Study outlining resource protection features Haskill Basin

Whitefish’s watershed and recreation management practices in Haskill Basin are helping similar communities protect and preserve their own resources.

Headwaters Economics, a research firm based in Bozeman, recently used Haskill Basin as a case study in a report meant to help inform Sandpoint, Idaho, in how to go about protecting their watershed areas while still promoting and creating recreational opportunities.

Along with Whitefish, the report examines Bozeman, Tacoma, Washington and Salt Lake City.

“We wanted to look at municipalities that own or have some sort of ownership interest in land where their drinking water comes from in their watershed and places that allow recreation,” Kelly Pohl, a geographer at Headwaters, said. “We were interested in learning about best practices and management strategies for balancing the needs of municipal drinking water and the growing public interest in outdoor recreation.”

The Haskill Basin conservation easement, which protects about 3,000 acres of forestland north of Whitefish, came together after five years of planning by the Trust for Public Land, the city of Whitefish, Stoltze and FWP. The easement was funded by a $4 million donation from Stoltze, $9 million in federal grants and $7.7 million from Whitefish’s resort tax. Final documents for the easement were signed in February 2016.

The Reservoir Road trailhead of the Whitefish Trail officially opened in May and adds 5.5 miles of trail through the basin and up to the Big Mountain Trailhead.

Whitefish Mayor John Muhlfeld has called the project “the most rewarding project” he’s worked on in his tenure with the city and said having easement be a blueprint for other communities is humbling.

“It’s just very rewarding for me personally and I think everyone who worked on the project to see the trail system being as heavily utilized as it is on a daily basis,” he said. “I’ve just heard nothing but great feedback from the community and visitors alike, so it’s very rewarding.”

The report concludes with five best practices that help drive success, which include: building an early, robust public process; designing a management plan proactively rather than reactively; partnering with land management agencies and others; integrating public eduction into the management plan; and gathering and monitoring baseline data.

Compared to the other communities featured in the study, Whitefish’s approximately 7,000 water customers pale in comparison to Tacoma and Salt Lake City’s more than 320,000 customers.

However, Pohl said Whitefish is unique in the partnerships that came about to protect the watershed, as well as the community-backed resort tax increase that helps to fund the easement.

“One of the things that was really interesting was the very deep partnerships among nonprofit organizations, the city agencies and private land owners. Those partnerships had been in place for a long time and those really robust relationships helped create a great project and deep community investment in the project,” Pohl said. “Even though it’s small, the community made a really visionary step in creating the tax measure to tax themselves and visitors to protect the watershed. It’s a really forward thinking strategy and it’s not one that we saw in the bigger communities.”

Muhlfeld said the community support was one of the biggest factors in the project.

“I think we nailed the public process as shown by the 84 percent approval rating when we went out for a special election to increase the resort tax to 3 percent,” he said. “I think we had a very engaged process with plenty of opportunity for folks to weigh in and comment on the project ... and we also had strong partnerships with Glacier Nordic, Winter Sports Inc., and of course the state, federal and nonprofit organizations that helped push this project across the finish line.”

Pohl said Sandpoint also has a lot of similarities to Whitefish.

“They own part of the watershed, part of the watershed is private land and they’re also considering opportunities and challenges around allowing recreation. And the community of Sandpoint has a lot in common with the community of Whitefish. So we hope the study and Whitefish’s experience will help inform Sandpoint’s decision making process as they move forward,” she said.

The full report is available at https://headwaterseconomics.org.