At Montana Wave Project, we aim to improve water delivery to irrigators, enhance fish habitats, and mitigate dangerous hazards while providing a recreational whitewater wave for surfing and kayaking. Our non-profit organization focuses on updating irrigation infrastructure in a way that benefits all.
Ecological Benefits
The Montana Wave Project wants to help preserve and improve healthy watersheds for the future. Montana is home to the headwaters of many of our nations great rivers. It's where these rivers begin their route to the sea, and it's where we can set a holistic example for watershed management that all downstream states can follow. We are one community of farmers, fisherman, cowboys, kayakers, surfers, and nature lovers here in Montana. We are all in this together, and we all depend on our freshwater ecosystems.
When most of our state's irrigation infrastructure was placed in our streams and rivers, concepts of environmental health and ecosystem services were far from the forefront. It was a different world. One where natural resources seemed limitless, and there wasn't yet a need to understand the complexity of the environment which sustains us. Much has changed over the last century. Our understanding of river ecology and the importance of watershed continuity has increased immensely. Efficient agriculture systems are more important than ever to feed our growing communities, yet we still have the same dams and diversion features in place, some of which where built over one hundred years ago.
Many of these diversion features obstruct the entire stream channel. At low water times they act as a dam, disrupting critical ecosystem processes such as fish migration, nutrient transport and sediment flow. When stream flow is inhibited or altered, this also leads to reduced groundwater recharge which has widespread effects and contributes to our increasing drought conditions. The stagnant water behind the infrastructure can lead to higher than normal water temperatures and the accumulation of pollutants, such as fertilizer run-off, that eventually smother the benthic habitat with algae.
Montana is synonymous with great trout fishing, and great trout fishing depends on healthy streams. We can re-vamp this old infrastructure to allow continuous flow, effectively removing these fish and flow blockades, and turning the river into a continuous system once again, instead of the segmented water bodies that exist today.