Segment I, Agriculturalist, 2006)
This one contractor was taking out houses and stumps, so he asked me whether he could
bring these foundations down here along the river. But pretty soon [others started
4.BankStabilization:HowWeDoIt|67
bringing] junk and trash…. I couldn’t be down there all the time. Signs didn’t do…[any]
good. So, I got after it, and I cleaned it up, and burned all that I could. And then put all
the cement on the edge, and that part works. (Segment I, Agriculturalist, 2006)
They keep saying plant trees to stop erosion and the best riprap they have ever had is old
cars. They have been there forever, and they are mashed but they are still there. (Segment
II, Recreationalist, 2006)
Leave it like it is. It has been working pretty…[well] for quite a while. I say that the old
cars are the best riprap they ever had, if it is up against the bank. We have been looking at
them so long, they aren’t unsightly to us. (Segment II, Recreationalist, 2006)
We can get riprap for nothing…. People are glad to get rid of it because they have to pay
to take it to the dump. Whenever [my husband] sees a new project going on…he’ll stop
and tell them they can come out and dump it here…. But we don’t put anything in the
water that has any steel rebar in it. Absolutely not…. That’s just plumb outta the question
because people come by here in a rubber raft. A three-quarter-inch piece of rebar sticking
up—what do you think that would do to a rubber raft? (Segment III, Agriculturalist,
2006)
We were all out on the riverbank…and [one man] asked, ‘What’s the problem with car
bodies?’ And [an agency man] says, ‘It’s the oil and the rust.’ I said, ‘Yeah, I can
understand that, but when I go to Billings and this old vehicle in front of me… [is
making] a puddle of oil…. Where does that go when it rains?’ He says, ‘It goes in the
river’…. That kind of tells me that a 100,000 people make it right, and one individual
makes it wrong. (Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2006)
We used to just push cars in the river. I remember along the Milk River…. What an ugly
sight, but it worked. There were places they’d have half a mile of cars piled up, just push
them off into the river for riprap. They were allowed to do that at that time. They’re all
gone now. (Segment III, Civic Leader, 2006)
I don’t want old cars down there and I don’t want any concrete riprap. If it could be done
naturally, I don’t want the Yellowstone turned into a ditch. We were down in California
and the Colorado River is a ditch and it made me very sad. (Segment III, Agriculturalist,
2006)
Fortunately, they’ve changed the rules of riprap. You don’t get to throw your old car
bodies and things like that. When you start dealing with riprap, that’s not…[natural]. I
would rather do it naturally, if we can. (Segment II, Civic Leader, 2006)
Definitely, they should not be using old cars or junk or tires that move suddenly. [They]
are dangerous and don’t stay where they are put. I’d just as soon not see concrete with
rebar. I’d just as soon not see concrete at all. If they need to stabilize those banks, then
I’d just as soon see them use some natural rock or try to establish vegetation to do that.
With a river like the Yellowstone, you’re never going to get vegetation to hold the
4.BankStabilization:HowWeDoIt|68
Yellowstone back anyway. But, if they really, really have to do it, I’d say hard, natural
stone is the best way to go. (Segment II, Recreationalist, 2006)
At least they don’t use old cars anymore. It doesn’t really bother me, [but] I’m glad they
don’t do it now. It’s almost become part of history. There’s a ’56 Ford in the bank! I’m
really glad they don’t do it now. If you had a chance, it’d be nice to remove some of
them, but they’re part of the town…. They call it the ‘Drive-in on the Big Horn,’ where
there’s 50, 60, 70 cars, but I’m glad they don’t do it anymore. (Segment IV,
Recreationalist, 2006)
I’m just glad they finally decided not to use car bodies anymore [for riprap]. You still see
a few of them when you go down…We just have to learn that this river will not stay
pristine unless we take care of it. (Segment V, Recreationalist, 2006)
Other Things that People Do—2018
He’ll take concrete that doesn't have any rebar, and he sets it up on the bank, and when it
rolls off it serves as riprap because the Corps won't let you riprap it anymore. But if it's
sitting on his ground and it happens to get in there because it washes away, well then it
serves as natural riprap. But he makes sure that there is no rebar—like sidewalks, a lot of
sidewalks don’t have rebar, so you can dump it there. (Segment I, Civic Leader, 2018)
Well, it's illegal to put concrete. You know, people will break up driveways and they'll
put it in the river to keep the water from eroding, and that is illegal to do, but if they
dump it up on top and then the river comes and wears it and it falls in, that's ok. There
again, government thinking. (Segment I, Recreationalist, 2018)
Our son when he was in high school, he used to go right straight down on the riverbank
over here, where there’s old concrete and stuff from when the high school burned down
and they rebuilt it, they threw it over the riverbank to build up the bank. (Segment I,
Residentialist, 2018)
I did a little experiment one time. I went down there and put like haybales or strawbales
down in the water. And then, when they soak up with water of course, the river will go
over the top of them and it creates silt. And it silted in-behind the bales, and pretty soon I
had a tall grass growing, and I had some willows growing on there. And two years later
they cranked open these hydroelectric dams that just cleaned everything right out. Took
all of that stabilization. I was just experimenting to see if you could do it, and it was
working. I mean stuff was starting to grow in there again, and those bales held the ground
and the silt, and everything was coming in there—Russian olives, and willows, and that
tall grass was growing on those bales… I don’t know if I should have been doing it in the
river, but I mean it was stabilizing that thing. But then when they cranked the dams open,
it just took it all out. (Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2018)
But now last year, we had quite a bit of high water again… And for the first time in my
lifetime…the river changed at our inlet—totally changed… A rock fell off a cliff
4.BankStabilization:HowWeDoIt|69
upstream. And then a snag laid in there, and it was diverting [the water] back out… My
neighbor and I went up and he says, “What are we going to do? … You got any ideas?” I
said, “I’ve got one, but… I don’t know if they’ll throw us in jail or what they’re going to
do!” [All laugh] … So, I contacted Darryl Wilson with Yellowstone River Parks, and I
said, “Darryl… We’re in a pickle… Would you give us access in through the park with a
track hoe?” … And he says, “Do what you’ve got to do.” … So, we went in there and got
that [rock and snag] out. And [we] got the water coming right at us [which] cleaned out
our inlet—got the silt out. We actually force-fed it. (Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2018)
You can’t control that water. We tried; one night we were out until midnight trying to get
riprap in enough to stop it. We were dumping concrete head gates, which is now against
the law, but we were trying to save that. And they were huge, and as soon as they
dropped in that water, you could hear them going clunk, clunk, clunk. That river was just
rolling them. They were probably weighing two tons. But you would hear them just
rolling down. (Segment IV, Agriculturalist, 2018)
You know, at one time we used old cars. We had an old Ford down here in the riverbank.
And we used to measure the depth of the Yellowstone by how far the water was up on the
windshield of that old Ford car. And now they got numbers on the bridge, we got to look
at those. But I miss those old Fords [laughs]. (Segment IV, Civic Leader, 2018)
That old river used to come up high every year. And in doing so, it would run across
these guys’ land…and cut off a whole bunch of their grazing. So, they took a Cat and got
in there. And nothing was ever said, but they got in there and closed those seams where it
would run [away from their land]. It probably saved, oh, 50 acres of grazing land for their
sheep, so they were happy. And nobody ever said a word. This was a long time ago, you
know…. Now, they’d string ‘em up. These environmental cops would come along and
string ‘em up. (Segment IV, Civic Leader, 2018)
Cars? [Laughs]. That worked really good. That was great stabilization—It worked!
(Segment V, Agriculturalist, 2018)
Most of it, we did ourselves… And we just used material that we had, you know… take
some dirt and mixed it with some gravel… I’m sure that somebody could find a problem
with it today. Because things have changed a lot since the early 70’s… as to what you can
do, and what you can’t do, according to someone, somewhere… (Segment III,
Agriculturalist, 2018)
People used to use concrete, and car bodies, and that kind of stuff. But you know, they’re
not allowed to do that anymore, and I can see why. I think that there’s only certain types
of rock and stuff that you can use to prevent erosion now… Lots of times I’ve fished in a
spot where there was old Cadillacs and Buicks. You get hung up and say, “Oh, got a
Buick”…. I think that probably the not using car bodies and that kind of stuff is an
excellent idea… I think concrete would be okay, I mean I’m sure they don’t allow it
anymore, but I don’t think concrete and rebar would hurt anything. (Segment III,
Recreationalist, 2018)
5.BankStabilization:DecisionsandConsequences|70
Section 5. Bank Stabilization: Decisions and Consequences
Participants identified several concerns and complications that must be considered when
contemplating bank stabilization activities. The concerns focused on these questions: Will it
work as intended? How long will it last? How much will it cost?
Many participants stated it was extremely difficult to predict how the river would react to
different projects. They often cited their own experiences of how bank stabilization projects
apparently caused a negative impact down river.
Bank stabilization projects designed to protect public infrastructure—mostly roads and
railroads—along the Yellowstone River were identified as the main culprits when discussing the
impacts of bank stabilization. Others viewed these large projects as necessary to protect
community interests. Some explained that large stabilization projects seemingly happen without
the same permitting constraints and timelines experienced by smaller landowners, even though
the large projects apparently alter the river in significant ways.
Two concerns were often tied together: costs and longevity. Participants who considered
stabilization projects often stated that these two factors were their primary reasons for not
pursuing bank stabilization, despite needing such projects to protect property. In 2006 and
20018, stabilization projects were often deemed too expensive.
Another way to “live with” river bank erosion was explained as learning to simply accept it and
allow it to happen. Comments in 2012 and 2018 revealed the topic of channel migration
easements was becoming of interest among participants; some explained the specific pros and
cons of implementing such a program. In each field season, a few participants noted that the only
the “wealthy” folks coming to Montana had enough resources to engage in conservation-minded
practices.
Fixing Problems/Making Problems
Unintended Consequences—2006
There [are] guys that put in little rows of rocks and stuff to push the river away from their
bank, so it’s going down like this. This guy does it, this guy does it on this side, so it
kicks up more that way from them doing that…. It pushed the river that way, so then
those guys over there pushed it back this way. (Segment III, Residentialist, 2006)
It cuts into one side, and it changes the [bank] across the river. For every action there
seems to be a reaction. (Segment I, Agriculturalist, 2006)
The river is the river, and you are not going to control it. If you are doing something here,
it is going to affect something, or someone, down there. High school geology taught me
that. (Segment IV, Residentialist, 2006)
5.BankStabilization:DecisionsandConsequences|71
In my opinion, most of all the riprap projects…have been done wrong. It’s because
people have not taken the time to assess, ‘What am I doing? What do I want this to look
like? and What are the true reasons [why] I am doing this?’ You know, if you analyze all
those things before you go in there…hopefully you’d come to the realization that you’d
give the river some room. So that when it comes its day in June that it needs to go over
the banks…. It has…[somewhere] to go. You could stack the dirt up 40 feet high and just
keep narrowing it up. Well, the river is going to rev up so fast that Jesus Christ himself
couldn’t stand on the bank and keep the bank from disappearing…. I mean, we just got to
pay attention. (Segment I, Agriculturalist, 2006)
Taking a look at the entire river is the right way to go. Sometimes you can make
individual changes, and you are not really sure of the effects up or down river. I know we
have a channel that has changed three times in the last fifty or sixty years. It goes from
one side of the island to the other. There has to be something upstream causing it to do
that…. For example, when the state highway department built the interstate bridge down
here, we developed an island that had never been there before. I am sure they had no clue
that was going to happen. (Segment I, Civic Leader, 2006)
Erosion is constant…. It is influenced by runoff from the mountains…. [And,] with this
soil composition here, you can see where this basin has stretched. [The river] wants to
travel. People built close to the water, and now they are trying to armor the river to keep
it from traveling, and it is a [lost] cause…. The problem is, if [we address erosion] here,
we’re affecting everything downstream. They have learned that…small changes on this
river cause major changes downstream…. We have a bridge out here that [the river]
flowed straight through the piers. It now flows [parallel] to the bridge. Minor changes
have had major effects on that river…. You can’t control this river…. One year, this guy
lost 600 feet of agriculture land. (Segment I, Civic Leader, 2006)
I have seen a number of riprap problems. The irrigation project did it to keep from losing
ditches. If you happen to be on the other side of the river you say, “I wish you wouldn’t
do that.” (Segment I, Agriculturalist, 2006)
If somebody had done that on the other side, I would be mad because why [should they]
push it over to my side? (Segment I, Agriculturalist, 2006)
When you look at [this] bridge, there’s twenty feet of silt built up there. If it isn’t there,
it’s going to be in the dam. If it isn’t [in the dam] it’s going to be in the Missouri, or the
Mississippi. That’s why I believe in riprap to stabilize the banks. I believe in rock jetties.
But if you put a rock jetty on one side, you’ve got to stabilize it on the other side…. And,
if you don’t stop it, then it just eats, and then it starts meandering on the other side.
(Segment I, Agriculturalist, 2006)
My gut tells me…if they look at the entire river, they get a better feel for what [upstream]
changes can do [downstream]. I have heard stories about how, all of the sudden the
channel changes, taking away a bank upstream, and all of the sudden a farmer has lost
100-feet of his field. I have, also, heard stories about someone riprapping their bank, and
5.BankStabilization:DecisionsandConsequences|72
pretty soon you have another adverse effect downstream. The natural course of the river
has been altered. (Segment I, Civic Leader, 2006)
People have tried to put in rock jetties because they were trying to save their land. Let’s
say they put it on the left side of the river…. He didn’t think about what effect it had
when it went to the other side. So, the guy on the other side says, ‘Oh, wait a minute, now
mine’s starting.’ So, he puts one. We can learn from that. There may be ways that we can
protect [it], and I really feel that it should be protected…. [but] over the years even those
[rock jetties] have been destroyed. (Segment I, Civic Leader, 2006)
Riprap works pretty-well…I think the river is going to do what it is going to do.…I could
riprap this, and I have always heard that if you do that, it will take it someplace else.
(Segment I, Residentialist, 2006)
That’s another problem; you riprap on one side, and you’re shoving that water back over
on another guy. He’s going to be a squawking…. It wouldn’t do…[anything] to the rivers
at all, but it would take away from the natural beauty of it. I mean, you drive down the
river and it is all rocks, which aren’t supposed to be there, you know. (Segment I,
Residentialist, 2006)
You have a bend in the river up here by Billings somewhere and they put some riprap
here because it’s cutting. They put a bunch of riprap in here and all it’s doing
is…narrow[ing] it down. It just creates more energy, and it just erodes over here.
(Segment I, Agriculturalist, 2006)
Well, it can stabilize the bank, but you’re changing the hydraulics of the stream, so
you’re going to get a change somewhere else. You’re going to deflect it somewhere else
or change the deflection somewhere else…and it’s going to be hitting the bank differently
someplace else. (Segment II, Recreationalist, 2006)
I don’t think they are going to be able to say, ‘I am going to keep this point where it is.’
[Not with] riprap or whatever…. They may stabilize it there, but they will move it
somewhere else. (Segment II, Recreationalist, 2006)
You get a guy with more money than he knows what to do with, and he’s paid tens of
thousands of dollars an acre for land along the river, and here comes the damn river and
starts washing [his land] away. Now he can afford to do something about that, and he will
do it. What he doesn’t understand is that the degree to which he does that, it is going to
hammer the guy downstream. So, he has [created] unintended consequences which he’s
not responsible for—he should be. (Segment III, Recreationalist, 2006)
The natural processes of the river [include] erosion and deposition…. I understand why
[people who live near the river] would [want to stop erosion], but from a geologic or
scientific viewpoint, once someone affects one part of the river it will affect another part
of the river. There are consequences…. If you put in…riprap, then that may cause
scouring in some places and deposition in others. You may be affecting your
5.BankStabilization:DecisionsandConsequences|73
neighbors…. Those types of things need to be considered…. I think it is important to
approach this from the scientific point of view. (Segment III, Civic Leader, 2006)
Even in Yellowstone County, we have a lot of extreme bank armoring. You can see it in
very site-specific areas where the armoring has caused erosion just right downstream
from it. The velocity increases where the bank is armored, and you get swirls and eddies
downstream that cut into the bank…. On a site-by-site case you can see evidence of how
armoring really does change the dynamics downstream. It’s not [only] development; it
may just be a farmer trying to save his field. It doesn’t have to be a subdivision, housing
development. (Segment III, Civic Leader, 2006)
If you stabilize the bank in one area and…don’t really do a good hydraulic evaluation,
you’re going to erode something downstream. The river has to dissipate energy, and it’s
going to dissipate it by eroding the next guy’s bank. If you graze off all of the riparian
plants along the river, you’re going to have a whole lot more sediment…than if you had
good turf, trees, and all things that attenuate flood flows and that don’t allow a channel to
migrate as rapidly. (Segment III, Civic Leader, 2006)
Erosion [happens] on the banks…which is too bad…. You hate to lose areas of the ranch,
but [if you] put structures in the river, and try to push the river over, you effect somebody
else. So, it’s a no-win deal, really. (Segment V, Agriculturalist, 2006)
Unintended Consequences—2012 and 2018
We do a little tinkering here, which causes the next guy to do a little tinkering there,
which exacerbates on further down, and you concentrate that energy of the river further
down the river. So suddenly then you’ve got everybody who needs protection, and then
you have a big government project which, in the long run increases the flooding problems
for everybody because you’ve tinkered with a system that you shouldn’t be tinkering
with. You should be living with it. (Segment III, Recreationalist, 2012)
It causes a, what, action and reaction or something like that. (Segment I, Civic Leader,
2012)
I would like to [stabilize the banks], but I don’t know how to do it without changing the
course of the river, because that’s the problem with it. And you know, we’ve seen the
impacts of people doing that upstream. Well, I shouldn’t say we personally, but like
Alexis’s parents can remember where the river used to flow before riprap was put down
on the property next to us. And then you know, I mean all you’re doing is creating
somebody else’s problem down the river. (Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2012)
Obviously, every time there is a bank stabilization project, it pushes problems
downstream or creates problems downstream. So, it dominoes. So… if I were king, I
would change how we do bank stabilization and when and whether we decide to do bank
stabilization. (Segment V, Civic Leader, 2006)
5.BankStabilization:DecisionsandConsequences|74
Mr. White down there who had put a berm out in the river… might have caused probably
some of the [erosion] problem [on my property], I don’t know. (Segment V,
Residentialist, 2006)
We’ve looked at that and we know we’re going to lose a bunch [of land] … So no, we are
not going to ever do anything for it… Me personally, I don’t think that human beings are
smart enough at this point to do anything with that river but mess it up. Yes, there has
been old cars up and down the river that have piled up. Yes, I can remember a neighbor,
you know, they’ve spent millions of dollars putting riprap into it. Has it worked? Maybe.
I’m not that old yet. The new stuff I kind of like. If we’re going on somebody else and
they’ve made a nice backwater, is it going to last forever? Probably no. That river, if they
leave it alone and never dam it, it will be stronger than any humans. Because you’re
going to get it back someplace… If you take it out here, like I’ve said… guess what,
when it comes back around over here, it leaves it over here. It just depends upon whose
land they leave it on [laughs]. (Segment II, Recreationalist, 2018)
Where the river’s been squeezed it kind of has to run deeper and faster to fit in the river.
Any change in one place is going to show up as a change somewhere downstream.
Predictable or not. Intended or not… Channeling the river, creating faster water,
somewhere downstream is bound to cause some erosion that may not have happened
otherwise. (Segment III, Recreationalist, 2018)
Interviewer: So, have you contemplated protecting your bank? Participant: No. No.
Because we all live downstream from each other, and it’s a river, and rivers do what
rivers do. (Segment V, Civic Leader, 2018)
The things that the fluvial geomorphologist and the conservation districts describe is that
the river between Billings and Laurel is the most channelized section of the Yellowstone
River... So, what we know is if you riprap or armor a bank of a river like the
Yellowstone, which is a free flowing, gravel bottom river with huge power, and it hits
that armored bank and it bounces off and collects its force and hits the bank downstream.
So, there’s an unraveling of a river as soon as you start riprapping a river. But what
caused, I think, that oil pipeline break was because the channel of the river was going
down rather than sweeping back and forth as a snake. I don’t think any fluvial
geomorphologist would argue with me on that. (Segment III, Recreationalist, 2018)
Infrastructure Protections
Public Infrastructure—2006
I think that [we should protect] the infrastructure of the area. Roads are for an irrigational
practice [and] we have to have those. (Segment I, Civic Leader, 2006)
The good old Yellowstone is a cantankerous old thing. That river is wonderful, but it’s
also wonderful to watch it. It’s going to go wherever it wants to go. I’m kind of
torn…because we have people [who] defy us to do any riprapping, or to save a public
5.BankStabilization:DecisionsandConsequences|75
structure, or anything like that. We’re not supposed to do that, I guess. That’s what I’m
hearing. But darn it, you’ve got a two-million-dollar bridge sitting there, and the thing’s
washing out, you better do something. We can’t shut all the traffic off…. This bridge
down here was in jeopardy. So, they brought in a lot of rock and fixed it. It’s fine. We
had it protected.…We’ve, [also] had some subdividers that have gone on their own and
put in some Mickey Mouse things, jetties. But it really didn’t upset the river a whole lot;
it’s got a mind of its own. (Segment IV, Civic Leader, 2006)
You can’t go in and interfere with the river anymore. I agree that if you’re going to go in
and flood someone else or hurt something—fix mine and flood you— that’s not good....
[But] when the road washed out a few years ago, they could have stopped that. (Segment
IV, Agriculturalist, 2006)
This bridge here just south of Columbus, it used to have a lot of riprap on it. And, four or
five years ago, when we had the high water, it took that riprap away. And it was big
riprap. And now, I’d say it’s underneath that bridge someplace…. That whole bank—it’s
just a small piece of private property—but that’s going to just keep eroding away to the
road. And that’s a pretty important road…. I think they have to have an aggressive riprap
program. We’ve got infrastructure that needs to be protected…. Let us get in there to
protect [it]…. [Let us] put some large rocks, riprap, in there to protect those things. Most
ranchers cannot afford to riprap…and the river just eats away and takes away, but roads
need to be protected. (Segment IV, Civic Leader, 2006)
I think the people that abuse the river are the Highway Department and the railroad. They
do whatever they want. See, they don’t have to come to the Conservation District and get
a 310 to do anything on the river…. They just go. (Segment I, Agriculturalist, 2006)
You know how the railroad would riprap theirs without permits? They’d just go back 15
or 20 feet and build a great big trench and fill it full of rock. It’s on their property… [and]
above the high-water mark…Someday, when the river washes away, they’ll have a
barricade. That is the plan, a pre-plan. It…[isn’t] a bad idea. (Segment II, Civic Leader,
2006)
[The] Army Corps of Engineers needs to get involved and shore up these banks, but they
won’t do it…. They’ll let the river run its course. But, you see, with this one particular
area, when the river eats out the rest of that field, there’s not much until the railroad
tracks, and you don’t mess with BNSF. Oh, yeah, I can foresee that once the river has
eaten all of that field out, BNSF will come in and they will shore that up because you
can’t wash out the railroad. It doesn’t matter that people lose their crop ground, but don’t
do anything to the railroad. (Segment II, Civic Leader, 2006)
[Near] the population centers…the County and State government people come in and do
what they want. They don’t need permits [for bridges and roads]. They just do it. That
one project on South Billings Boulevard would have more impact on the river than 50
private people. (Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2006)
5.BankStabilization:DecisionsandConsequences|76
Public Infrastructure—2012 and 2018
We need that railroad… And we need our highway infrastructure. You know, those
things are important to us as a society economically and socially. So, they have impacts,
and the impacts generally are on the environment, the environmental systems, and
individuals who had no control over what was going on. (Segment III, Recreationalist,
2012)
Basically it [the river] … keeps washing the banks… to the south. So, it’s next to the
railroad in places and a lot of manmade structures and things like that, so they got to
protect those kinds of things. (Segment II, Recreationalist, 2012)
The only one that seemed to think you can just go haul rock and dump it in the river is the
railroad… [After] a couple of years ago when that train fell in the river… they’re trying
to get it passed now that railroad can go ahead and do it, you know, and don’t have these
wrecks. But the railroad doesn’t want to go out too far because it’s going to take too
much riprap… so I can see why they need to have the riprap and have the river shored up
if that railroad is going by. We don’t want those oil cars in the river, leaking. (Segment II,
Agriculturalist, 2012)
It’s probably within 50 feet of the roadway right now, so it’s kind of an emergency deal
that they’re going to have to rebuild the bank out and riprap that section… And the
highway department has had to riprap and do some work up toward Emigrant Creek
along the East River Road, and if they wouldn’t have, we wouldn’t have an East River
Road there. So, I mean, it’s a necessity. (Segment V, Residentialist, 2018)
The only thing that protects it through that area is the railroad… And the railroad, they
get riprap and make sure it doesn’t wash them out… it’s a big part of our infrastructure is
the railroad. If you cut them out of our transportation picture, it would be huge. (Segment
IV, Civic Leader, 2018)
The railroad has been riprapping. They come through here about three times a week, at
least two times a week, with a whole trainload of rock to keep the tracks intact. (Segment
II, Agriculturalist, 2018)
They say the only one who can do anything to the river is the government and the
railroad. And the railroad has a real tough time. It comes out of us, and it shoots right
straight across the river into the NP, and they riprap and riprap. I mean they put… Jillions
of yards of rock and… Trainloads of it, of granite in there pert-near every year. (Segment
II, Agriculturalist, 2018)
I still don't know how they [the railroad] got away with altering the course of the
Yellowstone River… the main channel… And I bet the railroad is still pissed because it
cut right over against the railroad tracks and for about a mile, there, they’ve had to riprap
the railroad tracks to keep the river from taking it out… And they continually, every year
now, have to do it… Because the river came down and just made a big loop and came
5.BankStabilization:DecisionsandConsequences|77
back around and came down. And they just cut straight through it and dammed it off at
the upper end. It's changed a bunch since then. I mean it's cut back and forth through
there… They [the Hook Ranch] hauled riprap day and night for about a week straight [in
2011]. They saved the buildings, but not by much. I don't know how much that cost them,
but… I think they probably could have rebuilt the buildings and stuff for what it cost
them to save them. (Segment II, Recreationalist, 2018)
Beyond Us Little People
Cost and Durability—2006
I have no education on how to tame a river, how to keep a river in its boundaries. I think
it can be done but it would take quite an investment…The last I heard, riprap was $125 a
foot. It doesn’t take long to eat up a life savings. There is no guarantee. It has got to be
something on a larger scale than an individual can do. The government will have to do it,
or nothing can be done. The county can just hold a little here and there…. I am sure there
is engineering out there that can fix it, but just putting a little bit here and there isn’t
going to do it. (Segment IV, Agriculturalist, 2006)
What we call the June rise is going to erode…somewhere. And, if it ever gets started on a
piece of bank that’s more sandy, or more silty, then it will erode it faster. But over the
years, what you lose on one side, you gain on another side. It’s really not stoppable. As
far as monetary-wise, you can’t afford to do anything with it. (Segment I, Agriculturalist,
2006)
It’s a good idea, everybody likes it, but who’s going to stand the expense to put it in? We
feel that it should be the Corps of Engineers because they seem to have the say so.
(Segment I, Agriculturalist, 2006)
To try to combat erosion, it would basically be impossible. You don’t have enough
money. You don’t have enough men and equipment to throw at it, at the time it needed to
be thrown. If you ever looked at the old maps of the river and the meandering lines, it’s
amazing what this thing has done as far as moving where it wanted to go. (Segment I,
Recreationalist, 2006)
We are so gung-ho on making sure we don’t have soil erosion. We have to leave stubble
on the field; we have to have a certain slope to the fields to prevent erosion. The biggest
monster for soil erosion is the river. The reason they don’t touch it is… [the]
environmentalists and it is so costly. It takes a lot of money to riprap a river. We poop
that away every day in Iraq…. We don’t take care of our own country and our own
people, just like this river. (Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2006)
The first estimate was about $300,000…. The way it sets now, the only one that can turn
the river is the railroad, or the government. (Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2006)
5.BankStabilization:DecisionsandConsequences|78
It is beyond us little people. The railroad tracks were about to wash in, and they riprapped
up there. The estimate was for $800,000 and it ended up being $1.2 million dollars. It is
beyond us little people. (Segment I, Agriculturalist, 2006)
There are quite a few erosion problems that need to be addressed, but it’s like anything
else anymore. It’s so expensive to try…. It’s a pretty uphill battle when you start bucking
Mother Nature. She’s pretty much going to do what she wants to do, and if you try to
alter her progress, it can get very expensive. (Segment II, Residentialist, 2006)
We’ve got the technology to do damn-near whatever we want to do; it’s whether [or not]
we can economically do it. (Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2006)
I remember reading in the paper, after the 500-year flood in Livingston, there was a guy
that went ahead and saved some ground. I can’t remember how many miles it was, but it
costs him $600,000. That’s what he put into it…. He must have had a lot of money to
invest, because it would take a long time to ever get it back. If it was for agriculture, I
don’t know if you ever would [regain that money]. (Segment IV, Agriculturalist, 2006)
About four years ago we moved the road…. Once [the river] decides to change course, it
just keeps hammering on you until it wins. There are no cheap tricks…. One project we
did with the Corps was to armor 500 feet of bank…The feds were kicking in 30 percent,
and it still cost us $170,000 to do those little, short pieces…. So, [with] a typical road, we
relocate it. We’re not talking paving, [but if] it’s all gravel…probably, we can move a
road for $80,000 per mile. (Segment I, Civic Leader, 2006)
I’ve put a lot of money into riprap…three-eighths of a mile… [which is] half of my
retirement fund…. I think it is almost cost prohibitive now…. I guess over the years I’ve
put a $100,000 to $200,000 into it. That was when money was worth more than it is now.
(Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2006)
I was told, ‘We can’t approve the using of concrete rubble.’ I asked, ‘Why not?’ I have
traveled quite a bit…and I have never been to a city on the Yellowstone where there
hasn’t been bank stabilization done with concrete rubble…. To do what he was proposing
you could easily spend a million and a half dollars. You reach a point and ask, ‘Is the
land worth saving?’ (Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2006)
I am not the expert, but I have lived here, and I have seen the river do some strange
things. It may work for a few years if you do it right, but you could get a bad year, and it
will wash it all out. (Segment I, Agriculturalist, 2006)
Had I substantial resources, there might have been things that could have been done….
[But] the scale is overwhelming.…To restructure an old jetty and riprap was three to five
times the cost of the land…. I didn’t have enough money because I had just bought the
land. (Segment IV, Agriculturalist, 2006)
5.BankStabilization:DecisionsandConsequences|79
We have the permit and everything, but we didn’t have the money to. [It] costs too much.
(Segment IV, Agriculturalist, 2006)
I don’t think [riprap] would be effective—not on a curve like that, because I think
eventually it just…gets behind the riprap, [and] you end up doing it again. So, I don’t
believe riprap is the answer. (Segment III, Residentialist, 2006)
Cost and Durability—2012 and 2018
A lot of cases, it’s cheaper to buy another farm than the cost of riprapping. (Segment II,
Agriculturalist, 2012)
And riprap is a thing where if you put it in, you think well you’re done. You’re never
done with riprap. You should have rock standing by so if some of it slips in, and it’s a
constant maintenance thing. Once you get it in, you got to constantly maintain it or
you’re going to lose it all… What’s happening is like when the ice and that goes out on
these dams, it’s taking the rock away behind it, you know, and it’ll cut… it takes that
rock out. We just lose it down the river… and just dump more rock in. (Segment II,
Agriculturalist, 2012)
In Forsyth down there, they had trouble with… the irrigation dam. And I went to that
meeting, and… it got to be about where they were going to get the rock, it had to be
natural rock. Everything has got to be green or natural… Well, the expense of freighting
in this granite rock was just tremendous…. So, I made the suggestion to him, why don’t
you just haul a bunch of pit gravel in there, bring your bag of cement or whatever you’re
going to do, and set you up a cement plant right on the riverbank, and make your own
rock…. And they thought that was just crazy. Well, that’s the cheapest way you could
ever possibly do it. (Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2012)
[And one man] just did a bunch of riprap and that high water took it all… he put a lot of
money in it too… they’ll only let you riprap like 300 feet, then you have to go get another
permit. I think he wanted to go 700 and they stopped him. And I think where the old
riprap was that held, but those weirs, they didn’t work… I think it [riprap] is [effective].
It’s really our only means right now, to protect, you know. But… they should have let
him go further. They shouldn’t have a limit on it. I mean, when you see with your naked
eye where it ends, you know, it’s going to cut him up. (Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2012)
I think I lost it [the barb] in this last one [flood]... they wash out, they roll… that cost
$25,000. (Segment V, Residentialist, 2012)
It’s too expensive… it just doesn’t work; you’re trying to alter the nature of the river.
(Segment IV, Agriculturalist, 2018)
Riprap is not very successful from my observation unless you’re willing to maintain it
with a lot of money and effort every other year… I think that the people that are doing the
planning at the county levels probably need to be using it as much, especially in the
5.BankStabilization:DecisionsandConsequences|80
higher populated areas. Billings, Yellowstone County. And they may be using it some,
I’m just not aware if they are. Most of the landowners along here are not going to put the
money into riprap the banks. It’s the high-dollar landowners that we’ve seen up towards
Big Timber and some of that area where there’s deep pockets and it doesn’t matter what
it costs, they don’t want to lose a foot of soil, you know, along the bank. Even though
they might be gaining it in some areas, too. That’s unfortunate because I don’t know what
you do about it, because that keeps the river healthy, obviously, by moving, I understand
that. But you have property rights that conflict with that, too, and some people don’t
understand that’s part of the health. (Segment I, Residentialist, 2018)
I don’t know how many acres you could say we lost down there. I bet it’s 60 through the
years… But back when our dad was alive, you could have ripped that, you know, you
didn’t have all the regulations like now. You could have riprapped it… He said, “I can
buy a place for what it costs me to riprap… So maybe I’d be better off to just go
somewhere else and buy another farm.” But you can see the islands building down below
from the high water, taking the soil. (Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2018)
A lot of these older ranches that are 100-year ranches, they’re already doing that. They’ve
been doing it forever. They already knew it was going to cost them way too much money
to try and start riprapping or any of that kind of business. Let the river do what it, because
it’s going to do it anyway. You’re going to get the right flood come down the river, and
it’s going to do whatever it wants to do. (Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2018)
The riprap would cost almost what the property and the house is worth. [Laughs] I mean,
yeah, we couldn’t afford to. And I don’t know that I’d want to… If I knew it would
definitely work and was affordable, I guess you could riprap and then fill it the riprap in
with dirt so it doesn’t look like a bunch of, you know, Rock of Gibraltar out there, but
riprap ruins the entire length of the bank. Because, you know, I fish down there, there’s
little eddies and pools and stuff. You put riprap down there and you’ve got a slough way.
That’s what I’ve noticed with a lot of it… And it doesn’t always work, it depends on the
base where it’s going to sit. Now it probably would work here. The only trouble is if it
cuts up in front of it, it’s going to be gone anyway… you’d have to go all the way upriver
with it to stop it. It wouldn’t do any good here… I’d be sitting here watch the rocks roll
away. (Segment IV, Residentialist, 2018)
There is an intake down here… They have to, now—on a regular basis—get in there with
an excavator and move the channel, under permit, in order to get the water back… but the
river changes itself, it’s got its own brain, it goes where it wants. I mean, it is costing
them a lot of money to get that water back there. And… probably 6 years ago, that would
have been 2012, the river moved so much gravel into the intake channel that it shut it
completely down... The study they did on it, it was feasibly impossible to fix that
channel. It was going to be a half-million dollars, and there was no such resources in your
irrigation canal to cover a half-million dollar project. (Segment IV, Residentialist, 2018)
If riprap would work, but they frown on you using riprap anymore, and financially it’s...
the neighbor up there just up the river put in… I don’t know, not a very long stretch to
5.BankStabilization:DecisionsandConsequences|81
kind of protect his house, because it’s probably gonna take his house eventually, and it
was $36,000… [And] we redid that a number of years ago, put in a bunch of riprap. And
that first winter the ice jam came in and cleaned the whole works out, so, you know.
There’s no way you can recoup that pasture on that ground… we’ll never get the money
back that we put into riprap that was gone in one year… So, we’ve just accepted the fact
that the land is gonna go away. (Segment IV, Agriculturalist, 2018)
There was a riprap above there and the family that owns the property now kind of
decided they don’t know how much they want to fight with the regulatory authority. Plus,
how much money. It’s so expensive… it’s almost cost prohibitive. (Segment V,
Agriculturalist, 2018)
This year it’s cutting the hell out of it up there by our pumps. It’s really wanting to tear
things up… the river makes a big bend and it’s really sandy, so it just cuts the hell out of
it… Someday… I’ll never see it… my grandkids will never see it, but someday that river
will be coming through here unless somebody ripraps it. And I don’t think nobody will
unless it’s a billionaire…. I think it’s something like $40,000-50,000 a foot. Because we
ain’t got no rocks there. (Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2018)
But the ice, for riprap… you can riprap against high water, but you can’t riprap against
ice. When that ice comes in, in fact there’s some of them box cars across the river in
probably maybe a hundred yards from the water now. (Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2018)
It was right over, cracking the roadway when they finally got all the permits to do it. And
they should have another hundred yards, but [laughs] they said, “This is as far as you can
go.” So, you know. (Segment V, Residentialist, 2018)
So, we have to be, you know, cognizant of their issues there, and maybe we need to allow
for more bank stabilization methods there, and maybe the permitting process should be,
you know, a little more relaxed for them or at least be more understanding of their
situations. How do you know that? Because you live here and you hang out with those
people, and they teach you things you didn’t know. (Segment V, Recreationalist, 2018)
Especially in this part of the valley, it’s tough. It’s always migrating. And it’s getting
very hard to get permits to do any kind of riprap or any kind of bank stabilization. And
that goes either way, I mean yeah, streambank preservation can cause problems down the
river or to your neighbors, that’s a huge question, but there are some things that need to
be protected. And I’m not sure that it’s always in the right place. If somebody’s house is
there, you can do whatever you want, but if it’s your agricultural land that you’re making
a living, let it go where it wants to go. I don’t know, I just think that their mindset isn’t
always in the right place. (Segment V, Agriculturalist, 2018)
Channel Migration and Easement Programs
I think at some point the government is going to have to be willing to step in and help the
landowners along the river. That land has value, but it has value for many different
5.BankStabilization:DecisionsandConsequences|82
possibilities, not the least of which is wetlands. The floodplain is what lets the river
spread out during these floods. I think that there is going to have to be some programs
where the landowners get some compensation [if they] allow the river to go where it
wants to…. And it has to be in the same context as if they are raising a crop. It has to be a
long-term agreement [with] the landowner, be it a rancher or a farmer or someone who
bought in for aesthetic purposes. They need to be compensated. I don’t know any other
way to do it. The local landowners…don’t have the means or the money to just donate
that. That is what they are being asked to do now. That isn’t right. (Segment V, Civic
Leader, 2006)
The mitigation fund should be acquiring some of these areas that have been riprapped in
the past that need to be opened up for the river… [and] compensating people to allow the
river to erode away their land… for their ability to live with the river in a way that’s good
for the river and the rest of us… Our best shot is to… try to figure out how to make it
easier for landowners to face the reality that some of their land is going to be taken away,
and that’s where I see a mitigation fund and flood erosion easements being a tool we need
to try to bring into place on the Yellowstone River… and it could be private; it doesn’t
have to be government. If people don’t want government, there’s different ways to do
that. (Segment III, Recreationalist, 2012)
I hope it continues on the path that we’re on right now. I think… we’ve got an awful
good balance of… containment of the river where it needs contained, and letting it
wander where it needs to wander… when you get out of the City of Billings and it heads
east, we’re seeing more people… putting their ground into these land trusts, where the
water will be able to migrate whenever it wants to… they’re called the channel migration
easement. (Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2018)
Our neighbor leased her ground to, I thought it was to Fish and Game, and somebody told
me it wasn't the Fish and Game. And she's letting in erode… The only thing is that she
really, really devalued her farm when she did that… I guess I don't, I don't get it. And
then she's created problems for us because now it's eating on her farm, but there's a farm
we rent that it's gonna take it too. Because it's come in really deep on her, and now it's
just washing away on my neighbor, or on my land that I'm renting… We protested it…
but… you know it didn't matter. I think they just gave us some time to hear our
complaints and it didn't matter, they were going to do it regardless of what we said.
(Segment I, Agriculturalist, 2018)
We’re actually talking to an outfitter right now about doing a river conservation
easement… where we would say we’re not going to do any bank-saving measures…
[Because] we don’t know what’s going to happen in 100 years, but we won’t be here, and
somebody else will be. And the conservation easement... It’s just a kind of a way to
ensure that… whoever that next owner is, can’t just do whatever they want… [And the
benefit of that] it’s mostly wildlife… [and to] help replicate what are more natural
conditions and that helps establish the native plant base in those areas, that helps keep out
things like knapweed, that helps keep out any of your noxious weeds that are spreading if
you have a good healthy stand of native vegetation there… The wildlife are just healthier
5.BankStabilization:DecisionsandConsequences|83
and happier, so if we can do things to encourage that diversity of native vegetation, it
works out well for us. (Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2018)
There’s the out-of-state landowners that I have two minds about - the guys that buy the
big ranches, the rich money people from back east and California, the techno financiers
or whatever you call them, they buy the big places, but they also usually protect them.
But they often cut everybody else off from using the things. (Segment III, Civic Leader,
2018)
My neighbor has done a lot to improve his property. He’s a good conservationist. Of
course, if I had a million dollars I could quite a lot too. (Segment IV, Agriculturalist,
2018).
6.Dikes,Floodplains,andDevelopment|84
Section 6. Dikes, Floodplains, and Development
Over the years, the towns of Glendive, Forsyth, Miles City, and Livingston have been faced with
increased flood risks related to the conditions of the levees, locally called dikes, that protect
these towns. Especially for the local Civic Leaders, problems concerning dike maintenance,
integrity, and certification are high priorities. Restoring integrity is understood to be costly, as is
flood insurance. Moreover, it is “hard to tell people what to do with their property.” Some
residents have come to understand that when trees grow on dikes, they degrade dike integrity.
The quotes demonstrate a progression from “Why can’t you leave the trees?’ to a better
understanding of the need to protect integrity. Yet, a persistent sense of security is expressed
regarding local levees.
In each field season, civic leaders expressed strong opinions about the floodplain maps and
regulations. Floodplain maps are controversial due to uncertainty. Several participants indicated
they were “not sure” if they lived in a floodplain. Civic leaders were the mostly likely to discuss
the maps as necessary and—when accurate—useful for the purposes of designing regulations.
Some called for better maps. Framed as governmental interference with private property rights,
some participants question why the maps change and why the rules seem to be getting stricter.
Many were concerned about the security associated with dikes and levees under new regulations.
Since 2006, locals discussed the changes in their local landscapes throughout the valley.
Participants reported that new landowners, many from out-of-state and apparently “wealthy,”
were building homes and subdivisions closer to the river and on ridgelines. In 2006, these trends
were mostly discussed by participants from the upriver Geographic Segments. By 2012 and
2018, those trends were discussed throughout the valley. Ironically, some of the “newcomers”
were now concerned about too much development near the river. Some in the local communities
were concerned how new residents would advocate for policies that impede local economic
development. In 2012 and 2018, the changing landscape and changing notions about how to live
with the river continued to generate a wealth of comments. Some thought maybe it was “too
late” to control development.
Consistent themes dominated these discussions, including linking levee issues with local
economic development, concerns about insurance expenses, private property rights, and
governmental intervention. Many advocated a “builder beware” philosophy that would let people
do as they wished, even if the potential for a bad outcome was likely. Others explained that the
regulations were needed, and a “win-win” approach was doable.
In 2018, evidence of increasingly positive evaluations of relationship with the COE emerged. By
2012 and 2018, there was a growing understanding that regulations could not move forward as
“one size fits all.” Also, in 2018, some conversations are quite specific to local projects and
agendas. In Yellowstone County, there are local groups hoping to create a connected trail system
to run along the riverfront. These projects are not universally supported among riverfront
landowners. As the years passed and changes were noted, locals further understood a need for
information and education concerning the river and how regulations could protect resources. By
6.Dikes,Floodplains,andDevelopment|85
2018, conservation easements were seen as a way to protect land from development, but the tax
deductions were viewed as insufficient compensation and the program “too permanent.”
Dikes Protect Towns
Our Dikes are Our Number-One Priority—2006, 2012, and 2018
For the community of Glendive, solving our floodplain issue is our number one priority.
(Segment I, Civic Leader, 2006)
The other issue that is of primary interest is the dike. (Segment II, Civic Leader, 2006)
Why can’t you leave trees too? It can’t hurt, and it’s better than big chunks of cement. I
didn’t understand that. [The trees] were mostly dead, but still their root structure was still
[there]. (Segment II, Residentialist, 2006)
The most important [issue with the river] of course, being the fact that we are still
working on our floodplain issue and dike issue with the Corps of Engineers. (Segment I,
Civic Leader, 2012)
Right now, one of the big issues is the dike has been deemed uncertified… [it’s] the
biggest concern that we have that’s been brought to us (Segment II, Civic Leader, 2018)
[The] Corps of Engineers require us to keep the dike from being invaded by trees and
shrubs so that its integrity isn’t ruined…. They also want the dike clear [so that if] they
have to get up on the dike…to work on it, they have a clear runway. (Segment II, Civic
Leader, 2006)
And I know the city is also cleaning up the big trees down along the Tongue River
anyway… because if a tree washes out, its root structure really weakens that levee. So,
the city is working on it. (Segment II, Residentialist, 2012)
There is a tree issue on it where we keep it maintained… but on the inside of the dike, the
river side that doesn’t belong to the city… there is cottonwood trees… And they said we
can’t have any trees on it, but yet, there can be trees on the inside… It really doesn’t
make sense. (Segment II, Civic Leader, 2012)
If some of those huge cottonwood trees were to fall, tear out a hole in that dike in a year
like this… it’s going to destroy the integrity of our dike, and then we lose that. And then
we, community members lose insurance coverage… Have you talked to Miles City yet?
Been down there? … Their dike, they lost certification and so I think their whole city is a
floodplain. So, they have one heck of a problem with the insurance, and building, getting
building permits. And so, we don’t want to let that happen in Forsyth, so we have to
maintain the integrity of that dike. So that’s what we’re working on right now. (Segment
II, Civic Leader, 2018)
6.Dikes,Floodplains,andDevelopment|86
It’s Hard to Tell People What to Do—2006, 2012, and 2018
The Army Corps holds the key to a lot of future development in Glendive. You might
have noticed a dike that was built… back in the ’50s to prevent high water and flooding
on that side of the river…. Unfortunately… [they say we are] vulnerable to flooding and
high water…. Because of our problem with the dike… they are allowing no building, no
additions, no anything, on the west side of the river…. It is handicapping Glendive.
(Segment I, Civic Leader, 2006)
The Army Corps of Engineers tells us that for all practical purposes we don’t have a dike
around this city, which has been protecting us for a long time, but they have eliminated
practically all building over in the north side. They don’t want to let us do nothing over
there anymore… A friend of mine for example, built… a storage shed… and they
wouldn’t even let him keep that on his property. They said it had something to do with
the footprint… I don’t understand that … the Army Corps of Engineers has intervened
like in Glendive, they wouldn’t let the McDonalds Restaurant remodel because they were
in their flood zone, so they caused McDonalds to go out of business in Glendive.
(Segment II, Residentialist, 2012)
I believe that if the city of Miles City continues on with the project and we get it certified,
I think the real estate and the opportunities for improving the community would increase
dramatically… So, I think that the main goal on getting the levee done would be to give
the citizens of Miles City the opportunity to work and upgrade their residence and make
real estate feasible again. (Segment II, Civic Leader, 2018)
When the Corps built the flood dike, they built it to the current standards, and it is not
[now] acceptable as a 100-year flood dike…. To raise the dike, it would be ten or twelve
million dollars…. To buy out the property, and demolish everything, and return
everything back to the Yellowstone Basin, would be 18 million. You are talking to a
community that doesn’t have the money. (Segment I, Civic Leader, 2006)
Most of the north side of Miles City is in the 100-year flood zone. Everybody there is
paying flood insurance. They would rather not. This is a town where the average income
is a few hundred dollars over the federal poverty level. (Segment II, Civic Leader, 2006)
We have just been decertified from the government, you see, it is over the dike… [and] It
means the insurances and so forth would go sky high because… this is not considered
floodplain. (Segment II, Civic Leader, 2012)
We’ve had the issue with flood insurance and… people are not going to be able to afford
to do anything with their homes. (Segment II, Civic Leader, 2018)
It is hard to tell people what to do with their property…. We, as a county, never were
involved with the floodplain. We didn’t want that restriction, [but] in 1998 the
government forced floodplain administration on us. It came out of Congress: if you want
6.Dikes,Floodplains,andDevelopment|87
emergency funds for disasters, you will be in this program… they took the stance that
said either control your systems on the floodplains or live without us. We had to get into
it…. The commissioner’s hands were tied. (Segment I, Civic Leader, 2006)
The Corps of Engineers pretty much controls all the water. So, they have a big hold
over…us as far as what we can do in a floodplain…. They have really gotten strict.
(Segment I, Civic Leader, 2006)
The Corps of Engineers [owns the dike] ... and… they flew in here with their corporate
jet. (Segment II, Civic Leader, 2012)
That Army Corps of Engineers is pretty much dictating to the city what the city can
approve of anymore… [and] I know [that’s] the reason that [I] can’t do nothing with it
[my property]. (Segment II, Residentialist, 2012)
We have a beautiful relationship with state and federal authorities. But like the federal on
the dike, they are really not using their head. You know, this has been here for, golly,
probably 75 years... You know, for some reason they’ll change policy, or some new
person will come into the office and say we’re going to change this. (Segment II, Civic
Leader, 2012)
Look, if they think Livingston’s going to flood, the Army Corps is going to come in and
build an even bigger dike. They have authority over all of us, it seems like. I couldn’t
believe what they built in Livingston… They came and declared an emergency… They’re
ridiculous. (Segment V, Recreationalist, 2018)
The dike has been here for years and years and years and now all of a sudden, it’s not
good enough. (Segment II, Civic Leader, 2018)
The dike is kind of a funny thing because if you look at the east end of it, it makes a big
curve and it just stops. If there…[were] an ice jam in the right place, it would just run
through here. (Segment II, Civic Leader, 2006)
So, they feel that we are going to get flooded at any time. Which, God, in 70 years I have
never seen water over my ankles. (Segment II, Residentialist, 2012)
All of that is in the hundred-year floodplain... [But I] never have [seen water back there]
.... But my grandson, we gave him an acre back here, and... the County Planner told him
that… because 18 feet of that acre lot was in the hundred-year floodplain, so he couldn’t
put a house there... I’ve been here 75 years, and I have never seen it ever [flood out], you
know. And there have been some pretty bad floods... it never goes high enough to hurt
anything. (Segment I, Residentialist, 2012)
Since I've been here there haven’t been any issues [with the levee west of Glendive]. And
from when it was put in many years ago, there hasn't really been any events that's caused
any concern. (Segment I, Civic Leader, 2018)
6.Dikes,Floodplains,andDevelopment|88
I don’t think the community worries about flooding. I think overall, they are very
comfortable with the dike keeping the water on the other side. (Segment II, Residentialist,
2018)
The Interplay of Dikes and Flows—2006, 2012, and 2018
This I-94 bridge is the dumbest thing ever. When they built it, they made a place for ice
to jam-up. There is no place for the water to go, and that dike is not up to specs… If the
money was there [to fix the dike], it would be fine. Where are you going to come up with
the 100 million dollars to do that? If they would have built that bridge high, all the way
across so the water could flow freely, the dike would be high enough. (Segment I,
Residentialist, 2006)
From the perspective of living here in Miles City [ask] ‘How is that going to impact us?’
With unbridled development, you could have a situation where the problems are
prevented from occurring upstream, only to be exacerbated downstream. So, that’s where
we would have to take a look [and ask] ‘Are we sufficiently protected with the dike
system we have here, or are the neighbors here going to suffer because we are sending
some of our problems downstream too?’ (Segment II, Recreationalist, 2006)
If it wasn’t for the financial reasons, I would rather not have the dike and let [the river]
do its thing…. Had we never…[built] a dike, when the river got high, it would come and
spread over the whole area…. You would have a bigger area, but not as much force…and
there wouldn’t be as much damage as with the dike…. I might be wrong, but I think that
is what would happen…. [However], now it is financially impossible [not to have the
dike]. (Segment II, Residentialist, 2006)
That initial... dike was stamped and approved and certified for a 100-year floodplain and,
you know, was very adequate. And then when the federal government came through
Montana with the interstate project... And for some reason, whether it be politics or poor
judgment, they decided to cross the Yellowstone River here at Glendive... and because of
that... the berm that they built leading up to the interstate on the north side of the river
over there, took away the overflow channel that was a natural one for the Yellowstone
River... and sure enough, they caused those problems and the Corps de-certified our dike
and put all that land back in the floodplain... We feel, at least in Glendive, that, you
know, the federal government caused our problem. (Segment I, Civic Leader, 2012)
Creating that levee… it just pushed and made it a problem further downstream. (Segment
V, Civic Leader, 2018)
Personally, I would like to see this levee built. I would like to see it certified… [I
understand] we’re channeling and we’re narrowing the channel of the river…. [We do it]
for sake of the citizens, and the homeowners, and the population. We’re not going to
widen the channel of the river. (Segment II, Civic Leader, 2018)
6.Dikes,Floodplains,andDevelopment|89
Floodplains and Development
Mapping Floodplains and Regulating Development—2006
I am almost positive that we are not in the flood area. (Segment I, Residentialist, 2006)
At the very far end of River Road we had some flooding. There is what’s called a
floodplain, and the west end of town is part of the floodplain. But where we are, I
believe, is out of the floodplain…. Like I said, my mom was born here…and lived here
all but two years…and she said…the river has never come this far. (Segment II,
Residentialist, 2006)
Basically, just the elevation [is the difference between floodway and floodplain], one’s
shallower. Um, the floodway in my thoughts is the deeper channels, it’s like the river
itself, and then the floodplain is like the surrounding land. (Segment II, Residentialist,
2012)
How the floodplain[s] themselves are delineated is just based on seat-of-the-pants
[guesswork], basically. (Segment I, Civic Leader, 2006)
About two months ago, we had a big map that somebody gave us of the floodplain
area….[The map has] the floodplain in the wrong area and it’s costing a lot of people
high insurance….And one fellow, he wanted to add a room on his house, and he [went to]
get everything lined up, and he [was told] your insurance is going to double because you
are in the floodplain. And his house sits way above the old shelf out there. Even if the
Yellowtail [Dam] ever went out it wouldn’t get to his house. (Segment II, Civic Leader,
2006)
There were some maps, but being a local, I understand this place floods, this place
doesn’t…So, even if it doesn’t say so on the floodplain map, [sometimes I know it’s] not
a good place to build. (Segment II, Civic Leader, 2006)
Primarily, the problem is, [the maps] are so inaccurate. They are this blanket, ‘Here is
where we think it is.’ I shouldn’t say they are always inaccurate because sometimes we
have information submitted in a site-specific area and they are right on. They don’t take
into consideration differences in topography. When they were done it was based on
information that was from 1982. They couldn’t go every 200 yards down the river. Since
then, there is a lot more information. They are useful, but they could be more useful by
being more site-specific. (Segment IV, Civic Leader, 2006)
The interesting thing is the Corps of Engineers, and the Montana State definitions of the
floodplain, are different…. The boundaries…aren’t the same…. We don’t really know
[when they will make the final determinations]. It is still pending. I would guess within
the next two to four years…. Not having a floodplain [defined]…we have no idea what to
expect from year to year, especially since we have been in a seven- to nine-year drought
in this area. Water flows are much lower than normal, and we don’t have the flows like
6.Dikes,Floodplains,andDevelopment|90
we used to have in the ’70’s and ’80’s. In ’96 and ’97 there were back-to-back flood
years. That was a 100-year and a 500-year flood…. The biggest issue is the flood issue
not being resolved. (Segment V, Civic Leader, 2006)
I have seen a major change in ownership along the river. We [now] have private
landowners with a lot of money…. [They are] buying up large tracts of land…. Across
the river we have a big shooting club. They have a big lodge over there, and they’ve tied
up a lot of land that they own and lease. So, we’ve got different people now controlling
what’s going on, and the focus isn’t farming; it’s on recreation…. If your focus isn’t
being a rancher, you’re going to lease it to somebody...maximize dollars, then get the
heck out…. Well, that’s state-wide. Everyone wants to get to the water…. Access is
going to be a major problem. (Segment I, Civic Leader, 2006)
This area is fairly attractive to out-of-staters. They love the beauty of the area, and two of
the key things they like are trees and water…. They want to be right down on the water’s
edge. They want to stand on the porch and cast that dry fly in the water. (Segment II,
Civic Leader, 2006)
Everybody wants a little piece of land on the river, and then they build right on the river,
which kind of sucks…. You go up by Livingston, and you see the houses. I mean, house,
after house, after house, after house, built right on the river. (Segment IV, Recreationalist,
2006)
I think one of the things that we see more is encroachment of development in the river
corridor…. Now you see a big house on the skyline instead of a natural habitat. (Segment
V, Recreationalist, 2006)
Do you want me to come in and tell you what you can do with your 160 acres? And what
if that is where you put all our resources…and your plan ultimately was to…pay for your
retirement. Then along comes the government and says now we are going to make this a
riparian area. This is a green space, and you can’t develop that. I have just wiped out your
assets. The government has to be careful that controls don’t go overboard…[and] start
infringing on private development rights. (Segment III, Civic Leader, 2006)
I feel strongly, if I’m in harm’s way, it’s my fault and I’ll have to deal with it. If they
want to pull my insurance that’s fine. I have the means to survive somehow. But I think if
you do live in harm’s way, regardless of wherever you are, you have to be smart.
(Segment V, Agriculturalist, 2006)
The people who have lived here, and grown up here, and have seen the Yellowstone at its
worst— pushing those eight-foot-thick ice flows 100 yards from the riverbank—have a
lot of respect for the river. You can go out here and see the stars and the trees. The locals
know not to build there. The newcomers do not…. There’s no understanding of the power
of the Yellowstone or of the damage it can do. (Segment II, Civic Leader, 2006)
6.Dikes,Floodplains,andDevelopment|91
I always thought that any damn fool who wants to build on the riverbank, sticking his
neck out, if he falls in—tough shit-ski. He should know better. It’s like those guys in
California that build up on a mudslide; they ought to know better. (Segment I,
Residentialist, 2006)
I guess I’ll stay here until the river comes up to the porch. (Segment III, Agriculturalist,
2006)
In ten years, I think [this area] will be fairly similar to the way it is today with a ten
percent increase in the trophy homes…. Where I live, they are building a trophy home.
Not me personally. I think [the construction of trophy homes] has created a lot of jobs for
the community, so a lot of people will say this is great. It is allowing us to stay here and
make a living, but there are a lot of people that resent it. (Segment III, Recreationalist,
2006)
As you travel the interstate, you can see people are within fifty feet of the bank of the
Yellowstone. They can’t get close enough—if it was up to them. Yeah, I do have a
problem with that…From the planning board perspective, … I guess I agree with
setbacks…. Just, case by case. Someone has to make that judgment [as] part of
generalizing to a rule.... [but] the river…varies every quarter [of a] mile…. No one could
agree on how to word [the rule]. (Segment I, Civic Leader, 2006)
If we don’t have regulations, we’re going to have development right next to the river. I
think development is the worse of the two evils, so we wind up accepting the
regulation…. [Otherwise] we can lose the cultural resource…. [through] an incremental
downhill slide. It’s unfortunate, but this is America, [and] that’s how it works. (Segment
II, Civic Leader, 2006)
The planning board could adopt some zoning regulations that would describe which land-
use possibilities would be along the Yellowstone, and it’s probably something that’s
going to need to be looked at before long. Right now, we’re kind of in the mode of not a
lot of zoning because we don’t want to put a lot of restrictions on the property…. We’re
thinking about how we want to proceed, but we haven’t done anything because we want
to make it so it’s not restrictive. (Segment II, Civic Leader, 2006)
Most officials and residents are trying to maintain a corridor on both sides of the river,
for the aesthetic value and free flowing. So, you really can’t be building down on that
floodplain. But we are getting very close…. [We try to maintain] a buffer zone to keep
commercial and residential development from off the river. The river is a wild river and,
if we can maintain a…100-year floodplain without permanent structures or that kind of
stuff, we are in good shape. (Segment III, Civic Leader, 2006)
This county does not have zoning at this point…. I’m not opposed to zoning, per se, if it’s
done properly. I think there’s a lot of people here who are outright opposed to zoning, but
I don’t know if we’re at the point where we need that. There are good things as a result of
zoning…. I don’t know if I would predict that for the next ten years, but there will come a
6.Dikes,Floodplains,andDevelopment|92
time when zoning will be needed, and people will be clamoring for it. So, I would say
future generations will have it better in that regard. So, if you buy property in a certain
area, you can kind of predict some stability. (Segment IV, Civic Leader, 2006)
People have wanted to put setbacks in place on the Yellowstone to keep development
away from the Yellowstone River. I think they talked [about setback of] up to 300 feet,
maybe, from the Yellowstone River. I think the setback now might be 100 feet. But that’s
one issue that has come up that people bristled-up a little bit over. I think the landowners
themselves would probably be most content with no regulations, but people who float the
river, maybe they want some regulation. (Segment V, Agriculturalist, 2006)
I would like to see a lot better mapping on the Yellowstone River. Most of our maps are
1982 FEMA maps. Some of the Yellowstone has had some updating, and…that is
helpful, but there needs to be some better mapping and better understanding of activities
in the floodplain, and how to best undertake those, both from a safety issue, and, also,
trying to protect the resource. (Segment IV, Civic Leader, 2006)
It is important to have those floodplains and floodways delineated so that when the river
is at high stages it doesn’t do the tremendous amount of damage that it can. (Segment III,
Civic Leader, 2006)
We maintain the floodplain maps here, [and] provide information to landowners as far as
what property is in the floodplain…. We just got those new ones in the last five years…. I
think they are accurate. (Segment II, Civic Leader, 2006)
Mapping Floodplains and Regulating Development—2012 and 2018
Looking back, ideally, I would have put setbacks in place in 1920, but it is hard to do it
now… Madison or Choteau County… one of those had a 500-foot setback. So, it can be
done. (Segment V, Civic Leader, 2012)
What we are seeing is people from back east buying the property as a hobby or not
necessarily as a productive, they do… farm it a little bit, but they’re not hiring hired men
or whatever, so it’s more of a hobby-type lifestyle thing. And… just for an example we
have an astronaut that lives right here in the county that bought up five places that goes
up Sarpy Creek. We had a developer come in and bought a big place and now
subdividing that out, and some of the ranches that have consolidated. You just see fewer
people running the same amount of land. So, there is no way to bring more people in that
way. Unless we have some type of manufacturing thing, or something, happen here,
Hysham won’t grow. (Segment II, Recreationalist, 2012)
Nowhere have I been between Laurel and Billings… have I seen a section of land that
doesn’t have a quarter section that is being subdivided and developed. (Segment III,
Civic Leader, 2012)
6.Dikes,Floodplains,andDevelopment|93
I would say [riverfront development] would be pretty good because it would bring in
more revenue… But the problem… is that most of the riverfront is owned by ranchers.
You know, ranching and farming and the way it is set up. (Segment III, Civic Leader,
2012)
Our area is changing very rapidly. It is becoming a recreation area. And the farms and
ranches along the river are becoming, I probably shouldn’t say this, “hobby farms”
[laughs]. (Segment V, Agriculturalist, 2012)
Part of the land [is in the floodplain], I don’t know. They’re redoing it all. Some of it is
floodway, some of it is floodplain… It [the difference between the two] depends, and
they’re allowing buildings to go on some of it, and I don’t know which one it is now… I
don’t think anybody knows… Because you get a different opinion and a different saying
from anybody, everybody along here. I don’t think they know. (Segment V,
Residentialist, 2012)
It’s just something that our homesteaders years ago, if they built in a creek bottom and
the creek come up and washed out their buildings or whatever, then they moved a little
higher ground. And over a period of time, people when they come in, they build on a
little higher ground. Well, we’ve gotten to where we don’t build on higher ground
anymore, and yet a flood can happen anywhere… we do not look at our history and
history keeps repeating itself and we just don’t think about that, and we need to.
(Segment II, Civic Leader 2018)
A lot more people moving in… like near Sarpy they put in a subdivision… there’s some
guys from Whitehall, sold some land over there and got a pretty good price, so they come
over here… and bought a section or two. And they must have had to pay pretty good,
because they had it into 160-acre plots. Some people wanted it smaller, and they wouldn’t
do it—the commissioners. (Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2018)
Where we seem to run into issues, and we’re going to see more of this… is out-of-state
ownership. Um, wealthy people buying these places, and there’s two ways this works. On
one hand, wealthy people come in buy this, they start doing whatever they want to do,
don’t think have to answer to anybody. But on the flip side of it, when something does
happen, they do have the money to correct it. Where your normal, everyday going-to-
work Joe, can’t. So, there’s good and bad with that. But we’re going to see more out-of-
state influence on the Yellowstone River as time goes on. As land prices rise, land
becomes harder to get a hold of, we’re going to see more out-of-state money coming. Not
saying it’s a bad thing, I’m just saying it’s coming… it’ll be different. (Segment III,
Agriculturalist, 2018)
We’ve got a little 100 acres. That’s our little part of the river. We can do everything we
can to make that great, but if you go to the southeast a little bit there are oil refineries on
the river, and we have a coal plant on the river. You’ve got county commissioners
looking at that coal plant site going, “We should do another industrial site there.” You’ve
got zoning permits being given out for storage facilities along the river. You go upstream
6.Dikes,Floodplains,andDevelopment|94
and you’ve got reinforced banks everywhere, so everybody can put their house there
where it’s going to flood anyway. See, you can carve out your little spot, and do the best
you can, but when all this other stuff is happening. There’s no resiliency there, there can’t
be. You’re not giving anything a chance. You’re not giving cottonwoods the chance to
grow, when you’re just looking at the fact that something has a railroad track to it, and
we could probably use that for something better than a park, like what a sane city would
do… Because for years, the community just looked at the river as a place to put their
trash, and you know, site industrial facilities that need water next to you, farms that had
animals that you need to wash the shit out of the barn just let it float down the river and
that was all great. [Boise] went through some rough economic times and some city
leaders actually sat down and said, “We should reimagine what we do with this river.”
And they built parks, they built interconnected networks of parks. They did a lot of work
at reestablishing trees along the river, and native vegetation along the river. They turned
it into someplace that people wanted to be. And then all of a sudden, things started to
happen. You know, people wanted to come there to float the river, and so businesses
popped up with ferrying people between their drop off point and where they come out.
And then pretty soon people wanted to build restaurants close to there, and they wanted
to build shops close to there, because people would do a float and then they’d come out
and they would want to get something to eat. This whole chain happened. But it requires
thinking differently. And that’s just what I don’t see happening around here. I mean I
still, with our county and city leadership in Yellowstone County and Billings, I still think
everybody looks at the river as some place to put their garbage… Instead of looking at it
for the resource that it is. It really pisses me off in the end, when I think about it, because
it’s such a waste. You know? (Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2018)
Most of the people that were born and raised here know what that river does, and they
stay away. (Segment V, Civic Leader, 2018)
Now, the only kind of potential this land has other than farming is if you find
somebody… who has an awful lot of money and is looking for a place to park it. They’d
like to own some property along the longest free flowing, wild river in the United States
that has white-tail deer on it… turkeys… geese… ducks, and… all these wonderful things
that people like that want to be able to say that they protect… And once or twice a year,
they show up and they look at it, and they maybe hunt for a day or two, and then they
disappear again. (Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2018)
I have seen a lot of change, through the last 50-60 years, and one of the biggest, biggest
things I think impact is subdivisions. Because people buy the land and then subdivide it
and sell it and bring in all kinds of people who want to change the world… they kind of
like to have it their way. They don’t want erosion; they don’t want a lot of things to
happen. “We are going to save our property, and we will build if we want to build a
house over there” … And then it’s kind of fun 10 years later to drive by and say, “I told
you so, you son of a gun.” [Laughs] (Segment IV, Civic Leader, 2018)
Forever people worried about Bozeman, but Livingston and Park County wasn’t growing.
We’ve been 15,000-16,000 people for years, except for this last two years, and the impact
6.Dikes,Floodplains,andDevelopment|95
of Bozeman now is really hitting Livingston. And we have three or four subdivisions
going in right now. There’s not a lot for sale in Livingston; it’s all being built on… the
impacts and the costs of that growth… is tremendous... And that Yellowstone River is
that damn thing that caused all these tourists to come here. So, you love it and you hate it,
you know… Even with the valley, you know when I was a kid, you didn’t even see a
light on a house. There just wasn’t that many houses up there, and now it’s lights
everywhere. It’s like a little city up the valley. And so, you know, I’m not an engineer per
se, to figure all that out, but I think it has to have an impact… So, I don’t know. It always
worries you. (Segment V, Civic Leader, 2018)
The worst thing that happened was the 20-acre subdivisions. That should have never
happened. They should have been more thoughtful. Most people would… buy a lot to
build a home on. They don’t want 20 acres to pull weeds on, that kind of stuff. (Segment
V, Residentialist, 2018)
Oh, gosh. Lots of changes. A lot of growth in housing, of course, a lot of subdivisions,
new businesses. Last year we just got Sage Lodge built up here and then Mountain Sky
Guest Ranch bought one of their neighboring ranches, and now they’ve done something
with it… So, a lot of new owners of property in the valley, not just small tracts but large
tracts also, ranches. (Segment V, Residentialist, 2018)
There’s a lot of realtors that would love to take that 20 acres and split it into 40 pieces,
and that’s where everybody wants to live. (Segment V, Civic Leader, 2018)
I wish for a different circumstance for this ranch all the time. The river is not our friend,
we live in the designated surveillance area, so we are highly regulated because of
diseased wildlife, and we’re surrounded by subdivisions. This is not a good place to
ranch… [Some ranchers are selling.] One of the pieces [of land] they owned for years,
just sold for 25 million. It was only on the market for a day. And rumors abound about
what that guy is doing with it, but he’s running gravel trucks in there like crazy, working
on roads and I don’t know if he’s paving it. I don’t know what he’s doing, but it’s really
scary. (Segment V, Agriculturalist, 2018)
In our forty years since we’ve lived here… when you used to pull in the lane at night
there were no yard lights in the whole valley. It was all ranches, there was nobody here
but ranches. There was no one-acre plots, there was no ten-acre plots. Every parcel was at
least 240 acres or larger and everybody was a rancher… the population of cattle in the
valley was somewhere in the 10,000-12,000 range. It’s about 2,000 now probably, the
livestock in the valley. [And that’s] Prices and subdivisions. I mean… if you bought if for
agriculture is worth about $300 an acre, probably $400, if you were going to buy it and
make it with livestock. It’s whatever it is now, $10,000-$12,000 an acre… it’s a shift.
(Segment V, Agriculturalist, 2018)
We’re in a high rent district, they’re selling land in this valley for huge money… I
wouldn’t be surprised if they [future generations of ranchers] get forced out… Inheritance
6.Dikes,Floodplains,andDevelopment|96
tax on a ranch of this nature… There’s no way… Unless you’re pretty-well heeled, you
won’t survive (Segment V, Agriculturalist, 2018)
I think now we are starting to see more development in general in the valley… I think
we’re starting to realize that even locally in Livingston, and I’ve tried being supportive of
this process at least with letters to the editor and some op-eds and that sort of thing, but
Livingston doesn’t have a good growth plan… the pass and the wind has always
protected Livingston from too much encroachment from Bozeman. I think we’ve all
realized those days are over; the pass and the wind are not going to be enough to keep
them out. (Segment V, Recreationalist, 2018)
There have been several attempts at the legislature that have not been successful. The
agreement is always, “One size just doesn’t fit all.” And so, if you say 300-foot setback
or 100-foot setback on smaller streams, or try to define it one way or another, there are
going to be people who object and then people who don’t like government, so they will
say that is heavy-handed. So... it is really hard to achieve. (Segment V, Recreationalist,
2012)
I’m really, really pleased that they are limiting the development that takes place in
floodplains now. You know, because it’s such an important, vital ecosystem… it carries
life for not just people but so many species. So, in a very real and practical way too, it
represents life. So, it needs to be protected. (Segment V, Residentialist, 2012)
You know, it’s one of those quandaries that I get into. I hate the idea of somebody telling
me what I can do with my own property, darn it. But at the same time when I see some of
the things that people do with their… property, I’m just horrified. So, you don’t want the
control, yet you need the control. So, it’s a hard one. Should we zone or not, you know?
... I guess at this point, if I were to come down on a side, it would be in favor of some
regulation. Because even though individual property rights are vital…. You know, we’re
here such a short period of time, and then we’re gone…. We can really wreck [things] for
the generations after that by some stupid, selfish… decision we made. So, if I had to
choose one over the other, I think I would choose regulations, but I almost cringe saying
that. (Segment V, Agriculturalist, 2012)
We’ve got laws that you can’t build within 100 yards of the Yellowstone which is great.
Years ago, we let them build right up against it… You’ve got the people that have money
that say, “Oh, I want to live along the river, and you can’t stop me.” But we had to pass
laws even to say if you build in the floodplain, we are not going to sell you insurance.
And I know one guy built in the floodplain, cost him a lot of money… and now he
complains that every time the river goes up, he’s being flooded. And we’re saying, “We
told you not to do that.” … So, yeah, there’s more people… I hate to say… that’s got the
money, that that’s their way of living. They think that they can do what they want to do.
And we have to get… to be a little stronger. (Segment III, Civic Leader, 2018)
Even though there are some regulations about building in the floodplain, there’s still
considerable impact of homes that are near enough to the river that they create some
6.Dikes,Floodplains,andDevelopment|97
impact. So, adequate setback… Just trying to keep the floodplains available to the river to
flood on is one of the best things. (Segment III, Recreationalist, 2018)
It was always a challenge because people fought us tooth and nail because the rules were
set about setbacks and 100-year floodplain and that sort of thing. And, of course, if
somebody has got 100,000 bucks in their pocket and they got to spend it and they don’t
want commissioners to get in the way. So, you are the bulldog of the bunch and always
wrong… [But] It has worked out real well, I think. We have always had a good planning
board and a good planner and good sanitarian people, you know. But how do you fight
the old days? … And some of it gets argued in too. You fight the system, terrible. But it
is an interesting challenge politically. Very interesting. (Egan, IV, Civic Leader, 2018)
There are groups out there that think they already have the big picture already in mind,
and that’s to eliminate all of the people along it [the river]. And we wouldn’t even be
sitting here talking about it if people hadn’t have been along the river, would we? In a
way they’re right, but hey, this is the 21st Century. We’re not talking 1793. (Segment IV,
Civic Leader, 2018)
There are a few, a hand full of citizen-initiated zoning districts in Park County. Other
than that, zone has been a 4-letter word, so it’s very spotty, and not much acreage is
regulated by any zoning in the county. And there are not any building codes in the
county… The subdivision regulations are sort of what guides things, and there are
setback requirements involved there and the sanitation requirements on where you can
site a septic tank and what not. (Segment V, Civic Leader, 2018)
What worries me is people want to put bike paths and nature paths right through our
property. And all of us bought this property because we wanted a little privacy. (Starr, 3,
Res, 2018)
And of course, you have people within the City of Billings, we were approached once
about, you know, they wanted to put in a bike path all the way down to the diversion
dam. And they asked if we’d donate land and I said no. We don’t want people. That
brings people. (Michael, 3, Ag, 2018)
Calls for Education and Long-term Planning
You know, these conservation groups all on the river have been issuing permits for
various activities and this kind of information provides a lot of knowledge to those people
saying, “We don’t want to put this structure in the river here or there. It’s going to get
wiped out,” or whatever…. Education should go to the people that are doing the planning
because they wouldn’t even propose some of this stuff in the first place if they
understood what the impacts might be or would be. That’s the toughest part. (Segment I,
Residentialist, 2018)
How do you deal with it? I don’t know. I’m a firm believer that the government can’t
protect you from everything. You make too many regulations and all of a sudden it starts
affecting something they didn’t intend to. Personally, I would say a buyer beware type of
philosophy… my opinion is that they should be made aware of the problem of flooding…
6.Dikes,Floodplains,andDevelopment|98
And if they do it anyway, shame on them… But here again is, you get too many
regulations about it, you know. (Segment I, Residentialist, 2018)
We all recognize and value the river, and we all recognize the flood zone area. You’re
never going to put houses in there…. It’s only going to be good for cattle grazing or
horses, or something like that, and if you end up having horse trails through there, or
bicycle paths, no big deal…. You could make out some kind of compromise so it could
be a win-win for the farmers and ranchers and for the city people. (Segment III,
Agriculturalist, 2006)
How we organize ourselves on the landscape is going to determine the health of our
wildlife populations and also the demands on the river and perhaps river quality or fish
and… I think there’s some decisions that have to be made to try to figure out what this
place should look like in 50, 100 years and how we see to it, because there is increasing
pressure… [What] is it gonna look like if we do nothing? And… if we choose to do
something? And nothing is always a choice… And it could be a conscious choice, or it
could be a deliberate choice to try to get some consensus about hey, you know, how do
we feel about setbacks? How do we feel about density? How do we feel about the current
incentive system? It’s interesting to contemplate, how do we decide how to organize
ourselves on the landscape for that pesky greater good and to maintain the incredible
geologic, geographic values that are so deep in our culture? (Segment V, Civic Leader,
2018)
Conservation Easements Protect the Land
With conservation easements I think that either people are afraid that the government is
going to do something with the land, or they don’t trust the people that are issuing the
easement. But I think it is a good thing because it protects the land. (Segment III,
Agriculturalist, 2006)
[Conservation easements] pretty much stop any development. I don’t agree with
conservation easements because it takes away the power of the future generations to
make a decision…for no further subdivision. Some of them expand on that to no further
development of any kind, either gravel or mineral or oil or gas or timber or feedlots. It
just goes on and on.… [The people who set up conservation easements] … have moved
in from somewhere else, most of them. (Segment IV, Civic Leader, 2006)
Most [conservation easements] are done for the wrong reason. They are done for tax
perks…. For [land worth] $100 an acre, put a conservation easement on it, and all of a
sudden, it’s only worth $50 an acre because it can’t be subdivided. So, they take that $50
as a tax write-off…. So, they buy land at a…cheaper [cost] than what you or I could
because we pay $100 an acre…. [For us,] it doesn’t do any good because you’re not in
that high of a tax bracket where it’s going to save you. (Segment IV, Civic Leader, 2006)
6.Dikes,Floodplains,andDevelopment|99
On this place, I love it here. And I would never do anything to hurt it. It is my job to be a
good steward. And I don’t need some conservation easement to encourage that. (Segment
V, Agriculturalist, 2006)
I think that there is a lot of room for using market tools to solve conservation problems…
I think [easement programs are] a good idea. I mean, it is a way of creating a property
right that is transferable, with a transparent set of conditions, you know. They are open to
transfer, purchase, and sale. (Segment V, Civic Leader, 2012)
Along the bank there is open water, cattails, and it’s about 180 acres that we have that we
put into a conversation wetlands project, an easement... And there are ducks and geese
and all birds, pheasants, and it’s just a beautiful area for bird wildlife… We did that
because we wanted it to stay the way it was, hasn’t been farmed for a long time and it
probably would be some good hay acreage or whatever… we decided to put it into this
wetland project... It’s through the USDA program that they have… [And] It’s lifetime,
like 90 years, whatever, so yeah. They paid so much for the easement, and my father-in-
law did the deal, and so we have been compensated for it. And it will always be that
unless I guess some way you can buy it all back out, but not our intention, that’s why we
put it in there, so that’s what it would stay for… So, the best way not to have anybody
build and develop the other side of the farm was put it in the wetlands program… Along
with the wildlife stuff. And let people use it like we’ve always wanted to do. (Segment II,
Recreationalists, 2018)
No. No, I’m not going to tie my place up and devalue my ground to where my children
don’t have any options to do with it what they want to do. They want to do it, great. But
I’m not going to put the hindrances on them. (Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2006)
I don’t know. If it was just me and I was going to sell it, I would want to be able to get
my money’s worth. (Segment, III, Residentialist, 2018)
We did put a conservation easement on the property too which assures that it will be rural
for the next bazillion years… It definitely limits [what we can do] … and it costs a lot in
the long term…. The tax benefits you get when you do it aren’t anywhere near what you
give up in value down the road. But we would do it again, I think… If you want to see
your family stay on the property for ongoing generations, I would encourage you to do
it... It’s got to be a decision made by the family, not just one individual. My wife and I
both agreed that it was a good idea…. Our son and our daughter live on the place, and we
hope that they will be there for their entire lives as well. So… we’re happy we did it…
it’s a five-hundred-acre chunk of ground that were it not for the conservation easement
would be developed into small chunks of prime real estate. So, it’s a good feeling to
know that it will be five hundred acres of rural ground for eternity. And the river is
something that we [included].… We gave up a lot of acres in the design of the project.
And I think the design turned out really well as far as being wildlife-friendly, fishery-
friendly… [but] our easement doesn’t anything to do with the river; it just has to do with
development. We can do anything on the river that’s approved by the government
agencies. (Segment III, Residentialist, 2018)
6.Dikes,Floodplains,andDevelopment|100
Half of our ranch is a conservation easement. Some of it was for inheritance tax purposes,
trying to keep the land together and not having to sell it off to pay the taxes. And we want
to conserve it. That’s a tough question. A lot of people don’t like conservation easements,
we do… We’re anti-building, we’d like to keep some of the open space… We’re sort of
unusual for ranchers. I think a lot of people think of their land as their retirement… And
what’s theirs is theirs… Nobody has the right to tell them what to do, but at the same
time, if you just look around and see the way that land is being gobbled up… and
developed… It’s hard to see a house go up on virgin land when there’s not very much of
it left. It’s really hard to see that. (Segment V, Agriculturalist, 2018)
I don’t think it will change much, there’s always somebody wanting to build a house, but
we haven’t sold anything. The lot of ours is under conservation easement, so it can’t be…
We did just, I don’t know what it was, 200-300 acres here. Just, we had to get some
money to settle the state, and they bought that easement. Then the rest of it my uncle did.
He put his old place in conservation easement, then we inherited that, so we got a lot of
conservation ground… there’s quite a bit of it [around here]. Getting to be quite a bit of
it… it’s Montana Land Reliance… [And] there’s quite a bit [of restrictions]. They limit
how many houses you can have. You can’t have a gravel pit or wind farm. No
commercial timber harvests. Some of it is… Sometimes I wish we didn’t have all that on
some of that, so we could get some oil leases. (Segment V, Agriculturalist, 2018)
The fact that now you can do conservation easements… I mean think of that law…
fundamentally saying yes, in perpetuity, you can make a decision… That’s what we’re
trying to do, no question about it. But what we’re not saying is, you know, the federal
government is going to come in and tell you what to do. We’re saying as neighbors we’re
doing things. (Segment V, Recreationalist, 2018)
7.IntakeandOtherDamIdeas|101
Section 7. Intake and Other Dam Ideas
Discussion concerning diversions dams and water storge were common during all of the field
seasons. In Segments I and II, the controversies associated with federal project to build a fish
bypass around Intake irrigation diversion dam for the endangered Pallid sturgeon near Glendive
were frequently discussed. In 2006, the controversy was relatively new, and reactions were quite
visceral as farmers felt threatened by the push to secure passage for the endangered Pallid
sturgeon and any associated uncertainties to irrigation and land use. Many in the area felt there
was not a clear understanding of the importance of agricultural activities. Others wondered if the
Paddlefish, popular with anglers, had been given enough attention. Many questioned the motives
of “outsiders” involving themselves in local concerns. By 2012, concerns about shutting down
irrigation had mostly faded due to the rebuilding of the Intake facility. By 2018, many felt a
balanced, even “win-won” solution was in the making.
Interviews in Segments I and II also included discussions of Yellowtail Dam (completed 1967)
and it impacts on the river downstream from the confluence with the Big Horn River. While
communities acknowledged benefits of less-intense flooding, many discussed how regulated
flows have changed the fishery. The dam produces electricity for some rural areas, and those
participants involved in managing that service discussed balancing the needs of the river with the
needs of those who are dependent on the power.
Many in the valley are attentive to the drought cycles. They often explained that while putting
dams on the Yellowstone River had once seemed a somewhat viable option, in the 21st Century,
the free-flowing river would generate resistance to any serious consideration of dams on the
river. Participants wondered aloud how to store “Montana’s” water. Off-stream storage was
discussed by some.
Intake and Pallid Sturgeons
A Big Controversy
The biggest problem here is the diversion dam. They are having a big controversy over
the Pallid sturgeon. (Segment I, Residentialist, 2006)
Out here right now the big one [issue] is the pallid sturgeon. (Segment I, Recreationalist,
2006)
I think that’s probably the biggest concern I guess that I would have, the biggest overall
concern. (Segment I, Agriculturalist, 2018)
Importance of Irrigated Agriculture
I think feeding the people of our country is the most important thing, and if we fail to do
that, we will have a famine in our country. We will save the fish instead of the
agriculture. Segment I, Civic Leader, 2006)
7.IntakeandOtherDamIdeas|102
It's just like they’re saying, “Well, we don't care what you do. You don’t do nothing,
nothing of importance. Just shut the goddamn river down, you don't need that.” I mean
it… I guess I'm a little offended on the personal side, you know, that somebody thinks
that what I do for a living isn't important. To me it's important, but you know… little
offended that way, that my business and my growing of food, you know… it's important,
it's needed… Somebody always buys it so somebody must be using it. (Segment I,
Agriculturalist, 2018)
The legal battles they are going through right now over that dam at Intake has got this
whole community concerned. That is the lifeblood of Sidney, period. That’s all there is to
it… You’re talking millions and millions of dollars’ worth of economy for Sidney. And I
say, my opinion, Sidney wouldn’t last without it… because there’s just no money in this
country, no money for dryland farming. If you don’t have the canal, you’re back to
dryland farming. It just cannot sustain. (Segment I, Residentialist, 2018)
I don’t even want to start. I'll get upset here… It's the lifeblood though. If you took the
irrigation away, probably sugar would go. The town would dry up. Sidney and Fairview,
this whole valley didn’t have a tree in it in 1906. It was barren, everything has been
planted. All these trees you see along the river, they weren't here then. (Segment I, Rec.
2018)
I can tell you, the irrigated ground, there is 55,000 total acres being irrigated by… Lower
Yellowstone Irrigation Project, all of that water comes out of the Intake diversion dam.
And an acre of irrigated ground taxable value… was $661, and… that is hay ground. I am
guessing sugar beets must be a little bit higher because of their value… [and] one dry
land, just regular hay ground is worth $100, 105 I believe it was. One ground of dry land
pasture is $14. So, what would happen to your tax base, because there is 36,000 acres, I
have been told, in Richland County that the taxable value would go from $600
immediately to at least $105, $115 maybe. (Segment I, Civic Leader, 2018)
Is the Pallid Problem Over-Blown?
Now, some things are supposed to go extinct if they can’t make it... I don’t think that will
hurt anything. [You] can’t save everything. (Segment I, Agriculturalist, 2006)
Those kinds of things become extinct all the time. They have forever, always will, and it
just so happens these sturgeon survived longer than some of them. They’re a prehistoric
animal, that old sturgeon, and maybe [their] time has just run out. (Segment I,
Agriculturalist, 2006)
You have to wonder about the Pallid sturgeon. You kind of wonder if that is as serious as
they say it is. (Segment I, Agriculturalist, 2006)
7.IntakeandOtherDamIdeas|103
Did you know we’re killing 80 million fish a year in this canal? … God, wouldn’t you
think it would stink around here? It’s not that bad. I don’t know where these people come
up with these numbers. (Segment I, Agriculturalist, 2006)
It seems like they have gotten a little too much emphasis on the endangered species part.
I don’t want the Pallid sturgeon to disappear, but I don’t know how much money we can
spend on it. I don’t know that they can do a whole lot about it. I don’t feel that they
should let other fisheries go because they want to spend so much time on the endangered
species. (Segment I, Recreationalist, 2006)
The changes they’re going to make, like I said, spend millions of dollars…they could
haul them in a limousine…you know, what I’m saying? It’s just crazy. It’s ridiculous,
and with the amount they’re talking, you could give each one a limousine ride up there
every day for a long time. (Segment I, Agriculturalist, 2006)
Most of the local people feel that why are we spending 20 million dollars on extending
their breeding ground when 20 million dollars could do so much for our community... So
that’s probably the only conflict there. I believe that the fishermen and, you know, people
that live in Montana wouldn’t disagree with saving the pallid sturgeon if that’s the last
step... But at the same time, from an economic standpoint… local residents have
expressed some concern over that cost versus the cost of, you know, getting Glendive,
Miles City, and Forsyth whole as far as land that we can use. (Segment I, Civic Leader,
2012)
The pallid sturgeon… with a lot of these bridges… if you put in another couple spans…
then you’re probably up another hundred thousand dollars… so what they do, is they’ll
make it abrupt and they’ll narrow up the river with the bridge, like these highway
bridges. Well, anytime you narrow it, you restrict the water, and you get an effect. So, it
speeds up the water… so the pallid sturgeon, the way I understood, can only swim up a
stream 3 to 4 miles an hour. But right here where these bridges are, they’ll speed it up
maybe to like 5 or 6. So the sturgeon wasn’t going to make it through these bridges… So,
there’s a bigger problem and bigger issue in the middle with the state highways.
(Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2012)
I don't want to see a species die out, but I don't think they're dying out anyway. I mean
there's two schools of thought on that. There's plenty of them, they planted some. They
said they don't breed in captivity, but they planted some so how did they get them? So,
they must breed in captivity. (Segment I, Agriculturalist, 2018)
I think there are more of them, and they keep saying every year, "125 are left." … There
is more than that. But they really are a fish of concern. (Segment I, Recreationalist, 2018)
They had that big controversy at Intake about… the pallid sturgeon won't reproduce
because of that dam. We've caught pallid sturgeon this big, and you go to show it to a
biologist, and they turn around because they don’t want to see it because it doesn't fit
their agenda. So, I don’t have a lot of respect for them. (Segment I, Recreationalist, 2018)
7.IntakeandOtherDamIdeas|104
Somebody made this statement that we lose 800,000 fish a year. Really? It would stink so
bad in the city and Montana of dead fish if there was 800,000 fish dying. I mean, come
on. I think they swim right out the end of the canal back into the river, they just took a
different route to get downstream… So, we're not losing 800,000 fish. I swear to God, we
weren’t. (Segment I, Agriculturalist, 2018)
I’m a strong believer in protecting the wildlife. You can tell from our conversation that I
love the wildlife, but you can only do so much, then all of a sudden, you’re hurting
another species on this planet… [And] you have to be considerate also of the people, and
we’re part of this earth and planet also. If you start making rulings to affect one fish out
here that maybe impacted one half of 1%, all of a sudden you start impacting tens of
thousands of people, that’s not alright (Segment I, Residentialist, 2018)
Questioning Motives
I guess there’s talk that they’d like to have the diversion dam out, just so people can boat
over, or canoe over it, or whatever.... Which would [mean we will have to] pump the
water… Well, most of the guys who want to do that are environmentalists... They’re
really deep thinkers… the electricity... It would take burning coal, or something, to make
it. (Segment I, Agriculturalist, 2006)
Tell me if this is true, do they get their lawyers for free? This is what I've heard. That the
Friends of… Defenders of Wildlife get their lawyers free. The government pays them up
to $600 an hour per lawyer… I think if you dig into that, you might find out. That would
be a question I would like somebody to answer for me, because I think that's totally
unfair that the government pays for their lawyers, and I got to pay for my own… But they
don't realize the jobs and the chaos they’re creating to real people... I mean if somebody
comes up and asks me, “Do you want to kill wildlife?” No, I don't want to, but I mean…
I think we've come up with a plan, but they don't like the plan, so therefore they just keep
fighting it… I believe the Corps and the Fish and Game are on the right track. I think they
actually want to help the fish. This other party, I don't think they care about the fish, I
think it's just about getting the river open… if they really cared about the fish, let's get
this thing built instead of fighting about it (Segment I, Agriculturalist, 2018)
In my opinion, they are domestic terrorists… the Defenders of Wildlife, they are no more
concerned about saving the fish, they just want to make this an open river so they can
float it, which is absolutely nonsense… Then they say, “Oh, it’s about saving the fish.”
There would be more fish sucked into them pumps every day then there is total all year
long what we get off of that… So, it isn't about saving the sturgeon, it's about shutting us
down… Ask yourself why the Defenders of Wildlife are even in this fight. Whatever
happens, if we get our bypass and keep our weir or lose it, it’s not going to affect them
one iota, not one. Because it isn't their livelihood. So why are they even in the fight?
(Segment I, Civic Leader, 2018)
7.IntakeandOtherDamIdeas|105
Aren’t Paddlefish Important?
The Intake Diversion Dam…keeps the paddlefish from going too far upstream. Our
paddlefish season is very productive. They have now limited it to 1000 fish caught, or six
weeks. The last two years, the season has lasted seven days and ten days. That is because
they can go down to the dam, and snag them, and haul them out. (Segment I, Civic
Leader, 2006)
There’s a push to get rid of the Intake Dam… this is to aid the paddlefish in getting up
stream, which I think the dams been here since 1905, and paddlefish seem to be thriving.
(Segment I, Agriculturalist, 2006)
What bothers me is that, okay, we're doing this to save the pallid sturgeon but now the
existing plans we have is not just affecting those fish but it's affecting every other species
on the river including the paddlefish which aren't doing that great right now. So that’s
what I don't like. (Segment I, Residentialist, 2018)
There’s No Reason They Can’t Fix Intake
From my understanding… you can keep the dam, keep the irrigation, and the canal the
way it is, but the fish need to have an alternate route to get over the dam. (Segment I,
Recreationalist, 2006)
There’s a push to get rid of the Intake Dam, which is not really a dam… and that would
be impossible because those farmers can’t afford to pay for a pumping project when this
is gravity flow. (Segment I, Agriculturalist, 2006)
There’s no reason why they can’t fix Intake Dam. It’s got to take somebody that’s got
heart who wants to put heart and soul into it. That isn’t just a job for an agency person.
It’s got to take people that are on the land that are willing to go above and beyond the call
to get involved. And then put credibility into it—not that agencies don’t have credibility,
not that they don’t have good people. But there’s that division of the ‘us and them,’
mentality. And the us have to become them to make it really truly work. And then it
drags; it’s that black hole effect. It drags a whole bunch of other folks into it. (Segment I,
Agriculturalist, 2006)
The rest of the thing is still up in the air, and they ran out of money to do it, so I don’t
know. (Segment I, Recreationalist)
Phase 1 is they built new intake canals... and they put screens over the new intake
portions... hopefully keeping fish from entering the irrigation canals, etcetera... The new
massive structure they have down there is super... but now they are awaiting funding
and/or an okay to go ahead with Phase 2, which would be to build a ramp, a bypass ramp,
around the dam so the pallid sturgeon can get further upriver to spawn and have a longer
spawning area in the Yellowstone... When the Corps is going to move ahead with Phase 2
7.IntakeandOtherDamIdeas|106
is anybody’s guess with the present congressional funding situation. (Segment I, Civic
Leader, 2006)
The irrigation project… I would never recommend that that dam be taken out. If they are
feeling like some fishes aren’t going where it wants to go, I’m sure they could make an
arrangement. (Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2018)
I guess I would like to see this intake issue settled. But I don't think… it'll ever settle.
Unless they get their way... If we get the weir in, I think there will just be another issue…
we need to get this thing settled… We've spent a lot of money on lawyers. (Segment I,
Agriculturalist, 2018)
What I do notice though, is we use some pipe, and if carp would get in there it was a
problem. I don’t have that problem anymore, so the fish screen wasn't that bad. It wasn’t
that bad of an idea. And I think they kind of… whoever engineered it actually did a pretty
good job… I think it's easier for us to control the water going into to the canal now with
that system, so I don't look at that as all bad. (Segment, I, Agriculturalist, 2018)
I mean we want the fish to live, but we also need the people to live… It just would not
work to try to pump the water for that big of an area. It’s just phenomenal the costs
(Segment, I, Agriculturalist, 2018)
In my opinion, it’s negatively impacted the river since they put the new inlet structure
in… just for fish movement… There’s not a lot of green people around here, and I don’t
consider myself green, I just don’t like the way this has played out. We got, the Corps
kind of led everybody down a path and then they switched paths, and all of a sudden,
there’s people that are upset about it. (Segment I, Residentialist, 2018)
I know, if you’re an irrigator, obviously you want your water, number one, and you want
it cheap, number two. And I can understand that, but at what point do the taxpayers have
to provide, what share of that should the taxpayers, you know, take on, and what the
responsibility for you guys? Because their water’s been really cheap compared to
everybody else’s… they’re sensationalizing some of that, saying if we don’t get this, you
know, 55,000 acres will no longer be irrigated and it’s going to be devastating and all
this… most of the people around here don’t talk about it too much because if you’re
negative, you’re against farming. You know, and I’m totally not against that, and it’s
never been an argument about water or no water, it’s just whose share, who needs to bear
the burden here, or partial burden… I don’t know where it’s going to end up. I totally
understand their interests in what they’re doing, but at the same time, I see both sides too
(Segment I, Residentialist, 2018)
Yellowtail Dam
Benefits and Harms of Yellowtail Dam
7.IntakeandOtherDamIdeas|107
We used to get ice jams. We haven’t had ice jams for years. I think that has a lot to do
with Yellowtail Dam, too. I think that warm water coming out of Yellowtail Dam has
kept the ice from getting too thick. (Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2006)
Before they put Yellowtail Dam in, you had a lot more ice. It was thicker and bigger…
With the warmer water from Yellowtail, we don’t have the bigger ice flows and the
thicker freezing of the river. It is a two-edged sword because that part is good for winter.
(Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2006)
Since they put that dam in, that water is a little bit warmer as it comes out of there, and
the ice isn’t near the problem that it used to be like back in the 60s. (Segment I, Civic
Leader, 2018)
Since Yellowtail has been in… I think we’ve had a lot less erosion. Yellowtail is
controlling the spring runoff. (Segment I, Agriculturalist, 2006)
I really think that since ’96 they’ve done a lot better job…. They had to because [before]
they weren’t doing their job…. They were slipping up…. And they’ve been doing a lot
better job. (Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2006)
The fishing has just improved over the last probably 10 years tremendously for some
different species of fish… I think the water quality is really good… the water is a lot
nicer coming out of the Big Horn Dam, or Big Horn Lake out of Yellowtail Dam. It
keeps the river pretty consistent here, and that way we don’t have the really low water or
the really high water, except the spring runoff. And I think that consistency has given the
fish the opportunity to reproduce and survive there. (Segment II, Recreationalist, 2012)
Controlling the flow of the Bighorn last year was a big deal… for downstream flood
relief. (Segment IV, Recreationalist, 2012)
I think they open the gates at the wrong time… during the high-water mark, which half of
May, and all of June. And that adds to the flooding that takes place along the river. And,
of course, the guys…that have river land continue to lose it because of the high-water
washing action… It’s a major disaster when it happens. (Segment I, Agriculturalist,
2006)
There have been several battles about how they regulate the water in Yellowtail [Dam].
Sometimes, when there is a lot of runoff, they will dump water and it will cause excessive
flooding down here. It is well documented that this is an ongoing thing. The state and the
Feds don’t agree on this process. We have had several go-rounds on this. (Segment II,
Agriculturalist, 2006)
It’s nice to have it [the Yellowstone] that way [free flowing]. Because if you did dam it
off, it creates problems. It controls the flow like it does on the Big Horn, but then you
have got moss. When you have clean water and sunshine you have moss and lots of it…
And it really creates headaches for irrigators… They have a moss ditch at Hardin, and
7.IntakeandOtherDamIdeas|108
sometimes it is manned 24-hours a day for the water going into the canal. That’s how bad
it can get. (Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2012)
I don’t think we’re getting the flood control that we should be getting from Yellowtail
Dam, Boysen Dam, and the Cody Dam… I think that they’re not letting out enough water
on these dams to compensate for these floods that we’ve been getting… And so now half
of our place down here is going down the river. And I’m not the only one... And they talk
about soil conservation, well, it’s a farce because there’s so much water intake and so
much erosion on this river… But I talked to a federal judge about it, and he said…what
you need to do is… have all the ranchers file a class action lawsuit… And see, one of the
things is, when they put the dam in, the dam was supposed to be for recreation, irrigation,
and flood control… Well, maybe they are doing some flood control, but… with all the
technology and satellites they ought to be able to tell what the snow depth is… somebody
is not doing their math right… But… you can’t blame Yellowtail because they’ve got two
Wyoming dams sitting up there, and when they get full, what do they do? Dump it down
on Montana. So, you need to have the congressmen and senators, I think, working
together. And they’re going to tell you they already are, but I think that’s bullshit because
it’s not happening... So that’s my opinion; I don’t think it’s regulated right… To me
we’re not being represented… They don’t care about the ranchers in my opinion… But
you know… if you live along the river you have to expect high water. But you know, we
have so much technology, why can’t we do a better job than what we’re doing? That’s
what I’m saying. (Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2018)
Balance Interests and Work on Communications
There were a lot of issues on Yellowtail Dam, [including]…how high you let the water
come up in the spring, or how low you take it …. If there’s a lot of snow way up above,
shouldn’t the Yellowtail Dam be taken down a little bit more to help hold that back? On
the other hand, it provides a great source of irrigation…late in the summer…. So, it’s a
tough issue to balance…. I believe…the Corps of Engineers…came down and had some
town meetings afterwards, to take the heat, I guess, or to try to explain how they have to
balance all these different uses. (Segment II, Residentialist, 2006)
The Army Corps of Engineers controls it, I think…. They did [notify us] for a few years
right after that flood, and then they quit again…. Well, now that’s the biggest problem.
(Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2006)
It would be nice if they would put information out. (Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2006)
There is no [communication] that I know of. We have tried… mostly through the
Conservation District…but it didn’t seem like we got much response…. I would pay a
little more attention to what is going on downstream instead of just the dam. You have to
look at the whole area more than they do. (Segment II, Residentialist, 2006)
I think the toughest thing is when you are using the Yellowtail Dam to help control water,
and they have issues of how high they need the dam to be at Memorial Day for boating
7.IntakeandOtherDamIdeas|109
up there, versus holding back water so we’re not flooding. Of course, the preference
down here is you let the water out so you can hold it back this time of year and not let the
river get so high. But there are recreationists up there that need the water a little higher so
they can access it, so it’s just a tough thing that the Corps has to deal with on there.
(Segment II, Residentialist, 2018)
Water Storage
Dam the Yellowstone?
My biggest concern is…[a] dam. It’s a wild river. It needs to stay a wild river because it’s
one of the last ones…. If there were wild rivers across the United States, then it would be
no big deal. But when this is one of the last, if not the last, then that’s different. If it is the
last, then we need to keep it just because it is the last…. That is my biggest concern.
(Segment I, Recreationalist, 2006)
I don’t think that the river should be dammed… Most of the damming we have done
hasn’t helped. We dammed up the Colorado so we could irrigate California and they
paved it over and built houses. I am opposed to a dam. (Segment III, Recreationalist,
2006)
I hope it continues to be the same. I can’t imagine that they’re going to dam it because it
is the last major, longest free flowing river in the United States. Hopefully, they are not
going to impede the way it works its magic around here. (Segment III, Recreationalist,
2006)
As long as it stays natural, that’s the best. No dams, no changes. Just leave it…like it is
today…. I like to watch the river come up in the spring and go back to normal. And just,
you know, wait for [William] Clark to come down. (Segment IV, Residentialist, 2006)
Ideally, I would like to see a dam on it, but I think we’ve passed that opportunity. At one
time, there was quite a bit of engineering done; they were going to put a dam above
Livingston. Now they’ve developed housing so much along the Yellowstone that it
probably won’t happen. (Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2006)
I, myself, believe that [by] putting in a dam on the river…they create a controlled way to
keep flooding from happening and a controlled river-flow downstream. At the same time,
they make better use of the resource through recreation, or irrigation projects, or power,
or whatever. I think you can physically do things to a river…for the betterment. A perfect
example is the fact that they built the dike, here, sixty years ago to try and make the
community better. (Segment I, Civic Leader, 2006)
[In order to have a lot more water] you’d have to build a dam up in…Paradise Valley or
somewhere up in there. And that is such a beautiful area, you’d hate to see that lost…. I’d
have a lot of misgivings in this day and time. At one time, I was real-strong in favor of it.
I think it is important for future generations. You know, I suppose that’s as important as
7.IntakeandOtherDamIdeas|110
the land we irrigate now, [but] we already can overproduce what we sell. So, it’s hard to
say. (Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2006)
I think it is too bad we can’t divert it somehow, the high water, and put it to use. Once it
leaves this state, it is gone. I think we could develop more agriculture if we had some
diversion. I’m not sure how’d you do it. Maybe it would take a dam and that would be
pretty hard to do anymore. (Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2006)
Another conflict would be between power generation and wanting to use more of the
water for power generation and also for cities…and agricultural diversion dams….
It’s not too much of an issue right now, but in ten years…, I think it might be. I think
there will be conflicts of development versus leaving the river in its pristine character.
(Segment III, Recreationalist, 2006)
The river corridor is like the whole valley. In places, the Yellowstone River valley is
miles wide. The river is actually maybe 600 to 700 feet wide, but there’s from hills to
bluffs on both sides; it’s pretty extensive…. You have to be careful, I think, so wherever
little creeks that drain into it, and we need to be careful not to impede those….There’s
things that could be done towards the outskirts of the corridor that are definitely going to
affect the river. (Segment III, Civic Leader, 2006)
It is the longest free flowing river in the United States, and it should be maintained as
that. (Segment V, Recreationalist, 2006)
I just want people to love the river and to respect it and not do anything to damage the
way it does… How do we protect that river? You know, not use too much water, not
riprap too much… Don’t put a dam on it. I mean I lived through… Froze to Death Creek
that comes down, one time they wanted to put a dam there. They were going to give this
fellow who we knew the family all this money, and I’ll tell you what, there was kind of
an uproar in the community over that. No, my folks, no, do not dam the river…
Interviewer: Let’s say somebody listens to this in 50 years or 100 years, what would you
want them to know coming from history about right now? … How good we’ve got it.
And it is god’s country. And don’t dam the river! … Whichever way you want to put it
that way, don’t put a dam on it and then don’t ‘damn it’ the other way either [laughs].
(Segment II, Recreationalist, 2018)
Mother Nature wanted it that way… Once we keep it free flowing and going… We
should be doing good. (Segment III, Civic Leader, 2018)
Dams or reservoirs seem to be appealing recreationally, but they sure change the nature
of the riparian areas and the fishery. So, I hope that those things would be held off or just
not done right on the river. (Segment III, Recreationalist, 2018)
Just don’t stop the river. Don’t put a dam. It’s pretty neat. (Segment IV, Residentialist,
2018)
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Big Horn’s set up a lot of people… as far as producing energy… [But] the Yellowstone
has been declared the last wild river in the United States, so people don’t want to do
anything to it. They already don’t want any unnatural diversion, however… You’ve
already got people along the river that have done things to change its course already…
but I kind of think that in years to come they are going to have to do things a little
different, just to make things work… I know there is good and bad about dams, but I
always thought it was, in my mind, a good thing, but that’s why this is a free country.
People can have their own opinion. (Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2018)
If you can store water, that’s the ticket… I know you can’t make it rain, and you can’t
dam that river, you can’t. It shouldn’t be. (Segment III, Recreationalist, 2018)
I come back with the statement which bans me forever against every environmentalist
that there is. And I think there should be responsible control of the river. I understand free
flowing, dam-free. I was born and raised here…. But every time I look at what happened
in 2011, and I see the amount of water that we flushed down that could have been used
for irrigation, for all sorts of things that could bring back some health to our agriculture...
Water is used for man, it is put here so man can use water responsibly… Does that mean
that I would advise a dam? It should be in the discussion… If it’s not in the discussion,
you’re never going to be able to address the issue. You’ve got to be able to stand for it
and bring the topic up. (Segment III, Civic Leader, 2018)
The biggest thing is if we had a dam and that would store the water and you wouldn’t
have these terrible floods and we wouldn’t be talking about the river... Not going to
happen in our area because of the fact that they are taking them out instead of putting
them in... But you know what else it does? Look at Oklahoma. Oklahoma in the Dust
Bowl days… they started building reservoirs. If you look at Oklahoma from the sky, it is
all reservoirs. What did that do? It changed the climate in Oklahoma. Now they get more
moisture than they ever did in pre-Dust Bowl days. I don’t know why it is such a bad
thing. You can’t even hardly get a permit to go on your own property and go build a
pawn. Makes no sense… They say it’s all for the fish, but where is the best fishing?
Around any dam. It’s always the best fishing… Helping the economy… so it’s bigger
than just natural, I think. (Segment IV, Civic Leader, 2018)
It’s the only undammed river, which I think years ago… you’d never get it done now.
Years ago, if it was dammed, slowed down, and controlled a little bit… (Segment IV,
Agriculturalist, 2018)
Off-Stream Storage
I think there will always be plenty of water in the Yellowstone until late in the fall. There
will be some shortages that show up in the fall, for irrigation mainly. The river gets so
low then that people have to pump and that is expensive. I don’t think they will ever put a
dam on the Yellowstone. I think there is too much public pressure. The only thing is, if
they could divert some of the high water, and use it when the river is low. I don’t know
anybody that is in favor of a dam. (Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2006)
7.IntakeandOtherDamIdeas|112
I wouldn’t mind some water being diverted off into a big reservoir, so we can store water.
That’d be nice…and I always thought we should try to hang onto as much water as
they’ll allow us to, instead of just letting it flow into the ocean, because we need it here.
We live in a semi-arid desert. And sometimes the river gets so low, we’re losing out on
species of fish that need water to live in…[and] when the water table goes down there’s
certain types of trees that can’t make it, too. (Segment II, Residentialist, 2006)
I think there could be some more improvement. Somebody had this idea of storing that
water when the river is really high and then letting it back in later. I think that should be
done. (Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2012)
Well, you got to start with the beginning, when there is lots of water, do what you can to
conserve it, store it. One of the things on… the [Yellowstone Basin] Advisory Council,
that we talked about was, how do you creatively store water? Off-stream storage.
(Segment III, Civic Leader, 2018)
It’s [water storage is] a good thing to look up and research, because there’s been
discussion of a way of recharging by doing a reservoir there and taking the water, putting
it up there, hanging onto it, recharging or pulling it out of there. (Segment III, Civic
Leader, 2018)
We’re involved in a project right now that has identified a significant area to create a
water reserve that would run the City water right through BBWA canal into a very large
reservoir. That would allow us to bank, so to speak, eight to nine months’ worth of water
and provide a secondary source for the community. So, it's a big deal in terms of just
protecting future growth for our community, but also just the existing population that we
have. The other opportunity that it potentially offers is the distribution of raw water to the
suburban and urban areas in Billings so we’re not using treated water for unnecessary use
like irrigating a lawn or your garden.… The foresight that our leaders have here in
Billings I think is profound… Dave Mumford who's the Public Works director here, and
who I feel is an understated visionary for our community, as a public servant…. [His
idea] is part of the integrated water plan… [And] they’re hoping for five [years until
completion].… It's exceptionally aggressive. The hold-ups… may come with DEQ,
getting the appropriate permits on something like this that’s so unconventional, but I
think that discussion has already happened. So, I think that there is some real possibility
that this could be happening sooner rather than later… The left side of the aisle and the
right side of the aisle, the recreationists and the fundamentalists, they were all just like,
“Yeah, keep going. We got to do this. This is a cool project for Billings.” (Segment III,
Residentialist, 2018)
I want you to build a big dam off the Yellowstone River somewhere so that it don’t do all
this damage and we can use that water later. People hate me when I say that [laughs] …
The trouble with me saying that is because we know everybody; we were crop adjusters
for years and years, so we traveled the whole state, and we know everybody. There’s just
no place I can think that they can do that where they wouldn’t do it on somebody. You
7.IntakeandOtherDamIdeas|113
know what I mean, take somebody’s property. So, I should have bit my tongue. (Segment
II, Agriculturalist, 2018)
8.CottonwoodForests|114
Section 8. Riparian Areas and Cottonwood Forests
In designing the original protocol, efforts were made to engage the participants in conversations
regarding riparian areas, however it was assumed that the term was not a locally used vernacular
term. We attempted to elicit comments that might answer these questions: Was “riparian” a term
local residents would introduce into the conversation? What do participants use to express
understandings of riparian areas? Moreover, did they attach any value to riparian areas?
To avoid using the term riparian, we decided to solicit conversations about the “river corridor.”
The results were not always successful in terms of soliciting discussions about riparian areas.
Indeed, for some, the term “corridor” had political connotations. Participants worried about how
wide the corridor boundaries might be: A quarter of a mile? Five miles? They offered opposing
opinions concerning whether or not restricting activities in the corridor was a good idea. By
2018, the conversations concerning corridors were much the same, however a few people
described the corridor as an interface, or as an expanse where the river could migrate.
In 2006, discussions that could be categorized as fitting a riparian theme were obvious, and some
participants introduced the term into their explanations. There was much attention to wildlife,
birds, and some mention of ecosystems. Some of the participants explained that livestock grazing
was detrimental to these areas. In 2012 and 2018, the conversations were not much different;
however, once participant explained that the riparian area could filter water.
During each of the field seasons, the cottonwood (Populus spp.) forests, in riparian areas, were
described as beloved. In 2006, participants claimed that livestock and wildlife inhibit cottonwood
growth. In 2012, some blamed reduced cottonwood health on other factors, such as human
impacts, temperature changes, and disease. In 2018, the team put extra effort into soliciting
comments regarding cottonwood forests, and found that out of love or worry for, there was a
general awareness that the cottonwood forests were “aged.” Some speculated that grazing,
beavers, squirrels, and erosion were detrimental to cottonwood health. Participants explained that
cottonwoods need “a lot of water.” Some noted that sapling cottonwoods appeared after flood
water recede, yet no one suggested more flooding as a means of enhancing cottonwood
regeneration.
River Corridor
Corridor Discussions—2006
[It’s] where the deer, geese, [and] ducks [live]. I just call it wildlife habitat. It’s not a
corridor. Corridor, to me, is a runway. (Segment I, Agriculturalist, 2006)
To me the corridor of the Yellowstone River is where the river is, but some people got
the idea that the corridor is out here, all on the riparian areas, or all in the valley….I think
the corridor has to be where the water runs, where you [have] control of the
water….Some people wanted to try to put all the riparian areas in, which includes our
farmland….we’ve got an argument with that….Some of them figure…you can call it a
8.CottonwoodForests|115
corridor and then turn around and get out on somebody’s farm just because the river,
maybe a thousand years ago, went there. (Segment I, Agriculturalist, 2006)
I’ve heard ‘corridor,’…and I don’t know what the actual measurements would be. I’ve
heard they want to establish a corridor five miles from the river in each direction where
everything’s protected. What a bunch of crap that is! That’s what worries people. If they
did that, they’d have control of this entire place, and you wouldn’t be able to do anything.
You hear of these Heritage River deals, where they come along and see a house that you
can see from the river, ‘Well, you’ve got to take it down.’ They can really shut you down.
I think that’s what a lot of…[environmentalists] want. And, the really radical ones, they
don’t care if I’m here or not. They couldn’t care less about me, or anybody like me.
They’d like to see us gone, actually. They’d like to see a buffalo range, and me in a
sustainable village doing something that the government mandates that I do. (Segment I,
Agriculturalist, 2006)
Well, if you’re going to say corridor, you’re going to have to define the boundaries. Is it a
one-half mile or a mile either side of the center line of the river? [Will] that distance be
consistent, or will it depend on whether you’re on public or private land? (Segment II,
Recreationalist, 2006)
To me, the river corridor is almost in three pieces. You have the river itself. You have the
immediate riparian area that is river-influenced. And then you have the cottonwood
corridors that are turning quickly to Russian olive corridors, some wetlands associated
with the river, that kind of thing. It’s a relatively narrow strip in most places. And then
you have irrigated fields that are directly adjacent to that riparian area. That boundary is
flexible depending on who wants to do some modification of the area. I think that
corridor has to include the Ag areas that are immediately adjacent to the riparian areas
because there is so much influence to the wildlife and how the river operates based on
those fields too. The deer, for example, living in those riparian areas use the heck out of
the Ag fields and depend on them. (Segment II, Recreationalist, 2006)
Designating a river corridor and keeping in that corridor? So, the minute it starts to
wander out of that corridor, they fix it. Is that what you mean? Maybe environmentally
speaking they set up this corridor and nobody can touch it—it’s off limits to any industry.
Is that what they mean? So, they can maintain it as a wild river? (Segment II,
Recreationalist, 2006)
[A corridor is where] we aren’t going to have any development along the river…[and]
keep housing and development out of it. I assume is what they’re talking about. That
sounds fine. (Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2006)
As I understand it, they want to take land from the landowners along the river and make
this river corridor. Let’s say they have a corridor of a quarter-of-a-mile wide. That would
take a good share of our productive land. I object to that. That’s how we make our living.
Then let’s say the river continues in its wild, untamed fashion and it washes into that
corridor…. They’ll want another quarter-of-a-mile. (Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2006)
8.CottonwoodForests|116
I agree with the [idea of a] corridor…. I mean it keeps the quality of life where it is….
There’s something about walking down the road smelling a fresh cut alfalfa field. I’ve
seen the corn field out there and watched a raccoon go into it, or a deer go by. That’s just
something that you want your kids to experience, just like you get to. The beet industry
up and down the river, the smell of just all that, that’s all a part of the quality of life.
(Segment III, Civic Leader, 2006)
We actually looked into creating a river corridor here. We were going to have three miles
of riverfront in conservation easement. We had our two neighbors, and myself, and
between us, depending on how much land they put in, we could have had as much as five
miles. Three miles would have been easy to do. And we had the Feds and State both out
here several winters ago talking to us over a couple of months. It was a terrible worthless
deal that none of us wanted. We were all excited and interested about doing it, [but] the
way they put that program together, I don’t know why anybody would do it…. The tax
break is not significant. (Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2006)
I believe that there needs to be corridors…. Not only to protect the river itself, but [also]
the wildlife systems that are in that river. I would love to see public funding in some of
those issues. That is kind of wild for me to say considering I come from a Republican
background. (Segment III, Civic Leader, 2006)
The land values are such that…It makes that river corridor the domain of the upper class.
(Segment V, Recreationalist, 2006)
The river corridor is basically the river and its surrounding lands, the whole riparian
area…it’s not just the river, it’s the trees, animals, insects, birds, the worms…the dead
leaves that fall on the ground…. Ninety percent of Montana’s nesting birds use riparian
areas. Close to 60 percent actually lay their eggs there…. If you fly over in an airplane,
you look down at the Yellowstone River, you see this big green lush strip running
through the countryside. (Segment V, Recreationalist, 2006)
Corridor Discussions—2012 and 2018
People have different… expectations or ideas when they come here from particularly out
of the area that don’t know. And the Yellowstone can be very intimidating. You know,
big water, big river and stuff. But you know, it’s... What’s nice about it… in this corridor
here where you’re floating within ear and eye shot of the railroad and the interstate and
all that, it still can be a very peaceful and tranquil experience out on the river. (Segment
IV, Recreationalist, 2012)
Pheasant numbers remain about the same. Let’s see, along the corridor there, yeah.
Further off river, antelope numbers are down. (Segment II, Recreationalist, 2018)
The river corridor? That’s a term I’ve never used…. [But I guess,] the river itself is over
here. So, the river corridor, the cottonwoods, and asparagus, is over here, and pretty soon
if you talk to the old timers they’ll say, “We’ve never had that island.” Because the river
8.CottonwoodForests|117
now is over here and there’s an island in the middle of the river. And is this the river
corridor because there is river around here and there’s river around here? It’s the way the
river runs. (Segment II, Recreationalist, 2018)
Without the shelter belts, which are corridors from the river down, there wouldn't be
quite so much [wildlife here] but those both create a corridor, so we get a good amount of
traffic. (Segment IV, Residentialist, 2018)
I think the corridor is not just the river itself, but I think it is everything that surrounds it,
and I cannot really put a mile on that, but you know there is Cow Creek up on the other
side, Cow Creek drops in from the Joliet side. I think they are part of the corridor because
that creek dumps into the Yellowstone. However, when you get up on the rocks on this
side, and all sudden you are in the Broadview foundation where you are down 400-700
feet for water, I don't think that qualifies as a river corridor. That sounds more like mesa
and its own microcosm out there. (Segment IV, Residentialist, 2018)
The river corridor is the lowland along the river, like the land that would be affected by
the flooding, the land that would be self-irrigated by it, like the riparian areas, that’s the
corridor. (Segment IV, Residentialist, 2018)
I really don’t know. I’ve heard the term [corridor], yeah. What they’re referring to, I
guess that depends on who you talk to probably… I’ve heard it used, but I really never
knew where they were coming from or getting at, I’ll put it that way. (Segment IV,
Agriculturalist, 2018)
I really have not [heard the term], what do they mean by a river corridor? (Segment IV,
Residentialist, 2018)
River corridor, where you can only build within, you can’t build up by the river. Yeah,
there’s a lot of discussion on that. That’s been a discussion for our county for a long time.
There’s a lot of opposition obviously to that, but lots of discussion. (Segment V, Civic
Leader, 2018)
There’s definitely a river corridor, like I say, that river has been all over this valley
especially in this stretch. Like Mary said, it seems silly that we build houses in the river
corridor. (Segment V, Agriculturalist, 2018)
And then you know, Google Earth now, I mean it’s just clear as day that you come up the
Yellowstone, you come up the Shoshone, you come up the Snake, you come up the
Madison, and you know, it’s just all building in because the rivers are our life, the rivers
are our wildlife corridors, and the development comes up those drainages right to the
boundaries. And that’s cool, but how do we manage that interface and keep some of those
things we cherish? (Segment V, Civic Leader, 2018)
8.CottonwoodForests|118
Riparian Areas
Riparian Discussions—2006
The Yellowstone is one big riparian area…. It could be a low-lying area, a hardwood
draw, there could be a thousand things they could use that terminology for…. BLM uses
that term all the time…. It is like a big pasture with a little stream running down it. That
is the riparian area of a big pasture. I don’t think you can use riparian area with the
Yellowstone. I think it is its own ecosystem. (Segment I, Civic Leader, 2006)
We have a huge waterfowl population that uses that…deer. Riparian areas support upland
birds, as we discussed earlier, songbirds, raptors, [a] huge population of raptors, and
provides a tremendous waterfowl hunting. To alter that, or to change that in any way
right now, would be a national loss, a national tragedy. (Segment II, Recreationalist,
2006)
The water, I mean, it has to have riparian vegetation, the type of vegetation that you
associate with the different riparian zones. (Segment II, Recreationalist, 2006)
Grazing is the one big management concern. If you overgraze it, you’re taking out the
important riparian vegetation, and livestock are breaking down the stream banks. Yes,
that’s a very common problem…. It’d be nice to have better livestock management along
the river so you can return the riverbank back to its real riparian-type setting. (Segment
II, Recreationalist, 2006)
The riparian area is what I would call the difference between, let’s say the low-water
mark and the high-water mark, and places where there is a transition between the land
and the river itself. And that can be marshy areas that hold an incredible amount of
wildlife. It’s all unique plant life, and that sort of thing. Those types of areas—let’s say a
marsh area, for example, I know there’s laws that guard against draining those areas and
bothering those areas, at this point I think are largely effective. (Segment II,
Recreationalist, 2006)
Do you want me to come in and tell you what you can do with your 160 acres? And what
if that is where you put all our resources…and your plan ultimately was to…pay for your
retirement. Then along comes the government and says now we are going to make this a
riparian area. This is a green space, and you can’t develop that. I have just wiped out your
assets. The government has to be careful that controls don’t go overboard…[and] start
infringing on private development rights. (Segment III, Civic Leader, 2006)
Because of irrigation in this valley, this valley has changed tremendously from what it
was in the 1870s…. This whole valley was an alkaline flat…. There was a nice riparian
area, because the Yellowstone is a wandering river, but it was probably a mile wide at its
most. Now it is ten miles wide. (Segment III, Civic Leader, 2006)
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[The Yellowstone River is] one of the most important riparian areas in this part of
Montana…. The riparian zone is a place that is adjacent to the river, and it extends from
the river back two or three miles…. It’s important for bird species and animal
species…and aquatic [life]…. [It] filters out the dangerous things that might filter into the
river. It decreases erosion…and aesthetically it’s very pleasing…. [It is nice] to kayak the
river and camp along the shores in the cottonwood groves. (Segment III, Recreationalist,
2006)
The riparian area should all be restored. We have a lot of restoring on the river that needs
to be done…. [A natural corridor is] a natural habitat area. It does not mean [a] lawn right
down to the river that is sprayed with pesticide to keep it green. It does not mean that. To
me, [the riparian area] is a natural, protective thing. Maybe there could be bike trails and
walking trails so people can enjoy that. Not storage and parking lots. (Segment III,
Recreationalist, 2006)
We are seeing such a change in philosophy even in the farm and ranch community about
riparian areas. Everyone used to just perimeter fence their cows; you have a mile square
section or half a mile depending on whatever land you own. And now they are starting to
fence the riparian areas out, so the cows don’t trample through the brush and that natural
filtering system. That is kind of a farm management thing that is good for the
environment. (Segment III, Civic Leader, 2006)
Bank erosion today is caused by inappropriate use of the riparian zone, primarily…. It’s a
tradeoff: do you want to have your cows and calves down in the river under the trees or
do you want to take care of them somewhere else? Well, the old-style method was down
along the river. Well, they trampled the shit out of everything. The Yellowstone is a big
river, so you don’t see it as much as you see it on the side channels. The Clarks Fork is
awful. It creates nothing but trouble for us because of sediment coming down. It’s a very
erodeable country….it erodes something fierce. [And] it’s got years of that sediment built
up right in the flood channel. So, even if you were to correct it today, it will continue to
move that stuff forever. (Segment III, Civic Leader, 2006)
I describe it as pretty…. Where we live is within a riparian area, close to the river and
next to our alfalfa fields…. [There’s] a lot of wildlife and [it is] just a pretty area.
(Segment III, Residentialist, 2006)
With people moving in, a lot of people are fencing off the riparian area, [and it] is
growing back. They’re fencing it off, and…that’s helped a lot as far as with the erosion to
the banks. (Segment IV, Recreationalist, 2006)
The Governor’s Task Force…did focus a lot of attention on the riparian zones… What
are the alternatives of grazing management and what are the implications for riparian
zones? What are the effects that riparian zones have on avian productivity?... [On]
diversity and preservation of fish habitat, there is more public awareness…than there was
say ten years ago. There’s an awareness that a lot of what we’ve done to the river is to
diminish the productivity of the riparian zones. (Segment V, Civic Leader, 2006)
8.CottonwoodForests|120
Riparian Discussions—2012
It provides the alluvial water that allows us to get some sub-irrigation in like the hay
crops that we have... That river bottom ecosystem produces just the right mix of
vegetation that we need for goats. (Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2012).
It’s kind of amazing, the combination of what the force of water can do but then also the
fact that the Yellowstone, its primary trait or characteristic being a free-flowing river, that
it seeks its course but it still kind of... Pretty amazing… And obviously there’s a lot of,
you know, it has impacts on my community. I’m sure it has very significant impacts on
the agricultural community and other communities that rely on the, I don’t know, the
riparian area of the river... and the fish, you know. (Segment IV, Recreationalist, 2012)
The riparian zone is more between like the upland/dryland area and the riverbank. It is
where there is more water and trees grow because of the water there, and there can be
wetlands. And I think it can be easily damaged, if you have… the cows coming down to
the river to water and too many people...can damage it. But it is like the connection
between the river and off the river… I think it is important because that controls
pollution. You know, it controls erosion, especially erosion. That is what can keep your
banks stabilized in the high runoff years. If you have tree roots growing there to hold the
soil and grass and stuff. So, if you just have a bare dirt bank, it leaves pretty fast.
(Segment IV, Residentialist, 2012)
Development along the river is not good for the river, depending, you know if it is set
back and so it is not impacting the bank too much, not impacting the riparian area and/or
the experience of floaters, okay. (Segment V, Recreationalist, 2012)
There are so many types of species that live in that [riparian] zone, you know, rodents
and beavers and otters and different birds and fowl... golly… Willows and things like that
are always key to the riverbanks, and I think there’s a lot that relies on the willows, I
suppose even the deer that eat the leaves and stuff. It provides cover, it provides... Or the
small cottonwoods that, you know, start to grow on the gravel bars after an event like last
year for example, you’ll start to see those guys sprouting up probably… And you know,
that’s a good and bad thing. But I’m sure that those, the cottonwoods, they provide a lot
of habitat for a lot of things. (Segment IV, Recreationalist, 2012)
It’s such an important, vital ecosystem… it carries life for not just people but so many
species. So, in a very real and practical way too, it represents life. So, it needs to be
protected. (Segment V, Residentialist, 2012)
Riparian Discussions—2018
When it’s [the river is] eating away on older timber areas, you know, the big cottonwoods
slough off, the woody plants end up in the river as structure, and you’re familiar with
structure in any aquatic area, that’s cover for fish and everything else. And while it’s
doing that, it’s depositing on another location, and as soon as enough soil stays long
8.CottonwoodForests|121
enough, it starts growing willows and starting a new forest. So, that’s the continued
process. (Segment I, Residentialist, 2018)
The benefits from the water, what it does. The wetland, it's basically a filtration system.
So, it filters a lot of the chemicals and the things that go on, and so, before it ever hits the
streams. It obviously provides drinking water for all of the different animals that come
by. And then it sets up a lifecycle, so when the birds fly through or stay there, that they
have what they need to rebuild their bodies and the nutrients that they need to continue to
a different place… Actually, Montana is, of the 48, Montana is third in the duck
population for the breeding grounds… So, it's a very important area, and our waters are
very important because of that. (Segment II, Recreationalist, 2018)
It’s the area between the river and our fields that you can’t… you know, it’s full of
Russian olives, cottonwood trees, different types of brush, very good wildlife habitat…
I’m sure it limits the erosion with the good grass, and even the Russian olives. The more
vegetation, the less erosion I believe, so that’s all good, I think. (Segment III,
Residentialist, 2018)
I think it’s very important [to the birding community]. I don’t know the figures, but a
very large majority… of the native species of birds that… breed and/or winter in
Montana, use riparian areas. (Segment III, Recreationalist, 2018)
Riparian areas are a mess, they’re ruined, there are weeds everywhere… everything is
going to grow in the wetland, that’s where the life is. (Segment IV, Agriculturalist, 2018)
Oh, in my mind riparian area is just the area surrounding the river, within the footprint of
the river, in my mind. From where we are at, my yard I don’t think is the riparian area,
but once you get down to the foliage that I have surrounding the water, I believe that
would be termed riparian, in my mind. (Segment IV, Residentialist, 2018)
I just heard the name [riparian], thought it would be something for birds… So, there’s
overflow, there’s ponds, there’s marshes, and it is good for the ducks and the geese,
which I harvest and eat. (Segment IV, Civic Leader, 2018)
Cottonwood Forests
Beloved Cottonwoods—2006
Cottonwoods are the classic Yellowstone River tree. (Segment I, Residentialist, 2006)
I love cottonwood trees. There are a lot of those. In the wintertime, there was a family of
squirrels living in the cottonwoods, and I used to bring them nuts, you know. They really
enjoyed that. I don’t know if that was a good idea…. One reason I started feeding these
squirrels, I seen this big pile of cockleburs, half the sides were eaten off…. On the inside
there is a real nice nut that tastes about like a sunflower seed. They can live on those;
they don’t need anything else…. There are plenty of cockleburs, there. (Segment I,
Recreationalist, 2006)
8.CottonwoodForests|122
The other thing you see is the removal of the cottonwoods replaced with farm drills.
Anytime you take out the woody vegetation and replace it with…whatever, alfalfa, or
wheat, or crops, you’re putting those lands at risk. You know, especially the willows
along the stream bank. Segment II, Recreationalist, 2006)
Well, [cottonwoods] give a lot of shade, and, at one point in time [we used them]. For
instance, our old barn, the floor in it is made out of, probably four-inch slabs of
cottonwood….It’s in the old barn, in the old horse barn.…And then from the fact of
shade, and this type of thing, and habitat for the birds and one thing and another.…And
like I say, at that time way back it was used for lumber, and fence lumber, slab lumber. A
lot of our corral fences were slab lumber, cottonwood and this type of thing. But, right at
this point –in time, lumber-wise, they’re not a thing of value, so to speak. (Segment IV,
Agriculturalist, 2006)
[A free-flowing river] helps with cottonwood regeneration along the river. Cottonwoods
are important for breeding birds…. Cottonwoods need sandbars to germinate the seeds,
and if you don’t have a free-flowing river to help shift the course of the sandbars in the
river then cottonwoods can’t regenerate. And if you don’t have trees along the river, it
decreases the [habitat] for the birds. (Segment III, Recreationalist, 2006)
I have seen farmers take a wonderful, old…stand of cottonwood [and] doze them right
into the river, so they can farm right up to the riverbank. That’s something that I
understand what they are doing, trying to increase their farmable acreage. But what are
they really doing? Those cottonwoods are there probably helping that farmer more than
what he realized. (Segment II, Recreationalist, 2006)
Now, the cottonwood trees are a hindrance for erosion because when the water gets in
there…close enough, then they tip into the river. They take a lot of bank…. Plus, they
open up another hole for the water to get in. So, normally, if you’re really going to
manage the river good on some of these places, you go and cut down those trees ahead of
time so there’s no tops to them, [and] all you [have are] the bottoms. (Segment I,
Agriculturalist, 2006)
It tends to cut, even in places where you think the bank should be stable. We have some
huge cottonwood trees that went down this year. You’d think those trees would hold that
bank, but they don’t. (Segment II, Recreationalist, 2006)
They’ve wanted to reseed the cottonwoods, I’ve heard, and a few things like this. Well,
you’re not going to let the cottonwoods grow in your field anyway; you’re going to tear it
up and get it ready for next year’s crop. So, you know, I feel like it’s the right of the
landowner to be able to stabilize his banks when needed and he needs to do it
responsibly, there’s no doubt. (Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2006)
Those old cottonwoods started toppling. When a cottonwood topples, the roots stay there,
and [the top] falls down. That current hits it, and it’s just like a cutting torch. It cuts back
into the bank. We’d have probably been five acres ahead if we had run over there with
chainsaws and cut the trees down. (Segment I, Agriculturalist, 2006)
8.CottonwoodForests|123
And the cottonwoods, they take 1000 gallons a day. In the fall, when the trees and stuff
go dormant, the river raises ten inches. All of them trees and stuff, all the water that
they’re utilizing—how much [are]…[they] sucking out of the river on a drought year?
(Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2006)
When these erosions begin to take place, these big cottonwood trees that are along the
Yellowstone River start to hang out over the water, and another year or two they will get
washed out and when they tip over, they come out with roots and all, and there’s where
you cause a lot of erosion right there. If they were to come along and catch those trees as
they get in the leaning position, a year or two ahead, and stump them off, and either float
the tree on down the river somewhere or hook onto it and drag it out, and deposit it
somewhere, they wouldn’t lose near the ground that they can lose now….Like I say,
when those big cottonwoods go over, they cause a lot of turmoil….They bring out a lot of
that old mud and dirt and everything just goes on down the river. (Segment IV,
Agriculturalist, 2006)
[In] a meander-area, an island gets started by willows, and then it gets taken over by
cottonwood. Out in the hills…you don’t see young cottonwoods because it is such great
feed. Everything loves to eat cottonwood…. We will go along this trail [where we] see
the old and dying cottonwoods. There is nothing young to replace them. (Segment I,
Recreationalist, 2006)
The trees along the river…are generally cottonwood, and I hate to say it, but it’s Russian
olive. Russian olive is a noxious weed, and they grow really well down here. (Segment I,
Recreationalist, 2006)
Continuous grazing kills the cottonwoods…. I have to believe that [after] the big herds of
buffalo came through and grazed really hard, they wouldn’t be back for several years.
That would give young trees a start. (Segment I, Recreationalist, 2006)
When we have the floods, it’s great. The flooding is wonderful because it brings the
cottonwood seeds in, and we have new cottonwood stands which will help the bank….
We like that for stabilization. But we haven’t had a good flood for a long time. I can’t
remember the last good flood. (Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2006)
Mother Nature does some erosion control by putting some trees in the water, bushes
and…things like that. We have seen a decline in cottonwood trees in our area. I think
that’s from chemicals and stuff in fields. Those cottonwood trees don’t grow, so that
takes away some of your growth and therefore erodes some of it…. You just don’t see
many cottonwood trees around here anymore. (Segment II, Recreationalist, 2006)
I realized…[that] if you don’t have flooding, you don’t have new cottonwoods growing.
(Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2006)
8.CottonwoodForests|124
My place is unusual because a lot of my pastures are covered in high water and…it
reseeds all of the cottonwood trees. One year, before I did the diking, the river ran into
the field and the cottonwoods grew like grass. I turned the cows in, and they ate them like
grass. (Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2006)
Well, you know, if you look at our trees, they’re all mature trees. Go down along the
river there, there aren’t any young trees anymore. Because the only time you get any
natural cottonwood reproduction is during the flood years. The seeds come down, they
flow down, they get imbedded in the mud from the floods, and that’s how you get the
cottonwood stands…. Flooding is necessary for the regeneration of the cottonwoods.
That’s a good reason why not to do anything, from my point-of-view. A lot of people
disagree with me. (Segment IV, Agriculturalist, 2006)
The cottonwoods…are dying here…. There are trees…right along the water, getting
plenty of water, and you’ll see…a branch that will die and next year will be another one
and another one…. And…the canopy does a lot of things. It’s a great thing for
wildlife…when we have heavy rains, it keeps the silt run off and all these things…. And I
really don’t see a response from the state or the federal government really trying to figure
out exactly what’s happening. (Segment V, Residentialist, 2006)
Beloved Cottonwoods—2012 and 2018
To some degree seeing the river move around a little bit, that’s how the cottonwoods get
re-seeded. And [as a fishing guide] in terms of trying to educate clients is, as we float
down the river, that’s certainly one of things to try to explain to them, that you know, it’s
difficult for humans to live along the river that in a cottonwood bottom with a gravel
bottom river that tends to move a lot, but seeing those new channels and seeing that
movement is, to me, just part of the natural course of things. (Segment V, Recreationalist,
2012).
We irrigate with river water, so I have cottonwoods in all of my flower beds. (Segment I,
Agriculturalist, 2018)
Cottonwoods always seem to do good. The ash trees will die off but the cottonwoods,
they seem to do real well in this climate…. We got some pictures of us hunting with a
bunch of cottonwoods on a sand bar this tall; they are all 30 feet tall now. The
cottonwoods are just resilient; they'll grow anywhere. (Segment I, Recreationalist, 2018)
Down on the riverbanks, we don’t get the tree growth as we did. You can tell it. (Segment
I, Recreationalist, 2018)
Not so much. There’s an awful lot of big ones, you know. There are places where you see
them. But they’re not coming back like Gangbusters. (Segment III, Recreationalist, 2018)
Well, we used to have a lot of [cottonwood trees], and they fell in… The only ones left
you can see them right out this window… But we have a lot of new ones coming….
8.CottonwoodForests|125
There’s twenty-foot trees down there now, and they actually grew off the roots of the old
ones that were there. (Segment III, Residentialist, 2018)
We’ve got plenty of good-sized cottonwoods… [and] there’s all kinds of seeding
cottonwoods coming up down there. (Segment IV, Agriculturalist, 2018)
You know, I could be totally off base here, but I don’t know that I see young growth. It
seems to me, I see a lot of big trees, and they are the ones that end up in the river and
whatnot, but just I don’t know that I see as much young growth as maybe should be there
and I don’t know what to attribute that to… That’s my thought. (Segment IV,
Recreationalist, 2018)
I’ve heard that cottonwoods are having all kinds of trouble because they’re not being
regenerated… the old growth cottonwoods are old, and the new growth cottonwoods
aren’t coming. I mean, because maybe they’re getting eaten, or maybe they’re being
cleared out, maybe something’s causing the new growth from not happening. (Segment
IV, Civic Leader, 2018)
A lot of them are dying off, and lot of new ones starting. So can’t see much difference in
them. (Segment V, Agriculturalist, 2018)
There’s a lot of cottonwoods. They’re dying out; they’re old. (Segment V, Residentialist,
2018)
You know, it’s hard to track the cottonwood changes, because they are so gradual. And a
lot of the cottonwood issues are related to regeneration (Segment V, Civic Leader, 2018)
After we have the hightide in June, and if it’s an exceptionally high year, it will flood
some of our lower pasture ground. And usually in the fall we’ll see saplings. In the spring
they’ll start growing. We see an abundance of cottonwoods… There is so many of them,
it’s phenomenal... We irrigate… and… the river has planted through irrigation
cottonwood seeds on our shelter belt. So, it’s a good trade. (Segment I, Civic Leader,
2018)
The only places you see those things really coming is where it’s had standing water, it’s
just really wet. (Segment I, Residentialist, 2018)
After a flood, it’ll break out some new ground, flat, and then when the river recedes away
from it, the cottonwood seed is there, and little cottonwoods will come up all over the
place. (Segment II, Recreationalist, 2018)
It’s the river… Is it going to get out on that field down there? Some years… You just
have a lot more sand and asparagus the next year, cottonwood trees, whatever it brings in.
(Segment II, Recreationalist, 2018)
8.CottonwoodForests|126
Usually if it floods pretty hard, after it’s done... It can bring new cottonwoods in. Little
saplings will pop up here and there. Sometimes they make it, sometimes they don’t.
(Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2018)
The river is high this year, and so a little later on it’ll be just a mass of little cottonwoods
about this high. And some survive and some don’t. And that’s what regenerates itself
too…. I think [the river] …. spreads the seeds out. (Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2018)
You know, I want to see some new ones because every year we’ll have at least three or
four ginormous cottonwoods that will fall over or a big windstorm will push them over,
something will happen to them, or they will just die. (Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2018)
Once they get to a certain point, they start dying out, thinning out. Or the river comes
along and wipes them all out. Good ice jam is kind of tough on them too. (Segment II,
Recreationalist, 2018)
Most of [our cottonwood trees] are gone… when we lost our forty acres down there, that
was all covered with cottonwoods… I used to go out there and play when I was a kid. It
was full of big trees. They’re all gone. We only have… ten acres left with some trees on
it, and a lot of those trees are dying and falling over. So, we don’t have very many trees
left. (Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2018)
That was the only good thing about the 2011 flood, is that there were a lot of new
cottonwoods that started…I don’t think they come up any other way—I think there has to
be a flood. (Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2018)
[We have young cottonwood trees] in the riparian area too, I guess probably more where
we’ve had flood water. It seems like that’s where they show up. Yes. (Segment III,
Residentialist, 2018)
All those years I sat on the Task Force, one of the things that we were taught was that
flooding is the only way the cottonwoods regenerate… [And] there’s a lot of places….
[where] there’s a stand of cottonwoods that runs along the ditch, because the ditch
provided the water… I’m guessing we are probably losing some cottonwoods in some of
those areas just because of changes in, you know, changes in ownership and land use and
irrigation practices, we’re probably losing some of those. (Segment V, Recreationalist,
2018)
I will say this year was a bad year for the cottonwoods because of the drastic high-water
season. I mean, our river hit 36,000-cfs this year. So… there’s a lot of cottonwood trees
that have got uprooted that are just beached in the middle of the river now. And I don’t
know if that’s normal. Maybe that happens every ten years or something. (Segment V,
Recreationalist, 2018)
I guess some of the mature stands, certainly we’ve seen loss of some of those… along the
river, you know, I’ve certainly seen us lose some with flooding and bank erosion and old
8.CottonwoodForests|127
age and all the usual things that happen to cottonwoods. (Segment V, Recreationalist,
2018)
No, not really [any changes]. Except the ones that have fallen down during high flood
water, you know. (Segment V, Civic Leader, 2018)
The sad part is, if you’re grazing, then the cows will keep those cottonwoods out because
everything loves cottonwoods…. So, if you graze an area along the river where you’ve
got all these young cottonwoods, that’s one of the first things they’ll eat. And they’ll eat
them down to nothing… Now, if you have a big ice like in 2011, we had the big floods,
we had huge areas of new cottonwoods coming up. And if some of the landowners
could’ve noticed that, they might have held off on the grazing… We had thousands of
little cottonwood seedlings. So, I didn’t farm it until… about 5 years…. And when I went
back and tilled the field back, we left 3 big patches of cottonwoods. It’s pretty cool…
But, my neighbor said, “I’ve got to get in there [and] disc those trees before they get
established.” That’s what he said. And I understand, it’s economics, too. But… when that
happens, and your field is in a place where it’s going to get eaten away by the river
anyway, and you have the opportunity, you should let it be. The trees will slow that
process down. (Segment I, Residentialist, 2018)
We have a large deer population in this country, and those deer in the wintertime they
like to go eat those cottonwoods down to the ground. (Segment I, Civic Leader, 2018)
Oh, yeah. Tons of them…. I noticed that there’s not very many new ones coming back…
We have two pastures down there and we keep them [the cows] in one pasture and not
the other one… I’ve noticed that that’s helping some of the new cottonwoods because
they are not eating the leaves off of them. And then once the fall comes and the leaves are
off, then the cows can go in there. So that’s helping them some, but no I haven’t seen
much new cottonwoods coming in. (Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2018)
By the time they get big, some beaver comes along and finds them and takes them
away… That’s what’s so hard on the cottonwoods. (Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2018)
And cottonwoods… what we have noticed here is we still have beavers and stuff around,
so they keep the cottonwoods chewed up... So, we don’t see a lot of cottonwoods
growing up the creek so much anymore. We try to protect some of them, put some wire
around them, keep the beavers off them. (Segment II, Recreationalist, 2018)
Squirrels eat the hell out of them…The squirrels are just horrible on the cottonwoods in
town. They eat off all the small branches off the cottonwood trees. And they just tear it
apart. (Segment II, Recreationalist, 2018)
You know, they get brown spots every once in a while. I blame it on the squirrels. They
take off branches for building nests, but I don’t know what it is. They get a blight in them
once in a while, but basically, they stay pretty healthy. (Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2018)
8.CottonwoodForests|128
We do have the ones [cottonwoods] that the goats haven’t found yet. The deer tend to
like those a lot too… But you know it’s amazing, you’ll see like these spots where… in a
little tiny area, hundreds of cottonwoods would start. There is a reason that there has to be
hundreds of them though, because they do seem to be the favorite of every wildlife while
they’re trying to get up. (Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2018)
Beavers are taking mine… Those pesky beavers are about to drop two more cottonwoods,
so there’s that… Living on the river, yeah… they’re brilliant right now; they’re really
gorgeous. I don’t know. Other than beavers, mine seem pretty healthy. (Segment V, Civic
Leader, 2018)
They… were doing quite well until the beaver came along… And we need to fence all
those in too, the young ones, so that doesn’t happen again. (Segment V, Recreationalist,
2018)
We have more trouble with the beaver than the river. We had three big trees cut down last
year by the beaver… I put wire around the trees now. Eventually I think all of our
cottonwood trees will be history. The cedar trees are kind of taking over down there
naturally. I don’t know, we’ve never planted those. (Segment V, Recreationalist, 2018)
The leaves… fall early, like they’re diseased. Yeah, the cottonwood leaves. They’ve got
brown marks on them and… they fall real early. (Segment I, Recreationalist, 2018)
I’ve asked a lot of people, and nobody has an answer, but we have such a change – we
will have a record high in January and then two weeks later a record low…. A couple
years ago, it’s been probably ten years ago now... It warmed up really good and the trees
were budded out, and then it got down to thirty below…You could hear them [pop] like a
gun going off because they were freezing… All the juice [had gone] back up in the tree,
then when it got thirty below, it was just like when pipes freeze…. And it killed all of
them, all the big cottonwoods started dying off after that. It busted something inside
them… It sounded like people were shooting. (Segment I, Agriculturalist, 2018)
The cotton last year wasn’t very thick either… which made my wife happier than hell…
It was nice not having a lot of cotton, because when your swather… plugs up, you got to
stop and clean them off. (Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2018)
They pollute a lot during springtime when they blossom out. We’re finding the cotton
plugs up everything; it plugged up our sewers, it plugged up any air conditionings that
people used, so we’re learning… we do not want them anymore… so we did pass a law
that you cannot plant a cottonwood tree… that’s a city ordinance… We’re still planting
cottonwood, but they’re the cotton-less trees which are good. (Segment III, Civic Leader,
2018)
It is wonderful sitting under them, but as you can see there’s cotton flying. It’s dirty
looking and it’s hard if you have allergies…. We are replanting something else. (Segment
IV, Recreationalist, 2018)
8.CottonwoodForests|129
They need a ton of water. They are thirsty. But on the actual river itself, on these islands
down there in this part of the river, there are so many cottonwoods out there you can’t
walk through them now. Five years ago, everyone was saying, “Oh, no cottonwoods,
there’s no cottonwoods.” But now five years later they’re about seven feet tall. They’re
growing like crazy…. [But] the beavers are always up working around here… they work
on the cottonwoods… they’ll cut twenty of those little cottonwoods down… [It’s ok
because] right now it certainly needs to be thinned out. (Segment V, Agriculturalist,
2018)
9.UnderstandingsofManagement|130
Section 9. Understandings of Management
Concerns about river management regulations and the administering thereof were quite common
across field seasons. For acquiring bank stabilization permits, many participants explained the
permitting process as time-consuming and extensive. Participants voiced concerns and some
confusions about the various agencies that needed to be involved, but the COE was noted as the
“ultimate arbitrator,” with a great deal of power.
Even so, in 2006, some participants described positive experiences with the regulatory process as
well. While they found the permitting process lengthy and expensive, their overall experience
dealing with the various agencies was positive. Some expressed gratitude that they were
grandfathered into their stabilization projects. Other 2006 participants, made specific comments
about their understanding of new regulations requirements expressing dismay with the lack of
information concerning new rules.
In 2012, participants from Segment V commented on their confusion with the Special Area
Management Plan (SAMP) and the Governor’s Task Force, and in 2018 some described a shift,
noting that the COE was a lot more involved in general river management than previous years.
Despite the grumblings from some participants, in each field season, there were other
participants with positive, or at least neutral, things to say about the COE. Participants offered
suggestions for improved management. In 2006, many participants described gaps in
management or a lack of understanding. By 2018, comments from participants had shifted
toward wanting proactive programs.
Navigating Regulations
“Oh, the hoops!”—2006
I think the rules and regulations are pretty stringent about placing concrete alongside of
the riverbank. (Segment I, Agriculturalist, 2006)
I don’t know if you could jump through that many hoops. That is something that they
should make easier, besides the cost. You should be able to go through the hoops a little
easier to do some riprap…. Sometimes they will work with you and sometimes it is
tough, especially on the Yellowstone. They watch it pretty close. People want it left
natural…I can see their point-of-view. (Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2006)
The answer of the moment is riprap, and if you can get the Conservation District, the
DEQ, and the Corps of Engineers to agree with you, you have some chance of applying
riprap. Of course, we apply riprap entirely different than we used to. It’s not chunks of
rock or concrete dumped in there; we’ll net it, and vegetate it, and fertilize it. If you can
establish the river willows in it, you have a much better chance of saving something. It’s
not cheap, and everybody can’t do that. (Segment II, Civic Leader, 2006)
9.UnderstandingsofManagement|131
You have to go through quite a process of applications. (Segment II, Agriculturalist,
2006)
[I] always have had such a time getting permission to do something about river erosion.
But I’ve always looked at it and wondered, ‘Is it better to watch that dirt fall in the river
all the time and all the soil going down, choking up the waterway?’ ‘Is that better than
doing something about it?’ (Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2006)
Erosion is very serious, and, because of the laws, it’s almost impossible to protect your
land…. The Greater Yellowstone Coalition and some of the other environmental groups
sued because…[riprap] was supposedly ruining the river…. They didn’t care about the
landowner losing his property. They wanted [the river] to just go wherever it wanted and
wash their homes over. And there were some homes that…[were] damaged…. It’s more
the agricultural land down here that’s being lost. About 150 acres [were lost over] 25 to
30 years…. One year you’ll lose 30 acres, and the next year you might not lose any….
But you still can’t build riprap. (Segment II, Civic Leader, 2006)
Because of…303 permits, and people objecting to doing anything.… We can’t protect [it]
anymore. And we’ve probably lost 150 acres of land that the river has washed away.
(Segment II, Civic Leader, 2006)
You don’t want the troublesome fight…. For example, [when] the Hysham water ditch
system [needed to have some work done] they had a tough time getting permission for
that. (Segment II, Civic Leader, 2006)
There’s still a lot of management issues over erosion…. Landowners [with] a lot of
erosion problems [talk about] getting permits to riprap and doing it in a way that doesn’t
create… [a problem for] other property across the river. It’s not easy to get a permit to do
much work on the riverbank.… [Loosing productive ground] can impact us from a tax
base because he’s got a couple of irrigated fields in jeopardy. (Segment II, Civic Leader,
2006)
It’s a shame, because money talks…and with a local board you get that good old boy
syndrome. It…[isn’t] what you know, but who you know…. The board’s project is more
important than the guy down the road that had his paperwork in a day later. And that’s
the biggest problem….[We] have to take the money aspect out of it [or] regulation won’t
work….Unfortunately, we’re in a world where money rules. (Segment II, Recreationalist,
2006)
I know that it’s eating up the bank on this side…. The bank has really caved in….
They’ve tried different things, but everything they seem to suggest the Army Corps of
Engineers says, ‘Nope, you can’t do that.’ They’ve tried riprap in different areas in
different ways, and the Army Corps said, ‘Nope…it’s not ecologically safe, or it’s not
economically feasible, or it wouldn’t work’.…I would like to see [something] because I
don’t want my river to go away, and I don’t want my town to go away. (Segment II,
Residentialist, 2006)
9.UnderstandingsofManagement|132
I know you have to jump through a lot of hoops. The Corps of Engineers is one, the
County is one, [and] Fish and Game. (Segment III, Residentialist, 2006)
Make a comprehensive plan as to what is allowable and a process to permit it with ease,
rather than fighting every step of the way.…You get it so difficult, people just say, ‘It’s
not worth the energy [to get the permit.] We’ll do it anyway...[even] if they put us in jail.’
And I can’t blame those people. (Segment III, Residentialist, 2006)
I can’t do anything now because of the permit system. (Segment III, Agriculturalist,
2006)
I think we ought to reinforce the banks…. [Erosion is] endangering the canal that feeds
the sugar beet, barley, and corn farm area of Yellowstone Valley…. You lose that canal
system, you have no food. And yet we can’t do anything to it. The ditch company
couldn’t even get permission from the Corps of Engineers to protect the ditch, something
that’s been there since 1890….They spent over $100,000 trying to protect the ditch, but
they can’t get permits, can’t get in the water, can’t do riprap, and can’t protect it….They
used to allow riprap on the river, but they’ve made a decision in the last several years not
to do that, so they don’t allow anybody to do it. You can’t even protect it in Billings.
(Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2006)
I think many landowners just don’t have the patience, number one, to go through the
process. (Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2006)
Often times, before you can get your permit, the damage has been done…. All these
various approvals…take from three months…to six months, maybe. But the damage is
done and over before you can get [the permit]. (Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2006)
And then you get people across the river or downstream that just throw concrete on the
edge of the bank, let the riverbank wash out, the concrete falls in and looks like hell and
they don’t have any problems and yet I got hassled the whole way trying to do it [bank
stabilization] right. And that is very disappointing to me. (Segment III, Residentialist,
2006)
Most of the time, people haven’t taken the time to determine how to go about it properly.
They don’t go through the permitting process correctly. Traditionally, what happens is
they will do something inappropriately and then it sends the problem farther downstream,
to the next guy. (Segment III, Recreationalist, 2006)
All he wanted to do was riprap to save his bridge…. At one time, he had 20 guys standing
down there on his bridge, discussing what he should do. Bridge finally washes out and
down in the river it goes. The next day, to save the road, they are hauling big boulders,
dumping them in…and, of course, in the spring he had to haul his bridge out. That’s
required…. But there you go. When you’re dealing with water, you’re dealing with a lot
of different people. (Segment III, Residentialist, 2006)
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We have not had the best of luck with some of the agencies. They all have to sign-off.
The people who are in those roles, some of them, have been less active than others. We
have had permits sit on their desk six months, and [we] get it back signed with no
comments. (Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2006)
My husband wants to build a pond out front, and he would like to put a boat ramp in the
back, right on the river…. We haven’t really seen a lot of requirements, other than they
want to know what we’re doing, exactly how we’re going to do it, and what we’re going
to use when we do it, which I can completely understand. They don’t want us messing
stuff up. They’re pretty particular about what’s going to be used and what’s going to be
done…. They even want to know how we’re going to restore vegetation after we’re done
working. (Segment III, Residentialist, 2006)
I petitioned every agency that you have to…to build in four weirs…. We went through
four or five agencies to get this done—and write this down—the Corps of Engineers was
the slowest moving, hardest to…just follow up. I tried to do everything … engineering
drawings, pictures, whatever. It took forever for the Army Corps of Engineers to move.
Bless their heart, they did. I was good friends with the gal that ran this deal out of
Nebraska, and I certainly knew her on a first name basis, and her birthday, because I
talked to her every other day. I asked her where it was, and she said it was sitting on
somebody’s desk. (Segment III, Residentialist, 2006)
That flood, it took probably three or four acres of ground where our irrigation system was
and just completely wiped out our source of water. And we had to go through a quite a
lengthy process of going through the Extension Service and the Conservation District and
State of Montana…Corps of Engineers…to get permission to…lay an underground
culvert farther up the hillside and tie it into that system at another point and rebuild our
irrigation system. (Segment III, Residentialist, 2006)
They change the rules. Like if we want to do something in the river, we have to go
through six agencies to do all this crap. Laurel was having trouble getting water. They
just take bulldozers and drop them in the water and do whatever the hell they want. If I
did that I would have been fined quite seriously. So, they don’t enforce the laws equally
either that do exist. (Segment III, Residentialist, 2006)
It took us two years to get it permitted to do it right…. We lost 20 to 40 acres. Had
we…done it without the permit, we’d have saved that land…. We stood down on the
river bank looking at the project after we did it…[and] DEQ guy was complaining about
a couple of inches variation in elevation….Yet we looked across the river where they had
dumped in car bodies and concrete without permits. I said, ‘How can you give me a bad
time about doing it right, but being off a few inches in elevation, when you can stand here
and look across the river and not do anything about what everybody else is doing?’…If
I’ve got a permit…he’s going to make it miserable for me. (Segment III, Residentialist,
2006)
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We did a little riprap on Bridger Creek last fall, and there were six or seven agencies
involved in that permitting process. The county was involved in it. We were working for
the county. They were trying to protect county roads. It took months. (Segment IV,
Residentialist, 2006)
I’ve worried a time or two about some of these regulations that the government has on it
to where you can’t get some very simple things done in a timely fashion. By the time you
wrestle with them, the condition has changed, or gotten worse, or whatever. That would
be one of the complaints…. And then you get disgusted, and then you get discouraged,
and then you quit.…[and] just say, ‘The hell with it, they’re going to do what they want
to do anyway’.…But there’s got to be communication. There’s absolutely got to be
communication. And you[‘ve] got to have it from the engineer, and the hydrologist, and
the old farmer/rancher, and grandma and grandpa, and everybody. And you got to talk
about it, and discuss it, and see what you can come up with. That’s just that simple.
(Segment IV, Agriculturalist, 2006)
Oh, the regulations…. The hoops you have to jump through to get a permit to do
anything…. I wish [the Corps of Engineers] were more accessible…. We have a perfect
example….We’re having a problem on Bridger Creek with some people not complying
with…stream regulations, and took them a long time to pay attention. But now they are
coming. It just seems like it takes a lot to get them. (Segment IV, Civic Leader, 2006)
I wish they would be more responsive when there was an emergency. We’ve had some
riprap that’s been washed out in two spots by the Grey Bear Fishing Access. We would
like to have got it repaired before flood season. And we still haven’t heard back on our
permits…. [The river] just washed out two pieces probably: one was probably about 15
feet long and the other one was probably 20 feet long. But there’s a good chance with
high water now it will probably all be gone…. So, it’s one of those deals where we could
have got to it right away when we found out it was…and part of that is our problem for
not really looking at it close enough until we started thinking about high water. (Segment
IV, Civic Leader, 2006)
They have almost shut down any bank stabilization…. I should do some bank
stabilization, but I don’t know if I have it in me to take the guff that it is going to take to
get it done. It is tough to have to do battle.... I just dread it. (Segment V, Agriculturalist,
2006)
We counted them. There were thirty-one different representatives from different agencies
[involved in our project] …. We had an engineer that should have known we had to re-
apply, and he didn’t even know. (Segment V, Agriculturalist, 2006)
[During] the last bank stabilization project…it got kind of tough, and [there were] a lot of
inspections, and it raises the expense, and you have to go for public review. I don’t want
to be a public person. All I wanted to do is ranch and do my thing. I had no idea I would
become a public figure and be in the New York Times. (Segment V, Agriculturalist,
2006)
9.UnderstandingsofManagement|135
[People] have to actually apply for a 310 permit. Once they apply, the District
Conservation Board will go out and observe, and look at the project and make
recommendations, and either pass or ask for more details and a better plan…. They try to
re-vegetate everything now. They used to throw a bunch of rock over the edge. Now they
are actually putting riprap on the bank. They aren’t allowed to put it into the river.
(Segment V, Civic Leader, 2006)
That guy came down from Helena and looked. He said it needs to be riprapped. And
when he made out our application, he changed it and said that it will be an ongoing
project. So, he made it so that if we need to riprap there some more, we just go ahead and
do it, so we can protect our pump site…. He showed a lot of common sense. I said, well,
really what we should have done is just started there so everybody else could have rubber
stamped it after he made his decision. But, it seems like the Fish and Game wants to
spend a lot of time dabbling in our business too. (Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2006)
I got a pump that was there in 1903 or ’04. So, I can do anything I want to that pump
sight because it’s established. [When] my son [applied for permission to put in a new
pump site] they had to cut down three trees to make the paperwork. It was a humongous
pile of paperwork to put a pump site in there. (Segment II, Civic Leader, 2006)
We didn’t have too much trouble with the permits. They went pretty good. Not saying we
didn’t have little problems once in a while. Just misunderstandings. We get along pretty
good. The only thing was I couldn’t get any money to help. To [riprap] is awful
expensive. (Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2006)
Well, it’s going to take some time and you have to kind of get ahead of the curve. If
you’ve got a certain time schedule…. you have to get started, [but] like I said, we found
them very reasonable. (Segment V, Agriculturalist, 2006)
The banks have to be stabilized, and we have had to do quite a little of that since we’ve
been here—thirty-seven years. But we’ve always had good cooperation from the Bureau
of Army Engineers and the…Fish and Game and those [in the] conservation services. I
think they’ve treated us fairly…. We’ve always left some riparian area there along the
river. We never graze that real hard. There’s always a lot of grass and brush and things
like that, and I think that’s probably one reason we’ve always been able to get along with
the Fish and Game and the Bureau of the Army of Engineers because we’ve always tried
to leave the riparian area there next to the river. (Segment V, Agriculturalist, 2006)
After the flood, they built concrete all across the front of the house up to this floor. Then
they put the huge rocks in…. It is [a] concrete wall…[and] there is the barb. I am pretty
safe. It was nothing like this before…. They are saying you shouldn’t riprap, but this is
my home. The engineers will allow me to repair this…. If anything happens, they will let
me fix it. I am grandfathered-in. They will let me do that. (Segment V, Residentialist,
2006)
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Our other problem is that they are understaffed. With this economy, enforcement [of
regulations] is not an option…. In order to do the enforcement you have to have the tools.
It has to work from the top down. You have to have a county attorney that is willing to
prosecute. (Segment I, Civic Leader, 2006)
I’ve seen several guys in the past put in riprap. The way to do it, right, would be to go in
with big rock….Some people used to put in metal and cables, years ago, [but] they
haven’t done that in a long time because that’s just an accident waiting to happen….You
get that sharp metal sticking up, and then it might wash out, and then someone comes
[along] pulling a skier and they get snagged up on it. That’s not good. (Segment I,
Recreationalist, 2006)
I know they don’t let you put concrete in the river anymore. I don’t really understand
that, and nobody has explained it to me, so I guess I’ll have to figure that out. (Segment
III, Residentialist, 2006)
I’ve been thinking about getting some huge landscape rocks and putting them down there
along the bank, just on top of the bank. I understand that concrete blocks and concrete
riprap are out now because of the lime and all of that other stuff. So, you got to come up
with some kind of alternative. (Segment III, Residentialist, 2006)
“Oh, the hoops!”—2012 and 2018
They [the government] kind of made it difficult to stop a problem though. Like we had a
place down here... the river washed across and it cut the bank. And we couldn’t do
anything about putting riprap, or anything, in to keep it from cutting anymore. We had to
just leave it. And that is kind of worrisome. And I am not able to fix it. (Segment I,
Residentialist, 2012)
If you have to get a permit and wait two months to get it, and the river is starting to flood
and take your riprap, you need it now, you don’t need it when they decide to do the
paperwork… That’s why… we got a ten-year maintenance deal now. You know, there’s
some places that might take ten loads of rock, in other places only five, you know. So,
they can just go ahead and do it. (Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2012)
Over here at Bighorn, with that high water, it changed the river, it was cutting on them.
And they have a sprinkler, and the wheel with the sprinkler is hanging over the river. So,
you come along, and you can tell where it’s cutting, and they only let them do like 300
feet or something. So, we took a measure on the river there; they needed 450 feet… So,
we tell them, you know, you’re going to just waste the riprap. You might as well let them
come on around. (Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2018)
I have a real problem with some of the things they require you to get a permit for on the
river… for instance, I had a really good friend of mine… they have to put in a new head
gate… inside their inlet… And before they could do anything, they had to through four
agencies… Now, in my opinion, that’s their inlet, they maintain it, they own it… it’s not
9.UnderstandingsofManagement|137
going to hurt anything. It’s not going to kill a fish; it’s not going to do anything. All they
want to do is fix their head gate. But he said, “We were all ready to start, and then we
found out that we had to have all these permits.” He said that it took forever. And I’m
like, “Well, another way to hold you up, cost you money, time.” And it’s not necessary.
I’ve done enough work with NRCS, and Soil Conservation Service. And man, the
number of permits you have to get now to do anything on the river… from the Army
Corps of Engineers on down… they almost overlap… And the really unfortunate part of
it, a lot of those people that have those jobs that are in charge of giving out these permits
don’t have brains enough to pour water out of their shoe, in my opinion. Because they
come, and they look, and they… don’t know what they’re talking about… They haven’t
done it. They’re just in charge of the permit… [And] now, if we want to do any repair
work [on our project] … we’ve got to get a maze of permits. And one of the other
problems is that they make you do it to their specs… And their specs, there again, in my
opinion, they’re not common sense specs. Because we know what works because ours
has stayed all these years. (Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2018)
There’s a lot of hoops and whistles you got to do to put anything on the riverbanks, and
we had to something right away, so we called the authorities in Miles City… And they
said, “Go ahead and put some concrete on it.” Because it was going… Trees were going
out into our fields and stuff, so on three or four banks we got some concrete riprap. And I
didn’t like doing that, they don’t like doing that on Sarpy Creek. You know, they want it
to stay natural, so when we clean up on the creek, if a log fall in the creek or a tree, I’ll
cut the branches off and I’ll pull the log over to the bank and kind of anchor it down, so
they really like that. So, they know we are trying to keep it natural. So, they allowed us to
put some cement riprap on it to keep it (Segment II, Recreationalist, 2018)
It was a 2-year process to get it all approved and get it underway. And each stone is
placed immaculately. Everything has to be done just right in order to pass the
certification. (Segment IV, Residentialist, 2018)
I think it’s a little harder now than it used to be. I know my uncle had an excavating
business, basically, and back in the 50’s and 60’s people would just call him up and get in
the river and put riprap in. I think there’s, I’m not familiar with it, but there’s a lot more
of the process to go through to do that kind of stuff. (Segment IV, Recreationalist, 2018)
Even now just for the ditch company to, in the fall when the water drops way low, just to
get a permission through the Corps of Engineers, they can’t just go up without the
permission and scrape all the gravel and stuff out… So, it’s hard… for them to dig
anything out … (Segment IV, Agriculturalist, 2018)
The problem is, I said we worked with the Corps of Engineers, but they also drug their
feet for years and years and years to where that 40 or more acres was gone… all because
we could not get permitting. They kept dragging their feet, dragging their feet, dragging
their feet, so we… turned out over the conservation district because we couldn’t get any
footing. And they, having dealt with the water issues for a century, they were able to
finally get some permitting in place and we got some of the work done and it held this
9.UnderstandingsofManagement|138
year… [but] the Army Corps of Engineers… They are the ones that are the big oversight,
looking at supposedly the big picture and controlling us little government entities so that
we don’t do something that is harmful to the river or the environment… The middle
ground for me would look like common sense… would go in and we would talk to the
people that have lived there on the bank and have been here all these years and do it from
a local perspective rather than get the Army Corps of Engineers in and take ten years to
do this… if you have to wait for all this red tape – and there is huge red tape in this thing
because what you do here, you have to mitigate and pay for down the river what you
might affect… Mitigation credits… So, it gets very expensive. It’s not just the cost of
doing the project. It’s the mitigation costs also, which can almost in some cases exceed
the costs of the project… Around 7,000 bucks a credit… Yeah, they have a mitigation
bank. I don’t know where that’s at, but… I hope nobody robs it… The state is more the
common sense part… A lot of it is tied up with federal stuff… Our permit for repairing
our riprap at the other place, that was a state-issued permit… And that’s the way it should
be. That didn’t take years to get done… The local conservation district, they go out and
look at it and they got common sense ideas to fix the problem. And they got feet on the
ground. Maybe they don’t have the years in the educational system, but they’ve got the
experience of it. This isn’t the first time they’ve seen this… They’ve got some gray
hairs… and they know to fix it. But sometimes I think that they feel like their hands are
tied and they are not able to get on fast enough to fix it. (Segment IV, Civic Leader,
2018)
Whose Rule?
Experiences with Agencies—2006
I don’t think those are things that we have any control over. A lot of this is going to be
Corps of Engineers, Lower Yellowstone Irrigation, Fish and Game. It is not going to be
our problem…. We just don’t deal much with the river, unless it is a road issue. The only
dealing we have had with the river is this boat ramp and, there, we dealt with Fish,
Wildlife and Parks. (Segment I, Civic Leader, 2006)
[We would like to] do some riprap, but we’re not allowed to do that…. Fish and Game
[won’t allow it]. (Segment I, Residentialist, 2006)
They fooled with the river…[when] they put the jetties in, and that stuff. You’d think
now that they fooled with Mother Nature, somebody should be committed to keep it from
washing….They should…[see] to it that it don’t wash….If [the jetties] were put there,
they should have been maintained….I’ve had it stuck in the back of my mind, but I don’t
know who a guy would see [to have it looked into]. The Corps of Engineers? (Segment I,
Agriculturalist, 2006)
If you look over the bank [you’ll see where] I have to reinforce it because it has
sloughed-off into the river…. I’ve actually put a retaining wall behind it to shore it up.…
Other people have done the same thing…Some people have put big rocks close to the
bank to shore it up…. I’d be overjoyed if somebody would come in and deal with it in a
9.UnderstandingsofManagement|139
more professional manner. I don’t know who would be responsible for that. I guess, since
it is on my property, it is my deal. (Segment I, Residentialist, 2006)
The most difficult part of getting it done is you go through the Corps of Engineers and
then the Fish, Wildlife and Parks, and then the DEQ. I think it ought to be good enough if
the Corps said it was needed that would be enough...So many entities… [are] involved
and who wants to be in complete control? Maybe [you could] deal with one department.
As it is now, you have to go through each and every one of them and it makes a
complicated issue more difficult. (Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2006)
The barbs are the answer. Now whether you need blanket riprap or not depends on the
conditions. Getting through the Corps of Engineers—that’s the tough one…. The Soil
Conservation says this is good. Fish and Game is in love with the barbs because it makes
some excellent still water for fishing. But then you’ve got the Corps of Engineers. They
would like to do it, too, but they work with the federal government, so they have a
problem. (Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2006)
We started [riprapping] when it was under a cost-share [program]. That is no longer
available. As a matter of fact, it’s frowned upon. You have to get a permit to do it, now.
And you have to go through the Fish and Game, the Soil Conservation, and they are the
easy ones. (Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2006)
The individual landowners have to take the initiative to go through the permitting process
and work with the local Soil Conservation Districts to come up with a remedy and,
hopefully, get the permits. (Segment II, Civic Leader, 2006)
Riprap diverts water into the neighbors’ land if you don’t do it right. That is something
you have to be concerned about. You could subject yourself to a lawsuit. That is
something the Corps and the local Conservation District should look at. (Segment III,
Agriculturalist, 2006)
I want to give the Yellowstone County Conservation District credit because I think, by in
large, they are very reasonable. It’s just that in many cases they are reluctant to have you
do anything to the river. (Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2006)
The only problem we had was the reluctance on the Army Corps of Engineers and the
DEQ to get [the weirs] done. It took us two years…. We probably lost 30 acres and an
eagle’s nest. To me, that is very disappointing. The lack of vision on the part of people
that think the river has to be natural and nothing else works…. The length of time and
meetings it takes and attitude of, particularly, the DEQ was very difficult. Some of the
people in the Corps were very reasonable; some were not that reasonable. The DNRC in
town was very good as far as helping us. But their hands are pretty-well tied. They wait
for all of the bigger agencies to deal with it. I think they make it so difficult that people
just don’t want to do it right, frankly. (Segment III, Residentialist, 2006)
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Initially I didn’t really know what to do and I was looking for advice [on the permit
process]. None of those people give you advice, not the Conservation District, not the
floodplain people, and not the Corps of Engineers…. I just talked to people. (Segment V,
Residentialist, 2006)
All my father-in-law used to do is talk to the [Conservation District] and the Army Corps.
They used to design the project for you, but they don’t anymore. (Segment V,
Agriculturalist, 2006)
When [my project was] washed [away], I was pretty upset because I put in a lot of work,
and it cost a terrible amount of money. Along in June one of the agency personnel
showed up and said, ‘How did that project work out?’ I came apart. He said, ‘I could
have told you that wouldn’t work.’ I said, ‘Why didn’t you?’ He said [the Army Corps of
Engineers] wouldn’t let him talk. There was an ‘agency difference of opinion.’ (Segment
V, Agriculturalist, 2006)
Experiences with Agencies—2012 and 2018
And, you know, it all starts of course with the federal and the state governments and what
jurisdictions they retain for themselves, etcetera... But the state of Montana... and I think
the Lower Yellowstone Conservation Districts and organizations like that are very
concerned about the use of the river and trying to keep it from being altered or changed
with artificial impairments and things like that. (Segment I, Civic Leader, 2012)
One thing we’ve been trying to do on the [Conservation District] board, like on the riprap
permits and stuff is, before it seemed like it used to take forever to get a response back,
we’re trying to tell them we want an answer back in 10 or 15 so we can get with it, you
know. And that’s been helping… [The requests go to] The Fish and Game and then the
Bureau, you know. And then on the riprap, I think it was like... I can’t remember the
guy… [And] I think it is [a better working arrangement now with the different agencies].
When I first got on there was this… state hydrologist, the Bureau, and the Fish and
Game hydrologist, and they didn’t get along. And one retired. It seems to be going a lot
smoother now… But we okayed some projects back then, like for riprap, and they denied
them. So then I had to go more to the state level, you know. And we haven’t had any of
that lately. (Segment II, Agriculturalist, 2012)
Our number one job, as the conservation district… basically what we are is the referee on
the Yellowstone River… more times than not, we end up being an advocate for the
landowner, and try to keep the peace between the government agencies and the
landowner. Now that being said, sometimes we have to step up to the landowner and say,
“No, you’re in the wrong, and the government agencies are in the right.” So, there’s a
fine line there. But basically, we’re the ones that are the referee. We throw the yellow
flag when it needs to be thrown… [And] we have a great working relationship with most
of the government agencies, Yellowstone County here. I think, uh, for one thing,
everybody has got long-term employees that are well established here. And there’s not
much turnover. So, everybody’s found a way to work with each other on stuff.
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Everybody values everybody else’s opinion, and everybody seems to take it into
consideration when they’re making their decisions. So, it seems to work pretty good.
(Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2018)
I think it’s beneficial for me, as a river landowner ,to be on [the Conservation District
Board]…to help facilitate… When you’re a landowner on the river it’s not an easy
situation. Everybody thinks they can come and play, and all the government agencies
want to tell you what you can and can’t do. As a landowner that can be very frustrating. I
think the biggest frustrating thing for me and for other landowners is how long it takes to
go through the process to get a permit. There’s so many agencies involved and it just…
it’s very overwhelming for a landowner to go through that process…. The conservation
district is responsible from the inside bank into the river. Anybody that’s going to
basically touch the water, they have to come to us to get a 310 permit to do any work….
And basically, how that works for us is the Fish and Game, Fish and Wildlife, they’re
always on the river with their boats doing their thing… And they’re awful good to come
to us to say, hey, somebody’s doing something here... And then we get out our landowner
maps and we’ll send them a letter saying, hey, we’d like to come look to see what kind of
work you’re doing. And then we proceed from there…. We’ve had new landowners come
in from out-of-state, had no idea that you couldn’t do it. We’ve got other one’s that think,
“By God, it’s my ground, I’ll do whatever I want to do, and I’m going to do it.” And
we’ve had some that are fall in between both of those. (Segment III, Agriculturalist,
2018)
It’s a hard conversation to have… Because people have lots of dollars invested and when
you tell them they can’t get in the river and start protecting their asset without going
through the proper channels, it gets very tough. And gets very emotional. And sometimes
we’re [the Conservation District Board] not always very successful at it. (Segment III,
Agriculturalist, 2018)
The “Ultimate Arbitrator”: The COE
Talk about the COE—2006
In recent years, on the Yellowstone, it hasn’t been quite so bad. [In the past] the water
was meandering so bad we had to relocate actual roads. So, then we had to get into the
Corps of Engineers, and do the riprapping thing, and all that. I think in the last 20 years
we haven’t had to deal with much of that, but in the past, it was a major issue. (Segment
I, Civic Leader, 2006)
Probably the most important is working with the Corps of Engineers to get a reasonable
method of controlling erosion along the river. Every one of these little towns has to have
an intake for water. They need some kind of control, guidance, engineering, that sort of
thing. Farmers need it. We need more help from those people, to get the Corps of
Engineers educated as to what we need, what will work, what’s functional. (Segment II,
Agriculturalist, 2006)
9.UnderstandingsofManagement|142
But, you see, [my losses] all could have been avoided because right at the Yellowstone
River Bridge, after the water would go down each year, there was debris and a few rocks,
and we would go in with a backhoe and put it back where it was….Then the government
made a practice where you couldn’t remove that again, so the river swung, and just ate it
out…. We should go back to the Army Corps of Engineers, and I should be reimbursed
for that rock jetty, because, when I bought the property, that is supposed to be taken care
of. And it’s very expensive…. Everything is so expensive…. I don’t plan to do anything.
I don’t have a great deal of faith in the Corps of Engineers. I think they should come out
and justify what they did. (Segment IV, Agriculturalist, 2006)
Well, if you’ve violated the law, it doesn’t take… [the Corps of Engineers] too long to
get here. If you really need them for a permit, sometimes it takes forever. (Segment IV,
Civic Leader, 2006)
To some degree the Corps has been maybe too quick to grant the permits for hard
armoring without…necessarily educating landowners that there are alternatives. And I’d
like to see that. There are certainly a lot of soft armoring techniques that are quite feasible
and, in the long run, have lower maintenance [costs]. I think a lot of landowners, if they
were aware of those options, might choose those [soft] options…. I think we need to look
at alternatives. (Segment V, Civic Leader, 2006)
The Corps of Engineers…is the ultimate arbitrator on the Yellowstone…. When we
brought people here from Omaha and floated them down the river, [someone said] ‘Oh
my God, there are big boulders in the river.’ Most of the rivers in Omaha have a sand bar.
It doesn’t take very long to see where poor decisions get made. They had no idea. …It is
based on old science ideas, and it is difficult to get them to change…They went, ‘Oh
when we talk about the Yellowstone, we need to use different criteria.’ (Segment V,
Recreationalist, 2006)
Talk about the COE—2012
And we had 3 years ago, no it’s been longer than that, but the last high water we had, we
had a washout down below the dike. The river changed channels and came around our
corner and cut a piece out down below the fairgrounds. And so, the Corps and them said
we’ll fix that right now, and they did. They came in with riprap and put that dike back,
formed a new dike right in there where that had washed a little piece, where the river had
curved into it. (Segment II, Residentialist, 2012)
[I’ve seen people stabilize the banks with] boulders, lots of boulders… It seems like [it
works] ... It deflects the water, the pressure away so it doesn’t erode the soil… [But] there
have only been a few places I have noticed that that is what they have done… I don’t
think they can do it a lot. Because the Army Corps of Engineers, I believe, has the say of
what goes on the banks. (Segment IV, Civic Leader, 2012)
9.UnderstandingsofManagement|143
I’m not really clear on what the SAMP [Special Area Management Plan] intended to
do… I know it is supposed to be guidance document for how alterations are done.
Beyond that, I haven’t read it. I don’t know whether it changes anything or just
administratively solidifies what is already in place in terms of practice. So, I don’t know
whether any changes resulted… I believe it came from the Corps. (Segment V, Civic
Leader, 2012)
Last year…was… a nice acid test… We kind of went through reaction to the flooding of
’96 and ’97—things like the Governor’s Task Force, and… we worked on a lot of those
issues.... Part of the Task Force thing that fell out of that was the Special Area
Management Plan. And I think we’re now just sort of in the phase… of seeing how the
SAMP [Special Area Management Plan] is going to be applied, and whether people can
work with it … whether the various participants are happy with the results… Those that
didn’t want to see regulation on the river… they saw the SAMP as something that was
going to prevent any kind of development, any kind of work. From the ranching
community, I think the worry was that we are not going to be able to do anything along
the riverbank now…. I found it kind of oddly amusing that… the environmental
community looked at it exactly the opposite… that the SAMP is going to rubber stamp
every bit of development within the area of the plan. So, I think, like in most cases, the
sky is falling attitude from either side of the fence is not necessarily what’s going to
happen. But I think from everything I’ve seen so far… I’ve heard people say… that
they’re still worried that the SAMP is going to create problems... again, depending on
which side of the fence they are looking. But I think we’re just now sort of in that phase
where it’s going to be a while to see how the ag community deals with it, you know,
realtors and people wanting to build houses and seeing where the whole thing plays out.
And I don’t have much of a feel yet for what people are thinking. (Segment V,
Recreationalist, 2012)
Talk about the COE—2018
They’re a time-grabber. And… I understand…the river does not have a voice. But at one
point or another, they have to recognize that there are 6,000 voices here that need
consideration, and not just through the environmental aspect. I became very frustrated
with the inability of myself to be able to communicate that to them. I thought it was
pretty plain. They, on the other hand, did not see it as plain [laughs]… You’re picking on
a scab here… because when we had the railroad come in and put in that bridge… they
failed, in my mind’s estimate, to follow all the guidelines that were required for their
endeavor…. When we [the City of Laurel] went into the river… they were just making it
more difficult…. The railroad, by gosh, the railroad’s going to do what the railroad’s
going to do… It was not apples to apples… I would hope that… somewhere along line,
people would recognize that it should have been apples to apples—because we were both
in the water. Don’t make any difference if that boot that goes in the water is in the foot of
a municipality or if it’s in the foot of a multi-billionaire industry. So, that was my
concern… It’s very discouraging. (Segment III, Civic Leader, 2018)
9.UnderstandingsofManagement|144
It seems like in this last year it’s changed a bunch. It seems like the Corps has a lot more
to say. The floodplain people in Livingston, who are all from out-of-state, pretty much
control what’s going to go on…. It seemed like they messed a lot with the interpretation
of the vocabulary. So, without actually changing it, they changed the intent and the
meaning of the words, which was really difficult for us…. It’s not as local anymore. And
you know, local people a lot of times have historical context. Other people that are
applying science… bring this great big global [perspective] rather than looking at what
this particular ecosystem is…. They’re trying to blanket it…. You can’t take care of your
structure anymore. You’re going to have to go through this bigger permitting process.…
It’s really hard. (Segment V, Agriculturalist, 2018)
I know the Corps has gotten more difficult recently, because a friend… they have a fair
amount of river property, and… it’s taken stuff out, and the Corps wouldn’t give them a
permit. However, you can stockpile a whole bunch of rocks so on emergencies you can
put it in. Now that seems really stupid to me, but that’s sort of what the new deal is… In
an emergency if it’s eroding, you can start dumping a lot of rock in and it’ll end up all
over the place… I just heard that a little bit ago. (Segment V, Recreationalist, 2018)
A Real Good Relationship with the COE
[Forsyth] is built around the river, and the city is protected by a dike… it’s nice to have
the dike. We have a working relationship with the Corps of Engineers to maintain the
city’s responsibility for the dike. (Segment II, Civic Leader, 2006)
We see maintenance on [the dike] every few years. If there’s ever a spot that isn’t very
strong, you see them dumping gravel over the bank…. So, it seems to be maintained very
well. (Segment II, Residentialist, 2006)
Right now, the city [of Miles City] is rebuilding those levees down there, and from what I
can tell they are doing a pretty nice job of it… I see them every day hauling in concrete
and stuff and building the levees down there. (Segment II, Residentialist, 2012)
The sentiment of a lot of the population in Miles City believe that… the Corps of
Engineers of course are the ones that… always get the brunt of everything. And they are
not the bad guy here, I can tell you that right now. The Corps of Engineers is wonderful
group of people and, you know, they have worked very diligently and very well with the
city of Miles City… I would like to see FEMA and the Corps of Engineers do a little
more give and take, but I also understand that… they have guidelines, and they have their
policies—they have to conform to and abide by those. So, we are definitely in for a long
process. (Segment II, Civic Leader, 2018)
We’re 100% confident in the levee… We’re involved in the SWIF [System Wide
Improvement Framework] program… to make sure we meet the standards set by Corps
of Engineers right now… But the Corps has not said yet, “You get that stuff off that dike
by July 1st, 2020,” but we’re taking the initiative… We’ve had a real good relationship
with the Corps of Engineers. They come down every year and inspect and tell us where
9.UnderstandingsofManagement|145
we have weaknesses, what we need to do… it’s been a very good relationship and we do
what they ask us to do (Segment II, Civic Leader, 2018)
It’s controlled pretty much by the soil conservation people in the government. You just
can’t go in there and start doing your own thing... Everything has to have a plan and be
approved by them. They’ve been really good to work with out of Big Timber, really
good… You can’t go down and start dumping a bunch of rocks in without approval from
the Corps of Engineers or whatever… When the water got so high it actually got
underneath the wall out here, and the wall was slipping away…I called our neighbor
across the road… and I said, “We need help.” He was down here within two hours with
truckloads of rocks, kept dumping them... I called Big Timber, the Corps there, and they
were so good. I described what was going on and they said, “Do what you have to do.”
And they followed up with a letter that I kept in the files that they’d approved it. And
then they came down a few times just to check, and I assured them that we’re not going
to do anything that’s going to hurt anything. We’re just trying to protect our house and
property here. So, they were really good to work with. (Segment IV, Residentialist, 2018)
We needed to do some emergency work, placing riprap in that area. And we are very
lucky to have a good relationship with, first of all, the state, but then getting the Corps of
Engineers on board. In a matter of a phone call, we were given authorization to do some
repair work… And since, it’s held… If we ever get to that point where say it’s a common
occurrence that is has to be repaired, then I think we’d go to the Corps and say, “Okay,
what do we need to do with this?” (Segment V, Civic Leader, 2018)
I think they’re doing a good job. You know, they’re not letting people throw car bodies in
there anymore... They most always have a plan [laughs] and look at it. And they also look
to see how what they do over here, is it going to affect the river on the other side then? …
I think they’re doing a good job managing it. (Segment V, Residentialist, 2018)
Suggestions for Management
Suggestions—2006
You have to have a benchmark…. [Then] you can look and see if something is having a
devastating effect or no real effect. This mapping is the first step. You can’t make these
decisions without it…. [We need to know] what are the cumulative effects, as opposed
to…just hot air in the wind….You [need] a firm basis to make your decision. That way
they can make intelligent decisions. That is the major role [for management]. Eventually
they will be able to make decisions because they know what has happened and they will
have evidence to support those decisions. (Segment III, Agriculturalist, 2006)
The pressures from industry, agriculture, and urban areas are not benign on the quality of
the Yellowstone River. Also, we’re beginning to channelize the river and drastically
affect the biota, the quality of the water, the quality of the scenery, and the quality of the
recreation potential. It has limited capacity to supply all of these things…. It’s over-
adjudicated and it’s under-regulated, but there’s not a conservation strategy….There’s a
9.UnderstandingsofManagement|146
direct tie [between] how well we manage all these activities and the health of the river.
(Segment III, Recreationalist, 2006)
When the river is flooding and eroding land it is trying to relieve itself. If you tighten up
down here, someone downstream is going to get it. It is almost impossible to get
permission to riprap. [Riprap] can definitely have an effect downstream. It re-energizes
the river. You definitely have to take a look at that…. I’d be very concerned if I was a
landowner downstream and somebody put in some riprap. They should definitely have a
say, too, and there should be some remediation, if [those downstream] lose land as a
result of riprap upstream. (Segment IV, Recreationalist, 2006)
I think it’s a good thing that it’s hard to get the permits, but I think they just have to start
addressing some different ideas on how to control the river during high water and how to
keep a lot of the water in Montana instead of letting it go on down to the Mississippi to
support barge traffic. (Segment IV, Agriculturalist, 2006)
I think the river is threatened. We have rules, but we are only [a few] eyes up and down
the valley. If it weren’t for a lot of caring people, and a lot of snitches… [we couldn’t do
our job] …. We need to update our regulations. We need to look at them and revisit
them—and make more people mad at us. (Segment V, Civic Leader, 2006)
I think at some point the government is going to have to be willing to step in and help the
landowners along the river. That land has value, but it has value for many different
possibilities, not the least of which is wetlands. The floodplain is what lets the river
spread out during these floods. I think that there is going to have to be some programs
where the landowners get some compensation [if they] allow the river to go where it
wants to…. And it has to be in the same context as if they are raising a crop. It has to be a
long-term agreement [with] the landowner, be it a rancher or a farmer or someone who
bought in for aesthetic purposes. They need to be compensated. I don’t know any other
way to do it. The local landowners…don’t have the means or the money to just donate
that. That is what they are being asked to do now. That isn’t right. (Segment V, Civic
Leader, 2006)
The public, and myself included, we need to have some available information…. We
[weren’t] really good stewards when we moved here. We’ve done some rock work along
our bank, and there wasn’t anyone there [to advise us] …. unless we could have paid for
professionals….But at the time we couldn’t afford it….If there’s some kind of grants that
may be available so you can hire a professional—if those professionals really have the
answer—that’s a question…I have. (Segment V, Residentialist, 2006)
When we first moved here and we knew we had problems with our banks just because of,
well, poor management. So, we called up several different professionals…. We wanted a
conversation about what would be the best thing for us and the river. And we didn’t get a
lot of good information. In fact, very little. And I think that’s one of the things that is
missing….There’s not a lot of people that can afford a major study on how to protect
their lands….Somehow we have to have that information available and be willing to
9.UnderstandingsofManagement|147
work with people on the river so they don’t do something that’s going to damage
someone else, or damage the river, or straighten the river….This is a meandering river.
It’s great. It should stay that way. (Segment V, Residentialist, 2006)
I think you need to try your best to go way out of your way to make sure the public is
brought into the process as much as possible. (Segment V, Recreationalist, 2006)
Suggestions—2018
I think if you can educate people and get them to do it, you’re going to have less
government interference. But most of the time, the idea is, ‘this is my land and I’ll damn
well do what I want with it.’ The fact that they are taking something that is shared by all
of us, which is the river, gives government the right of oversight, I believe. If it was just
one man and one pond that would be fine, or one landowner and one river in his property,
it’d be different. But it’s a river that’s shared by all of us, by the whole country. (Segment
III, Civic Leader, 2018)
Truthfully, if nobody ever would have put riprap in the river, it would be a whole
different thing. But we can’t go back there. Of course, these spring creeks at different
times were part of the river. We all know that… [But] people started doing things like
putting cars or hauling rock in because they didn’t want [erosion] to take these spring
creeks.… Everybody that’s lived along the river has tried to keep their land intact by the
river, for sure…. As a society, and as a government, you look back at what people did,
and you want to judge, and criticize, and say, “We’re not going to do anything else now
because they did that wrong.” But you know, that’s already been done, so it just seems
like wasting a lot of time worrying. What can you do now? (Segment V, Agriculturalist,
2018)
If you’re being flooded, you have the issue where you can claim emergency and just go
do it. But if you’re not being flooded and you ask for permission to do it, it’s a long
process… So, I’m not saying everybody’s doing it, but some people know that, so they
just wait for the water to get up… So, it seems like there could be something more done
to make that go away; maybe the permit process would be easier or faster. (Segment V,
Civic Leader, 2018)
I live ten feet from the banks of the Yellowstone. When I did a construction project on
my house… of course the bank wanted… to know what its risks were like flooding. If
you look at the FEMA map, I’m on the floodplain. They’re like ah, we’re not going to
finance this. So… I look at the FEMA floodplain map in Paradise Valley… and guess
where the FEMA map draws [its line?] …. It comes down to Livingston along the
Yellowstone River on the west side. Guess what structure it hits and then there’s square
lines that go around and then back to the river saying this is not part of the floodplain.
Guess what building it is…. [It is] Park High and the middle school. Why? Because you
need flood insurance. So, I’m like okay, this is horse shit… So, I called, and I go okay,
I’m calling your B.S. What do I need to do? ... And they didn’t even actually have to
come out. They just kind of went, “Oh yeah, you’re not in the floodplain.” …. We need
9.UnderstandingsofManagement|148
the government to do its job, right? And everybody needs to be treated equally so at least
when we’re talking about floods, we know what we’re talking about. (Segment V,
Recreationist, 2018)
10.Analysesof15RecurringParticipants|149
Section 10. Analysis of 15 Recurring Participants
Having gathered data during three different field seasons, spanning 12 years, we had the
opportunity to explore these data via an additional mode of analysis. Fifteen individuals
participated in the project in each of the field seasons: 2006, 2012, and 2018. We refer to these
participants as the 15 Recurring Participants (RPs), and we approached their interview data as a
unique sub-set of the 12-year effort as a longitudinal panel interview study.
Although we used the same interview protocol during each field season, the open-ended
questions allowed participates to shape the conversations in light of recent events. The findings
echo and reinforce trends identified in the above sections. Here, though, an important additional
insight is disclosed. Namely, when place-based/experience-based stories anchor individuals’
understanding of river processes and management, those stories can function to hinder or
enhance the individual’s ability to incorporate new information into their personal discourse.
Fifteen Recurring Participants
The group of RPs included six agriculturalists, three local civic leaders, 3 recreationalists, and 3
residentialists, and each of the Geographic Segments was represented by 2-4 individuals (see
Table 7).
Table 7. Longitudinal Analysis Participation Table by Segment & Interest Group
Se
g
. 1 Se
g
. 2 Se
g
. 3 Se
g
. 4 Se
g
. 5
Interest
Group Total
Agriculturalist: 1 2 2 1 6
Civic Leader: 2 1 3
Recreationalist: 1 1 1 3
Residentialist: 1 1 1 3
Segment Total: 2 3 3 3 4 15
Analytical Foci and Approach
Our approach was to examine the degree to which the 15 RPs’ comments have changed (or not)
over time regarding flooding, erosion, and the oversight of bank stabilization projects. We
analyzed the 45 interview transcripts for analysis (15 individuals x 3 field seasons) for our foci
identified and cataloged within each transcript. The sorted data were then examined for patterns
of similarity and/or dissimilarity, within and across the field seasons. As a longitudinal data set,
the interviews with 15 RPs would allow us to evaluate the persistence of ideas among valley
residents. Our findings are explained below.
10.Analysesof15RecurringParticipants|150
Findings
Floods as Anchoring Events
The RPs described specific flood events and annual summer flooding in the interviews using
place-specific experiences. Often one or two flood events were identified as important
experiences that allowed the RP to orient their understandings of event magnitude. Over field
seasons, these specific events were referred to time and time again. Thus, we interpret them as
anchoring events, ones that function as centerpieces in individuals’ descriptions of flooding. The
anchoring events are place-specific, often to one’s property or town and specific to the RPs’ role
in their communities (e.g., mayor, farmer, field guide, or home owner) thus, they vary in
character. For instance, the floods of 1996 and 1997 anchored descriptions of flooding for people
in the island at Livingston quite differently than for others impacted by those same floods.
Participant comments about flooding ranged from ambivalence to a sustained defiance to
acquiescence towards flood events. The most outspoken RPs were those who expressed a lasting
defiance to flooding. This group was largely made up of agriculturalists who farmed land along
the river. For riverfront farmers, threat of flooding and impacts of loss of lands to erosion and
channel jumping (avulsion) was an ever-present worry. RPs described with great detail the
damages they experienced due to June (June Rise) and ice jam floods and the hardships of trying
to manage their property and livelihoods next to a large dynamic river. As beneficial as the
waters are for the farmers’ irrigation needs, the river can take productive ground. For those who
work the lands closest to the river, these were commonly voiced perspectives.
For example, a third-generation farmer characterized living on the river as, “a detriment, not an
asset. It’s just a big pain in the ass to me…every spring, right north of here, it will take 10-feet
deep—clear to the gravel” (RP-B, Agriculturalist, Segment II, 2006). This same sentiment was
expressed in all three field seasons, and it helped the farmer explain his losses that impact
productivity:
A lot of the work that was done [on this farm] 30, 40, 50 years ago is now down the river.
You know, we lost a lot of production…. We had trouble [with the 2011 flood]. We
couldn’t use any of our pasture until probably October. So, it was really a trying year. As
long as I’ve lived here, I’ve never seen that much water go down that river in the flood
channels and over the fields like it had that year, I’ve never seen it like that. I mean it was
just roaring through there. (RP-B, Agriculturalist, Segment II, 2012)
The floods and the erosion had caused him to discuss with his brother the idea of selling
the farm. He said, “My brother doesn’t want to sell, and I do. So, I always tell him, ‘Well,
your part of the farm was right there, it went down the river.’ [laughs].” (RP-B,
Agriculturalist, Segment II, 2018).
Another agriculturalist couple echoed similar sentiments, “Sometimes, you glorify it and
sometimes you think, ‘Boy, it is a monster.’ You learn to accept what it does. If you worry about
it, you can’t do anything; especially when it is really doing stuff, everybody is helpless” (RP-D,
10.Analysesof15RecurringParticipants|151
Agriculturalist, Segment IV, 2006). Throughout the field seasons this sentiment was echoed,
again and again. In 2012 he said, “while you live on the river, you got to fight it” (RP-D,
Agriculturalist, Segment IV, 2012), and in 2018 he said, “I think you just have to accept the fact
the bank will just keep eroding away” (RP-D, Agriculturalist, Segment IV, 2018).
Two other agriculturalists described their experiences of the 1996 and 1997 floods in strikingly
similar terms when comparing comments from 2006 and 2012. In one case, the agriculturalist
explained that ice jams loosened rocks and subsequently washed out their jetties. In 2006, this
anchoring event functioned to help describe the river. In 2012, this same story was prompted
after being asked about what type of bank stabilization they have used (see Box 1).
Box 1. Descriptions of Floods:
RP-D, A
g
riculturalist, Se
g
ment IV
2006 2012
“We had those ice jams and they kind of
jarred the rocks loose and then, when the
flood came, it wiped the jetty out.”
“The winter just before the 500-year flood, it
loosened that remaining jetty up that winter
with that big ice jam, moved the rocks. Then
that spring that water came up real high, and
it washed it out.”
Another agriculturalist described how flooding “isolated” them from their “bottom land
property” in both 2006 and 2012. Interestingly, in 2012, the story included more details, perhaps
indicating that as an anchoring event it had gained importance or that the opportunity to explain
the event was viewed as more important than in 2006 (see Box 2).
Box 2. Descriptions of Floods:
RP-F, A
g
riculturalist, Se
g
ment V
2006 2012
“In ’96 we washed out big time here. It came
through here and created a channel through
me and so I was isolated from my bottom
land property.”
“In 1996 the river got extremely high. I would
say 75% of the Yellowstone River was
running into Spring Creek. And it cut me off
from about three or four hundred acres of
property. I put in root wads along the bank,
and we planted willows, and we planted grass,
and I did a tremendous amount of work that
cost near three-quarters of a million dollars to
do it. Then ‘97 came along, and we had
another high event, and I lost the whole
thin
g
.”
A smaller group of RPs described flooding as a natural process that was important to maintaining
a healthy river. These RPs were generally engaged in livelihoods that were less dependent on
river-front lands. Their descriptions were broader in scope, referencing more system-wide
notions of river health. These RPs were sometimes concerned that too much interference with the
river’s natural processes might lead to unfortunate consequences.
10.Analysesof15RecurringParticipants|152
For instance, a civic leader who moved to the area after the significant flood events of 1996 and
1997 described regular floods as a “renewal of the ecosystem,” something “desirable.” Another
comment was, “This river system has been fairly resilient, I think there is a fair amount of
seasonal rehabilitation that the river does for itself, but that’s not unlimited in terms of capability,
and it’s hard to know what the limits are without bumping up against them (RP-A, Civic Leader,
Segment V, 2006). In 2018, the comment was, “I don’t know whether my attitude affects what
the river’s doing, but generally I see it [flooding] favorably” (RP-A, Civic Leader, Segment V,
2018).
A self-proclaimed “river person,” whose family has lived, farmed, and managed an irrigation
company for generations, offered similar comments in 2006 and 2012 regarding expectations. In
2006, RP-E referred to system-wide river health initiatives. In 2012, RP-E expressed a similar
sentiment in response to a question regarding “damages” from flooding. Within different
contexts, the participant expressed a similar priority (see Box 3).
Box 3. Descriptions of Floods
RP-E, A
g
riculturalist, Se
g
ment II
2006 2012
“My whole theory about the river is that we
have got to have a new vision on what we
expect of our rivers. I want to prove to the
world that we can have the irrigated
agriculture, but we can also have our rivers
and pretty much leave them intact.”
“I hate to refer to something that happens
naturally, from time to time, as damage. I
kind of look at it the other way: we’re here
and we’re kind of more or less the damage;
we’re the newcomers, so it [the river] needs
to be able to do kind of what it wants once in
a while, and I have alwa
y
s felt like that.”
The field season of 2012 allowed RPs to discuss the floods of 2011. Descriptions of the flood
event varied according to Geographic Segment, but the most recent flood was often explained in
comparative terms. Those in Segment II, RPs described the 2011 flood as: “a lot higher and
higher a lot longer” (RP-C, Recreationalists, Segment II, 2012), “I’ve never seen it [the river]
like that” (RP-B, Agriculturalist, Segment II, 2012), and the river was “brim-full” (RP-E,
Agriculturalist, Segment II, 2012). RPs from other Geographic Segments discussed the 2011
flood in less detail. A possible explanation was shared by a Civic Leader in Segment V when he
explained that “with the ’96-’97 floods the channel morphology changed so much that [the river
channel] has more capacity for water now. So, I suspect we had something close to record flood
volume, but we didn’t have floods” (RP-A, Civic Leader, Segment V, 2012).
The RPs, especially ones that owned land on the riverbanks, often connected flooding events
with erosion of riverbanks. They explained dramatic erosion and avulsion events through
detailed place-specific accounts, often providing specific measurements and timelines. For
instance, a Residentialist described losing “probably 80 acres, or maybe more,” since around
1974 (RP-J, Residentialist, Segment I, 2006). Another Residentialist described losing “100 feet
of lawn in ‘96” (RP-M, Residentialist, Segment V, 2006). One agriculturalist described dramatic
avulsion changes: “this island wasn’t even here 25 years ago” (RP-N, Agriculturalists, Segment
I, 2018). Another agriculturist described major avulsion events in 1996 and 1997 as occurring at
10.Analysesof15RecurringParticipants|153
“the rate of three or four feet a day, sometimes more. Hard to stop it” (RP-D, Agriculturalist,
Segment IV, 2012).
For one agriculturalist, his personal philosophy seemed to mature over the years from ‘you
always fight the river,’ to ‘fascinating,’ to ‘a necessary thing.’ (see Box 4).
Box 4. Description of River Power
RP-D, A
g
riculturalists, Se
g
ment IV
2006 2012 2018
“Somebody told me, if you
don’t like losing land and
getting flooded, you gotta go
get up in the hills and buy a
dryland place. You always
fight the river a certain
amount”
“We all know it’s got the
power. If you don’t cry about it
and nobody loses their life over
it, I think it’s kind of
fascinating.”
“I really don’t think you can
stop the river through our
section here. It’s a
necessary thing.”
Comments on Management
Our analysis revealed little change in participant priorities and narratives used to describe
flooding and its management. For example, agriculturalists spoke of flood management as their
“biggest problem” (RP-B, Agriculturalist, Segment IV, 2006) or “biggest monster” (RP-B,
Agriculturalist, Segment IV, 2012) and then provided suggestions on how to improve
management. The RPs often described the solution to flood management as more awareness and
education, “if they could drive around and see, well that is what happened to so and so” (RP-F,
Agriculturalist, Segment V, 2012). Other suggestions included better technology (i.e., dams,
levees, new engineering solutions, etc.) or development set-back laws—laws prohibiting
development within a certain distance of the river. Several RPs discussed set-backs or
specifically dams as the “only way we would have fixed control here” yet concluded that these
were a politically unattainable solution “that isn’t going to happen” (RP-D, Agriculturalist,
Segment IV, 2006).
One agriculturalist echoed the same sentiment in all three field seasons with little to no change
from 2006 to 2012, both times suggesting poor financial management on a federal level was a
problem (see Box 5).
Box 5. Descriptions of Management
RP-B, A
g
riculturalist, Se
g
ment II
2006 2012
“The biggest monster for soil erosion is the
river. The reason they don’t touch it is your
environmentalists and it is so costly. It takes a
lot of money to riprap a river. We poop that
away every day in Iraq. We don’t take care of
our own country and our own people. Just like
this river.”
“I guess what really irritates me is we’ve spent,
I think it was like 880 billion in Iraq, 330
billion in Afghanistan, and we’re going to get
rid of these satellite FSA offices. To me, it’s
just totally ludicrous. You know, it’s really
poor management at the top.”
10.Analysesof15RecurringParticipants|154
In 2018, the participant discussed the topic in a similar sentiment, but this time offered
technology as a solution, “But you know, we have so much technology, why can’t we do a better
job than what we’re doing? That’s what I’m saying” (RP-B, Agriculturalist, Segment II, 2018).
A civic leader described flood management as a priority in all three field seasons, even though
the context for the comments was slightly different. In 2006, the comments came after discussing
a study. In 2012, the comments occurred when the RP was discussing the need to balance
interests. In 2018, the comments were part of a discussion about how to improve river
management (see Box 6).
Box 6. Descriptions of Management
RP-A, Civic Leader, Se
g
ment V
2006 2012 2018
“So, I think we’re going to
have to have some kind-of
engineering solution, and I’d
really like to see it involve, in
a perfect world, some kind of
service set-back, designated
flood-way, flood-plain area.”
“Most of that obviously has to
happen at the county level. You
know, in terms of setbacks and
everything else. Again, looking
back, ideally, I would have put
setbacks in place in 1920, but it
is hard to do it now.”
“We try to create awareness
and incentives on the part of
people who would
otherwise make less than
informed development
decisions, both with respect
to structure siting,
construction materials
design, those kinds of
thin
g
s.”
Another agriculturalist indicated he had been directly involved in the construction of a diversion
dam. He expressed grave concerns for river management as it related to fisheries and system-
wide river health (see Box 7).
Box 7. Descriptions of Management
RP-E, A
g
riculturalist, Se
g
ment II
2006 2012 2018
“We absolutely need to
keep the rivers whole and
complete as we can. We
can have the irrigated
agriculture, but we can also
have our rivers and pretty
much leave them intact.
We don’t need to de-water
them to death – it’s
pointless.”
“You know, and we got to
take care of this place the
best we can or we’re going to
spin ourselves right out of
here, you know? When we’re
in the right place to do
something, we take a hold of
it and do it. It’s just that flat
responsibility to make the
world a better place.”
“I don’t understand why there
isn't an outcry against irrigation
companies that entrain fish. Hell,
that Intake is such a travesty.
People fish in the canal down
there. It’s like, for heaven’s sake!
How the river even keeps a
viable fish population at all in
light of what that inlet has done
to it.”
Riprap is commonly used to combat erosion along the Yellowstone River, and several RPs had
personal experiences with the bank stabilization permitting processes. These RPs explained that
getting permission to begin the process was difficult, and some stated that the managing agencies
would not let riprap projects move forward. One said, “We possibly could be able to do some
10.Analysesof15RecurringParticipants|155
riprap, but we’re not allowed” (RP-J, Residentialist, Segment I, 2006). Another recalled a
discussion where he was told he could not use riprap and he challenged the decision in these
terms: “Are saying you shouldn’t riprap. This is my home” (RP-M, Residentialist, Segment V,
2006). A recreationalist described the permitting process as, “a lot of hoops and whistles you got
to do to put anything on the riverbanks” because…. [the agencies] want it to stay natural…. They
are trying to keep it natural” (RP-C, Recreationalist, Segment II, 2018).
Some RPs told stories of failed bank stabilization projects. An agriculturalist described his
despair in these terms: “When I washed out, I was pretty upset because I put a lot of work and it
cost a terrible amount of money; it was devastating” (RP-F, Agricultural, Segment V, 2006). In
this case, there was added insult when an “agency” person said, “I could have told you it
wouldn’t work” (RP-F, Agriculturalist, Segment V, 2006). Also in 2006, another agriculturalist
explained the futility of stabilization projects. He told a long story about four jetties, put in by the
previous owners of their land, three of which only lasted two years. Both agriculturalists repeated
these stories in 2012, with the second concluding: “Anything that they ever put in to protect [the
bank] is all gone” (RP-D, Agriculturalists, Segment IV, 2012)
Over the 12-year span of the project, the costs associated with bank stabilization projects
remained a matter of concern to agriculturalists and residentialists (see Box 8).
Box 8. Expensiveness of Stabilization Projects
2006 2012 2018
“I couldn’t grow enough
crops to offset it, I wish I
could, but it doesn’t work
that way.” (RP-D,
Agriculturalist, Segment II)
“It’s cheaper to buy another
farm than cost of riprapping”
(RP-B, Agriculturalist,
Segment II)
“Even if the government would
pay 80%, at our age, it would
never pay-out” (RP-D,
Agriculturalist, Segment II).
RPs discussed the maintenance issues. The majority expressed these concerns with ambivalence.
For instance, one Residentialist explained, “You have to decide if you want to spend the money
to fix it or take what comes” (RP-M, Residentialist, Segment V, 2006). Similarly, an
agriculturalist described the ongoing task of repair: “I have to do yearly maintenance…. I have
been working off of that premise that I have to maintain what I have got” (RP-F, Agriculturalist,
Segment V, 2012).
At the heart of local frustrations is a tension between the rights of private property owners and
the need for agencies to protect river health. Several recreationalists and civic leaders
commented on these potentially conflicting interests, especially if setbacks for development are
under consideration. In 2006, a civic leader explained, “Politically, there’s a culture of property
rights and courts. The County Commission is certainly faced with a difficult balancing act in
making decisions regarding things like setbacks” (RP-A, Civic Leader, Segment V, 2006).
Some were more defiant about the bank stabilization permitting process, especially
agriculturalists, who experienced events that require immediate action. One agriculturalist
10.Analysesof15RecurringParticipants|156
explained his frustrations in 2012 and 2018. However, it is noticeable that in 2018 his
frustrations had shifted toward procedural concerns (see Box 9).
Box 9. Can’t Wait for the Paperwork to Get Done
RP-B, A
g
riculturalist, Se
g
ment II
2012 2018
“If you have to get a permit, and wait two
months to get it, and the river is starting to
flood, you need [the permit] now. You
don’t need it when they decide to do the
paperwork.”
“We wrote and told them, ‘If you don’t let us
know within a month, it’s an automatic go-
ahead.’ And we’ve sure been working better.”
Many agriculturalists expressed they want management to leave them alone: “They ought to let
you go out there in August, when there is not water running by, and do what you want” (RP-N,
Agriculturalist, Segment I, 2006). Another agriculturalist claimed, “All I wanted to do is ranch
and do my thing. Private property needs to be protected. I think that somewhere along the line
people have to come first. It’s the people’s river…. [And] I can’t understand how allowing banks
to erode and cut add anything valuable to the river” (RP-F, Agriculturalist, Segment V, 2006).
Again, anchoring events can play an important role in these narratives. Consider the next
examples, comments from an agriculturalist in 2006 and 2012 (see Box 10).
Box 10. Erosion & Management
RP-B, A
g
riculturalist, Se
g
ment II
2006 2018
“We used to have a two-story house down
there and six acres and a set of corrals with a
well. It is all gone. Like Al Gore says, we will
be importing all of our food, anyway. Like the
potato famine in Ireland. Those people have
learned to protect their farmers. If this country
has a problem, they throw money at it and
that ma
y
not be the best answer.”
“To me we’re not being represented. It’s like,
‘Oh well, so what if half of your farm did go
down the river? Tough smash. You knew that
when you had it’ Well, we’re the third
generation, and there used to be a two-story
house down there with six acres of hay on the
other side of it, and that house has been gone
forever.”
In contrast, a recreationalist discussed downstream effects and imagined that his neighbors could
come to an agreement concerning a best course of action: “From my own personal experience
[of] seeing where some of the projects were done and where the impacts were the greatest, I
think some people would accept the fact that there is a sort of bowling pin effect” (RP-H,
Recreationalist, Segment V, 2006). However, by 2012, the recreationalist seemed less hopeful
that understandings, alone, would lead to agreements: “It’s reactionary in every case. [One side
says] riprap’s going to destroy the river. [The other side says] riprap is going to save my ranch”
(RP-H, Recreationalist, Segment V, 2012). He, still wanted the river protected, but he had a
much more complex suggestion for moving forward:
Our best shot is to do as little tinkering with the river as we can, and to try to make it
easier for landowners to face the reality that some of their land is going to be taken
10.Analysesof15RecurringParticipants|157
away”….[We should do two things.] One, see that the finest engineering is done to
mitigate as much of the impact of the project as possible. Two, compensate our
landowners for the damage that they’re going to do because of the project” (RP-I,
Recreationalist, Segment III, 2012).
Those concerned with system-wide health over private property rights still expressed a need for
bank stabilization in very specific cases, “There’s some places where you do need to do it, but
where it takes out edges of fields and things like that, I think that just puts nutrients back in the
river and makes it a good river” (RP-C, Recreationalist, Segment II, 2012). Others also suggested
using natural alternatives rather than hard armoring: A civic leader explained it was better when
landowners were “helping Mother Nature along by planting shrubs and trees along the river”
(RP-L, Civic Leader, Segment III, 2018). Agriculturalists and residentialists found these
solutions acceptable, too: “Hopefully, you’d come to the realization that you should give the
river some room so that when it comes it’s day in June it has someplace to go” (RP-E,
Agriculturalist, Segment II, 2006). A Residentialist put it this way, “Common sense says you
should not build right on the riverbank because rivers do move” (RP-K, Residentialist, Segment
IV, 2012).
Those concerned with system-wide health often cautioned against bank stabilization for the
downstream effects: “Every time there is a bank stabilization project, it pushes problems
downstream. If I were king, I would change how we do bank stabilization” (RP-A, Civic Leader,
Segment V, 2012). These RPs often expressed that there should be more responsibility placed on
project owners stating bank stabilization projects, “have unintended consequences downstream
which he’s not responsible for—he should be…. [I know] a landowner who was more willing to
deal with damage on his own property rather than say that the [other] guy had to be responsible
for what he had done, because that meant he would be next. That thinking scares me” (RP-H,
Recreationalist, Segment V, 2006).
Overall, RPs from all sides expressed a need for improved management efforts. They offered
several suggestions: “Maybe it is education” (RP-K, Residentialist, Segment IV, 2012), “We
need to use our best technology to look at the cumulative effects of these impacts” (RP-I,
Recreationalist, Segment III, 2012), and “We had seen a lot of bank stabilization projects without
a lot of planning, [and] it wasn’t clear how detrimental that would be to the fishing community”
(RP-H, Recreationalist, Segment V, 2006). One agriculturalist explained the need for landowners
to think much more carefully about their projects: “Most of the riprap projects have been done
wrong because people haven’t taken the time to assess ‘What am I doing?,’ ‘What do I want this
to look like?,’ and ‘What are the true reasons I am doing this?’” (RP-E, Agriculturalist, Segment
II, 2006).
Discussion of the Longitudinal Data Set
Evidence from longitudinal data provided by the 15 RPs supports the findings above and
provides an added insight about the value of these data and this study approach for management
and planning. Not only are the stories that people tell important as a means to track diverse
understandings, concerns, and issues that circulate among the people of the valley, these same
10.Analysesof15RecurringParticipants|158
stories are important as personal anchors that function to define individuals’ understandings of
how the river works, what projects are best, how rights are framed, and the degree to which
agencies are valued as managerial entities.
The evidence in this section illustrates that because the stories are place-based and experience-
based, they may not obviously dovetail with scientific or abstract information. The repeated use
of anchoring stories within RPs’ descriptions of physical processes and river management can
likely function as factors contributing to individuals’ resistance to new ways of thinking. The
persistence of stories and explanatory narratives regarding oils spills is explained elsewhere
(Emerson, Hall and Gilbertz, 2021). However, trace evidence regarding “channel migration” and
“climate change” suggests that the stories are, at times, adapted to incorporate new information
or new vocabularies. Thus, they also represent opportunities for incorporating new information
and ways of thinking. When new information is incorporated into familiar stories, we posit the
new information will likely have staying power.
References|159
References
Emerson MR, Hall DM, Gilbertz SJ. 2021. Pipeline pipedreams: Oil spills, pipeline accidents,
and the local truths embedding fossil fuels in the Yellowstone River valley, United States.
Energy Research & Social Science, 72. DOI:10.1016/j.erss.2020.101859
Gilbertz, SJ, Emerson, MR, Kidd, KR, Hall, DM. 2021. Yellowstone River Cultural Inventory-
2018: Summary Report of all Segments. Co-Sponsored by the Yellowstone River Conservation
District Council, with funding from the US Army Corps of Engineers. 468663 Planning
Assistance Study MT. 111 pages. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.18860.80005/1
Gilbertz, SJ, Emerson MR, Hall, DM. 2020. Yellowstone River Cultural Inventory-2012:
Summary Report of all Segments. Co-Sponsored by the Yellowstone River Conservation District
Council, with funding from the US Army Corps of Engineers. 468663 Planning Assistance Study
MT. 94 pages. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.22355.12321 Available at:
https://ftpgeoinfo.msl.mt.gov/Documents/Projects/Yellowstone_River_Clearinghouse/YRCI_20
12_SUMMARY_REPORT_of_ALL_SEGMENTS_FINAL_wPubDate.pdf
Gilbertz, S, Horton, C, Hall, DM. 2007. Yellowstone River Cultural Inventory. United States
Corps of Engineers and the Greater Yellowstone River Conservation District Council. 787 pages.
Available at: http://geoinfo.msl.mt.gov/data/yellowstone_river/Socioeconomics Archived at:
https://www.ywhc.org/exhibit/yellowstone-river-cultural-inventory/
Hall, DM, Gilbertz, SJ, Horton, C, Peterson, TR. 2012. Culture as a means to contextualize
policy. Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, 2(3): 222–233. DOI: 10.1007/s13412-
012-0077-9
Hall, DM. 2016. Voices from the field: Understanding cultural impact: Uses of the Yellowstone
River Cultural Inventory reports, 157–159. In Clarke, T. Peterson, T.R. Environmental Conflict
Management. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Hall, DM, Gilbertz, S, Horton, C, Peterson, TR. 2013. Integrating divergent representations of
place into decision contexts. In: Stewart, W.P., D. R. Williams, and L. E. Kruger (Eds.). Place-
based Conservation: Perspectives from the social sciences. pp. 121–136. Dordrecht: Springer
Press. DOI: 10.1007/978-94-007-5802-5_10
Horton, CC, Hall, DM, Gilbertz, SJ, Peterson, TR. 2017. Voice as an entry to agriculturalists’
conservationist identity: A cultural inventory of the Yellowstone River. Environmental
Communication: Journal of Nature and Culture, 5, 609–623. DOI:
10.1080/17524032.2016.1157505
Jackson, JB. 1984. Discovering the Vernacular Landscape. Yale University Press: New Haven,
Connecticut.
Appendix|160
Appendix: Interview Protocols
Example interview protocols for each field season are found below. These examples were used
with participants in the “agricultural” interest group. Minor adaptations were made for
participants from other groups.
2006 Protocol-Agricultural Participant
1. How many years have you been in operation here?
a. Do you live here full time?
b. IF NOT: How many months a year is your home occupied?
c. How do you describe your place to people who have never been here (there)?
2. What was it about this site that made you (your family) want to locate here
originally?
a. Is the river important to you?
b. What do you like best about being near the river?
3. Are there any problems associated having property this close to the river?
a. What do you think is the most important problem?
4. Has there ever been erosion damage to your lot?
a. (If yes) How much of your place was affected?
b. Is there anything that should be or that can be done about erosion?
c. Why would that be your course of action?
5. Looking ahead 10 years, what do you expect your place to be like?
a. Will the physical facilities change?
b. Why is that?
c. As you think about the next generation, what are your primary concerns?
6. Some people talk about the river corridor….How is the river corridor different from
the river itself?
(follow-up to explore “riparian” zone –with or without using that word)
7. Besides what you have already described, what are the various uses of the river?
a. How do you think the rights of all users can best be balanced?
8. What keeps you here?
9. Of everything we’ve talked about, what is most important to you?
Appendix|161
2011 Protocol: Agricultural Participant
w/ Attention to Oil Spill on the Yellowstone River
1. How many years have you been in operation here?
a. Do you live here full time?
b. IF NOT: How many months a year is your home occupied?
c. How do you describe your place to people who have never been here?
2. What was it about this site that made you (your family) want to locate here
originally?
a. Is the river important to you?
b. What do you like best about being near the river?
3. Are there any problems associated having property this close to the river?
a. What do you think is the most important problem?
4. Has there ever been flood damage to your land?
a. (If yes) How much of your place was affected?
b. Is there anything that should be or that can be done about flooding?
c. Why would that be your course of action?
5. Has there ever been erosion damage to your land?
a. (If yes) How much of your place was affected?
b. Is there anything that should be or that can be done about erosion?
c. Why would that be your course of action?
6. Did you notice any impacts from the oil spill in 2011?
a. (If yes) What types of impacts and how much of your place was affected?
b. Is there anything that should be or that can be done about the oil spill now?
c. Why would that be your course of action?
d. Was the response adequate?
7. Besides what you have already described, what are the various uses of the river?
a. How do you think the rights of all users can best be balanced?
8. Looking ahead 10 years, what do you expect your place to be like?
a. Will the physical facilities change?
b. Why is that?
9. As you think about the next generation, what are your primary concerns?
10. Some people talk about the river corridor….How is the river corridor different from
the river itself?
(follow-up to explore “riparian” zone –with or without using that word)
11. What keeps you here?
12. Of everything we’ve talked about, what is most important to you?
Appendix|162
2018 Protocol--Agricultural Participant
w/ Attention to Drought, Cottonwood Forests and Long-term Impacts of Oil
Spills
1. How many years have you been in operation here?
a. Do you live here full time?
b. IF NOT: How many months a year is your home occupied?
c. How do you describe your place to people who have never been here?
2. What was it about this site that made you/your family want to locate here?
a. Is the river important to you?
b. What do you like best about being near the river?
3. Are there any problems associated having property this close to the river?
a. Is there one problem that seems to be “most important”?
4. Has there ever been flood damage to your land?
a. (If yes) How much of your place was affected?
b. Is there anything that should be, or that can be, done about flooding?
c. Why would that be your course of action?
5. Has there ever been erosion damage to your land?
a. (If yes) How much of your place was affected?
b. Is there anything that should be, or that can be, done about erosion?
c. Why would that be your course of action?
6. Have you experienced drought conditions here?
a. What needs to happen when droughts occur?
b. Are you prepared for drought? (How so?)
c. What does the community need to do to prepare for drought?
d. How do you think droughts should be managed by agencies?
7. Some people talk about the river corridor….How is the river corridor different from
the river itself?
(follow-up to explore “riparian” zone –with or without using that word)
(EXPAND COTTONWOODS when possible)
8. Did you notice any impacts from the oil spill in 2011?
a. (If yes) What types of impacts and how much of your place was affected?
b. (If yes) To what extent do you think the land and the river have recovered?
c. (If yes) Was the response adequate?
d. (yes or No) Is there anything that should be done about oil spills?
e. Why would that be your course of action?
9. Besides what you have already described, who are the other river users?
a. How do you think the rights of all users can be balanced, best?
10. What keeps you here? Looking ahead 10 years, what do you expect your place to be
like?
a. Will the physical facilities change? Why is that?
11. As you think about the next generation, what are your primary concerns?
12. Of everything we’ve talked about, what is most important to you?
