Flathead Lakers TMDL Home Page

Working for clean water, healthy ecosystems and lasting quality of life in the Flathead Watershed in Northwest Montana.

P.O. Box 70 | Polson, MT 59860 | 406-883-1346 | Email to Lakers

Updated 3 December 2001

Total Maximum Daily Loading
Flathead Lakers submit comments on the TMDL plan for Flathead Lake.
The TMDL plan for Flathead Lake now is available. Copies can be downloaded from the Department of Environmental Quality's web site. The Fall, 2001, of the Flathead Laker's newsletter, the Flathead Lake Monitor, contains a review of the plan. Although the public comment period officially ended on 30 November, you still can submit comments on an unofficial basis.
Total Maximum Daily Loading (TMDL) is a program for addressing clean water issues on a watershed basis. The following excerpts from EPA Assistant Administrator Robert Perciasepe's memorandum to the regional administrators of the EPA's water division summarize the situation nicely. The TMDL program for Flathead Lake is underway, and an important report on TDMLs for Flathead Lake is available on this site.
"If we are to achieve clean water everywhere, though, we must continue to build capacity to identify remaining problem areas and fix each problem on a watershed-by-watershed basis. The TMDL program is crucial to success because it brings rigor, accountability, and statutory authority to the process..."
"The TMDL process, in essence, is the following: States identify specific waters where problems exist or are expected; States set priorities; States allocate pollutant loadings among point and nonpoint sources; and EPA approves State actions or acts in lieu of the State if necessary. Point and nonpoint sources then reduce pollutants to achieve the pollutant loadings established by the TMDL through a wide variety of Federal, State, Tribal, and local authorities, programs, and initiatives..."
"States have primary responsibility for developing lists and TMDLs under section 303(d). Section 303(d)(1)(A) and the implementing regulations (at 40 CFR 130.7(b)) provide States with latitude to determine their own priorities for developing and implementing TMDLs. In particular, the flexibility to States offered by the priority ranking process of section 303(d)(1)(A) is a good opportunity for incorporating rotating basin or other watershed approaches into the TMDL process."
TMDL Strategy for
Flathead Lake.
The extensive 1997 report prepared by the Flathead Basin Commission's technical committee. It was not distributed widely at first, and there is an interesting story in how it landed on the internet.
The FBC's Official Recommendations. Not all of the technical committee's recommendations were adopted by the FBC. Compare these targets with the targets recommended by the technical committee.
TMDL Links. Selected by the Lakers and presented on the Lakers' Links page.