The following is a guest blog from Mike DeGrandpre, a long-time Coalition supporter and a professor at The University of Montana
The Rio Bio-Bio from our apartment building in San Pedro de al Paz. Concepcion is across the river on the right.
We’re three months into our nine-month stay in Concepcion, a city, like Missoula, with a river running through it. The Rio Bio-Bio in no way resembles our Clark Fork, however. It is more than a half-mile wide here, just before the desembocadura, the place where the river meets the sea. Although shorter, at 240 miles compared to the Clark Fork’s 310 miles, and about a third of the drainage area, mean flows peak at a whopping 70,000 cfs. These winter spates, or floods, are driven by rain—surprisingly not by spring runoff from the snowy Andes that sit just 100 miles away.
In my almost daily commute across the river, my perception is that the Bio-Bio is valued for utilitarian, not recreational, purposes. I have not seen a single boat of any kind and only one fisherman walking along the bank. The river here is dotted with paper mills and other industrial development. But just a short drive upstream reveals that a wild beauty still exists, the impression made stronger by the breadth of the river and the Cretaceous-looking foliage along its banks.
Further upstream two large hydroelectric dams have recently been built, a trend opposite of the Clark Fork. The construction of these dams, which flooded lands of the indigenous Mapuches and buried popular white water areas, is a testament to the corporate strength and weak environmental laws here in Chile. Other environmental worries resonate with those of the Clark Fork: pollution from paper mills, municipal wastes, and urbanization. But the Bio-Bio has been spared a similar mining legacy – most mines are in northern Chile.
Our daughters, Ella and Mabel, are uncertain what to make of their new home, but there is a river here, and that is a good thing.
Mike DeGrandpre is in Concepcion, Chile on sabbatical leave from the University of Montana.
The Coalition connected with watershed groups across the nation last week during a three-day training called Warming Watersheds: Water, Energy and Climate. The training, offered by 
In November, a state court judge signed off on an agreement between Montana ranchers and the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation (DNRC) over something called “permit-exempt wells.”
This image (left) shows hundreds of exempt wells placed side by side in a subdivision, illustrating how this loophole could dramatically deplete water resources. And in Montana, seniority rules when it comes to water rights. If a person has a senior (older) water right, he or she is entitled to that right over any other junior user.
The results are in for Election 2010: next up, the four-month Legislative Session in Helena, where the action really unfolds.
Last Monday was a big day at the Coalition-owned Dry Cottonwood Creek Ranch in the upper Clark Fork valley. Over 50 students from 9th, 11th, and 12th grades at Powell County High School visited the ranch for the first half of the Coalition’s “Hands on the Ranch” program, and spent a gorgeous fall day gathering field data from different areas of the property.
At the Clark Fork Coalition, a day at the office can often feel like a whirlwind swim through Class IV rapids. Between phones and email, meetings and letter-writing, project tours and presentations, it’s a lively and fast-moving environment for a team that works hard to build a better watershed. Last Saturday, October 2, though, the pace changed to celebration mode, all day long, at our 25th Anniversary Party—aka, the Best River Fest .