Last week a holding pond for Big Sky sewage system broke, which sent close to 35 million gallons of treated water into the river. There has been many different agencies looking into this and testing the water to see what has taken effect. This has been all over social media, and it has been hard to distinguish between what the various agencies are saying and what the local communities believe.
I have spoken to many members of the fishing community, and what I have heard has all been positive. I know many of them have continued to fish the Gallatin River with good success, and I haven’t heard any stories of huge fish kills on the river.
The most disturbing from what I saw in pictures was when the pipe broke and millions of gallons spilled down the mountain, the turbidity of the water collected plenty of sediment. Many of the pictures of the spill showed the dirty water coming into the Gallatin River. Given the nature of where the water originated, led many people to believe that the water was not treated and that it was raw sewage that was coming into the river. This was not the case but it was hard to make first judgements looking at the pictures.
So only time will tell what the long term effects may be, but from what I have surmised I believe the Gallatin will be in fine shape for the now and the future. I will keep you posted if there are any other major changes in the findings.
