Livingston's Yellowstone River

 Updated July 2007 | .pdf version

Dubbed “America’s last best river” by National Geographic Magazine, the Upper Yellowstone River, winding through Park County’s Paradise Valley and the City of Livingston, is a beloved and iconic part of the southwest Montana landscape.  Prized for its world-class wild trout fishery, clear waters that support the area’s agricultural heritage and jaw-dropping landscapes, the Upper Yellowstone River is a popular gathering place for anglers, rafters, kayakers and family recreation.   

Yet this exceptional river has long been threatened by historical degradation, such as mining and agricultural runoff.  Even more daunting, the Upper Yellowstone faces the onslaught of unchecked, rampant building and development on its banks.  In Park County, floodplain development has increased by 57 percent in the last twenty years, with more than 600 buildings now situated in the river’s 100-year floodplain.  Over the past decade, growth along the Upper Yellowstone has occurred two to three times faster than in surrounding areas. The altering of its banks has had such egregious affects that in 2006, the Greater Yellowstone Coalition (GYC) a conservation organization that works to protect the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and the lands that surround it, listed the Upper Yellowstone River with the dubious distinction of one of America’s “Ten Most Endangered Rivers”. 

This disturbing trend also prompted Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer to declare, “Development along rivers and streams that destroys protective riparian areas is possibly the single most urgent ecosystem threat facing Montana today.”  The problem with riverside development, in addition to the threat of floods to people and property, is that it degrades water quality, destroys valuable fish and wildlife habitat, and leads to the installation of “riprap” and other types of bank stabilization projects. 

Riprap involves heavy equipment brought in to shave off vegetation and smooth riverbanks.  After this is complete, a swath of rocks and boulders is poured onto the slope, a process that is also called “armoring.” In the year following the ’96 and ‘97 floods, dozens of such projects were completed in Park County.  Riprap is designed to lock a river in place, in spite of the fact that rivers are very obviously dynamic, flowing features of the landscape.  To artificially channel and straighten a river is to disconnect it from its floodplain.  Thus, what results from so-called “river stabilization” projects is increased frequency and severity of damaging floods and erosion.

Only in the past decade, as a result of intense riverbank development, it has become clear that such control destroys the river as a functioning system.  This paradox is clearly viewed in and around Livingston.  People move to Livingston and Park County to be close to a wild river and the wonderful amenities it provides.  Homes are built to be close to the prized river.  Yet, in order for people and their property to survive spring floods, the wild river must be controlled.   This was sadly brought to bear in 1996 and 1997, after the two great floods. 

In the aftermath of costly damage, a state task force was convened to examine the impacts of living and building so close to a powerful river.  Yet despite clear evidence that development needed restraints to protect both people and the waterway, not much as actually occurred to tackle the issue, putting the longest, undammed river in the lower 48 at serious risk to become nothing more than a straight, house-lined channel.

The 2005 and 2007 Montana Legislatures both sought remedies to the rampant development affecting the Upper Yellowstone and other important state rivers, through bills to control where developers can and cannot build along a riverbank.  The primary purpose of the legislation was to encourage Montana’s 56 counties to deal with the growing problem of unwise riverside development by requiring new homes and commercial buildings to be set back a safe distance from flood-prone rivers and streams. 

These streamside setback bills would have established a setback of 250 feet along 47 of Montana’s largest rivers, including the Upper Yellowstone.  If the bill had passed, it would have been one of the most progressive stream protection bills in the nation.  Unfortunately, neither bill did pass.  Sadly, shortsighted opponents of the bill to require a 250-foot setback for new construction claimed their opposition was based on protection of property rights, when in fact, developers opposing the protection are destroying the very resource that draws so many people to Livingston, Park County, and many other places in Montana. 

Yet some county commissions have shown foresight in protecting their rivers.  Gallatin County recently established a setback ordinance for new subdivisions, requiring them to be built 150 feet from a river’s highwater line (the level that the river reaches when charged with rain and snowmelt during an ordinary spring). Park County does have a setback law as well, also 150 feet from the high water mark, for new subdivisions.  However, most of the land is already grandfathered in. (When the state of Montana changed its law regarding the review of subdivisions in 1993, there was a huge rush to subdivide properties in the valley before the new rules could take effect.)  And the setback law does not affect individual landowners.  More than eleven miles of riprap were laid on a quarter of the banks of the Upper Yellowstone after the two floods.

Confined by such stabilization projects, a river can only scour down its own channel, deepening it, or disperse its concentrated energy onto a point downstream.  Thus, downstream landowners can find themselves in serious peril, if they live below a riprap project.  The cumulative effect of so much armor is not well understood. But it is known that as the channel deepens, the river does not spill out across its floodplain, so wetlands, those nurseries for fish and wildlife, began to disappear. Side channels that provide the main habitat for fish go dry. The floodplain loses what hydrologists call “connectivity” to the river itself, and it becomes smaller and drier, which can affect aquifers and water supplies in the river for everything from drinking water to fisheries to irrigation and boating.

Some residents and conservation groups have suggested that conservation easements could be acquired to preserve agricultural lands and limit riverbank development.  However, this prospect seems unlikely, given the spiked value of such lands, and the low tax base of Park County. 

The clear, lasting remedy to protect the Upper Yellowstone River is the establishment of riverbank development setbacks.  Restricting how close people can build to the Upper Yellowstone is the river’s best bet in being protected for the future, and future generations.  The City Commission of Livingston and the Park County Commission must work together and take action to make sure that the mighty Upper Yellowstone is adequately protected.  If not, both Livingston and the county will lose the primary attraction that draws so many people to the area in the first place.