Streamflow Restoration: Before and After

Working with Water: Tools for Landowners

The Clark Fork Coalition partners with private landowners, irrigation districts, and water user groups to support clean water, healthy fisheries, and working lands.  We believe that clean, healthy streams can thrive alongside irrigated agriculture in our valleys.  There are many incentives and options available to landowners for managing water, which can improve streamflows and a landowner's bottom line:

Irrigation Efficiency Improvements such as ditch lining, piping, or switching from flood to center-pivot irrigation can reduce the amount of water needed to meet irrigation demands.

Water Leasing is the temporary transfer of a water right to protect instream flows and is recognized as a beneficial use of a water right in Montana.  Learn more about different types of water leases and water rights in Montana.

Point of Diversion and Source Changes can save water in some cases, such as re-locating a headgate closer to irrigated acres or adding groundwater as a supplemental water source.

Water Purchases allow for the permanent management of a water right for instream use.

View photos and video chronicling streamflow restoration at Racetrack Creek in the Upper Clark Fork