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Dry Cottonwood Creek Ranch

Cattle and Clean Water at Dry Cottonwood Creek Ranch From 2005 to 2021, Clark Fork Coalition and partners ran Dry Cottonwood Creek Ranch (DCCR), a 2,300-acre working cattle ranch in Montana’s Deer Lodge Valley, to be a living classroom for the largest river repair job in the West, located in…
Clean Smurfit Now

The Smurfit-Stone pulp mill operated on the banks of the Clark Fork River near Frenchtown from 1957 to 2010, discharging enormous amounts of wastewater into the river. More than a decade after the mill closed, the 3,200-acre industrial site is still leaching harmful chemicals into the river and our aquifer.
In-stream Sediment Sampling 2022

In partnership with Fish, Wildlife & Parks, Natural Resources Damage Program, and the University of Montana – Western, we measured the amount of sediment in streams along several reaches of the Upper Clark Fork River. Students collected over 70 in-stream sediment samples to see if sediment levels affect trout…
Thermal Mapping of the Upper Clark

Professor Raja Nagisetty and environmental engineering graduate student Meggie Olsen at Montana Tech, along with several other collaborators, completed a series of drone flights on the upper Clark Fork River to study thermal refugia habitat. Professor Raja and his team documented an unremediated reach of the Upper Clark Fork…
Assessments of Geomorphology and Macroinvertebrate Diversity

The CFC has coordinated data collection efforts with Professor Rob Thomas at UM Western annually since 2019. Over that period, Rob’s students have focused on a variety of studies in the UCF OU from assessments of geomorphology and macroinvertebrate diversity on both remediated and unremedied phases, to a study examining…
Slickens Assessments in the Upper Clark Fork

The CFC coordinated with Fish, Wildlife & Parks to complete a hazard assessment of the remaining slickens in Reach A of the Upper Clark Fork Superfund Operable Unit. In the summer of 2019, over 170 individual slickens were assessed and mapped for hazards related to surface runoff and channel avulsion…
Milltown Dam Removal

For 100 years, Milltown Dam blocked the confluence of the Clark Fork and Blackfoot rivers near Missoula, trapping toxic sediments that washed down from mines in Butte and contaminating local drinking water wells. Now, the dam is out, the mining waste is gone, fish can swim back upstream, and two mighty…