Yellowstone River plan delayed again

By SCOTT McMILLION Chronicle Staff Writer

The long-delayed special status for the Park County reach of the Yellowstone River has been delayed yet again.

Known as a Special Area Management Plan, the status was first proposed in 1998, after two years of record-breaking floods. It is meant to evaluate the cumulative impacts of the existing riprap, barbs, dikes and other human-caused changes along the river and find a better way of allowing such projects in the future.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is writing the plan, and in February 2007 gathered public comment on it, with a promise to have the plan completed by the end of the year.

However, staff changes and budget problems at the corps have delayed the project further, said Todd Tollinger, project leader.

“We just didn't have the resources to dedicate someone to it full time,” Tollinger said Friday.

A key document is being evaluated at the corps' office in Mississippi and should be returned at the end of next week, he said. That document must then be evaluated before an environmental assessment of the plan can be written.

During the 1996 and 1997 floods, riverside property owners installed vast amounts of riprap and bank armor, trying to save their land from the rising river. However, nobody was paying attention to the cumulative effects of all that work and nobody knew how it was affecting upstream and downstream neighbors or the river itself.

Other projects continue to crop up on the river and “everything is kind of piece-meal” when it comes to issuing permits for them, Tollinger said.

Once the plan is complete “we'll have a better way of looking at cumulative impacts,” he said, and that should make it easier to protect the resource and to protect property.

“The public will know right away whether” a permit can be issued for a proposed project, he said.

But the public has been waiting for that information for nearly a decade, said Scott Bosse, rivers coordinator for the Greater Yellowstone Coalition.

“It's time that the corps delivered a project,” Bosse said.

He noted that the Governor's Upper Yellowstone River Task Force completed millions of dollars worth of scientific studies before it disbanded in 2003.

“And what has it lead to? Nothing,” he said. “All the corps has offered is excuses, year after year. We want a promise from the corps that it is not going to manage the river the way it did prior to the '96-97 floods.”

Riverside development continues to grow in Park County, Bosse said. “The problem is only going to get worse and worse.”

Tollinger said he understands the frustration, but his office has been left shorthanded by retirements and temporary transfers.

It's possible that a draft of the plan could be released early this year.

Scott McMillion is at scottm@dailychronicle.com

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