Insight into surface water

A recent letter to the editor (Pilot, March 11) had some concerns about drinking surface water. Being a former Montana State Certified Water Treatment Plant Operator, I wanted to provide some information that might be useful.

Permanently protecting Haskill Basin is extremely important and there are many reasons why we should continue to use it as our primary source of drinking water. It is true that many municipalities have been discouraged from using surface water, however, there are many good reasons for continuing our use of Haskill Basin.

Surface water is generally much softer and has fewer dissolved minerals than groundwater. Consumers prefer surface water because it avoids the additional cost of water softening systems.

Giardia and other waterborne organisms can be an issue with surface water.

While a graduate student at the University of Montana, I had a great deal of experience with Giardia. My master’s thesis examined the possibility of a Giardia contamination in the Rattlesnake Wilderness and National Recreation Area — the source of Missoula’s water.

Due to the increasing amount of recreation along Rattlesnake Creek, the Lolo National Forest was interested in determining if Giardia was or could be a problem.

I spent three years scooping beaver poop in Rattlesnake Creek ponds to determine if the resident beaver were infected. They were not. I did warn Mountain Water Company their system was at risk and could be contaminated by an infected dog, person, beaver or other mammal capable of cross transmitting Giardia.

One month after I turned in my thesis, the City of Missoula did experience a Giardia outbreak. The entire system was shut down and never reopened because Mountain Water did not want to invest in a filtration system.

An infected beaver had migrated into the creek and taken up residence in the water intake pond. Missoula had to drill more wells at considerable expense and customers of Mountain Water have the highest water rates in the state.

Groundwater also has issues. It can be polluted by herbicides, pesticides, fertilizer, septic leachate or oil spills which are extremely difficult and expensive to remove.

The city of Whitefish has invested nearly $6 million in a state-of-the-art filtration plant that does remove Giardia cysts. The combination of filtration and chlorination are very effective at removing contaminants. Abandoning this expensive infrastructure investment would be ill advised.

Our gravity-fed system greatly reduces the cost of delivering water. Pumping systems are expensive to run and maintain. In addition, Haskill Creek is a very clean source, due mainly to the excellent stewardship Stoltze Land and Lumber has provided over the years.

Let’s protect our source of clean, soft water, protect our infrastructure investment and provide management tools to safeguard this precious resource for future generations. Please support the ballot issue.

— Jan Metzmaker, Whitefish