The Middle Fork of the Flathead River along Glacier National Park is one of American Rivers' top 10 endangered rivers for 2017/NPS, David Restivo

Two glorious rivers in the National Park System – the Buffalo, America’s very first national river, and the Middle Fork of the Flathead, which races along Glacier National Park’s southern border – have the inglorious distinction of being among American Rivers' Most Endangered Rivers® for 2017.

The threats – a pig factory poised atop porous karst topography six miles upstream of the Buffalo on one of its tributaries, and oil trains hauling highly combustible Bakken crude past Glacier – are not new. But they are ongoing, with critics assailing a shortsighted state government on one hand and a railroad for not being proactive on the other for the threats.

Overall, American Rivers' list released Tuesday contains 10 rivers: 

• #1: Lower Colorado River (Arizona, California, Nevada) Threat: Water demand and climate change
• #2: Bear River (California) Threat: New Dam
• #3: South Fork Skykomish (Washington) Threat: New hydropower project
• #4: Mobile Bay Rivers (Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi) Threat: Poor water management
• #5: Rappahannock River (Virginia) Threat: Fracking 
• #6: Green-Toutle River (Washington) Threat: New mine
• #7: Neuse and Cape Fear Rivers (North Carolina) Threat: Pollution from hog and chicken farms
• #8: Middle Fork Flathead River (Montana) Threat: Oil transport by rail
• #9: Buffalo National River (Arkansas) Threat: Pollution from massive hog farm
• #10: Menominee River (Michigan, Wisconsin) Threat: Open pit sulfide mining

“This is a critical year for rivers and clean water,” said Bob Irvin, president of American Rivers. “Water is one of the most crucial conservation issues of our time. The rivers Americans depend on for drinking water, jobs, food, and quality of life are under attack from the Trump administration’s rollbacks and proposed budget cuts.

“Americans must speak up and let their elected officials know that healthy rivers are essential to our families, our communities and our future. We must take care of the rivers that take care of us.”

A commercial high output hog farm upstream of the Buffalo National River poses a threat of pollution through nutrient loading/NPS

In the case of the Buffalo and the Middle Fork of the Flathead, tourism and ecosystem health are at risk. 

For the Buffalo, the threat lies in the C&G Hog Farms, Inc. Concentrated Animal Feed Operation located along Big Creek upstream of the national river. The company is operating on an expired National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit while its application for a nondischarge permit is considered by the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality, according to Emily Jones, the senior program manager for National Parks Conservation Association's Southeast Region.

The hog farm's operations, which can handle around 6,500 pigs at any one time, generate an "estimated nitrogen output ... equivalent to a human population of 7,000, and the phosphorus output is equivalent to 23,000 humans, in a watershed with a total human population of approximately 17,000," a consultant noted in November 2016.

The karst geology underlying the farm is composed of easily dissolved rocks, such as limestone and dolomite. Via sinkholes and underground caves in the geology, groundwater can flow miles very quickly.

“If the court of public opinion was going to win, I think that the state of Arkansas would have no choice other than to deny this permit," Ms. Jones said late last week.

So far NPCA supporters have sent 18,000 comments - 4,000 or so since the Traveler wrote about the permitting issue last week, Ms. Jones said – to Arkansas officials asking them to reject the hog farm's application. The NPCA staffer expressed concern that there's a growing feeling that "industry belongs everywhere and anywhere that it wants to be. And it’s somewhat shortsighted not to think about a balance."

C&H originally had an agreement to produce pork for Cargill, a global agricultural company that deals in everything from palm oil and glucose syrup to pigs and poultry. Noting that Cargill uses the term "protein products" on its website, Ms. Jones said, "A protein product factory doesn’t need to be upstream of the Buffalo National River, when the byproduct of that protein product factory creates excessive nutrients that harm the water quality and create algae blooms and have the potential to disrupt the entire ecosystem of the river.”

In Montana, the threat to the Middle Fork of the Flathead comes daily in the freight trains hauling highly explosive Bakken oil. The production from the Bakken field in western North Dakota has eased some since 2015 when an estimated 30-35 million gallons of Bakken crude each week passed along the park's southern border as 10-12 BNSF Railway trains - with each tanker car holding about 30,000 gallons of crude - rolled from North Dakota to West Coast refineries and terminals, but it hasn't halted.

During the winter months, each mile-long train is exposed to a snowy Russian Roulette as they pass 11 avalanche chutes that could break loose without warning from mountains called Running Rabbit, Snowslip, and Shields on Glacier's flanks. Any day of the year, equipment failure, poor track conditions, or over-worked crews could lead to a derailment that could dump tens or hundreds of thousands of gallons of crude into the Middle Fork, a wild and scenic river, while an enormous fireball could ignite the park's forests.

“We take an oil spill possibility very serious. It would be very serious," said Glacier spokeswoman Lauren Alley. "We are working pretty closely with the (BNSF) Railway to learn more about their prevention efforts and their spill response. From our side, we are actually hosting an oil spill response training in a couple of weeks.” 

During that training session staff from the National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Environmental Protection Agency, and U.S. Bureau of Reclamation will sit down to coordinate response efforts, she said.

“It will definitely be sort of like an incident command sort of training, looking at roles, looking at scenarios, who would be doing what, how would we fit into a unified command system, particularly with the geography we have here and the different agencies," said Ms. Alley.

At NPCA, officials worry that Railway managers spend more time talking about response actions than preventive measures they could take to avert an accident that would send tanker cars and their oil down into the river.

“The railroads have persisted on focusing on response, rather than on prevention, so that continues to be the rub for us," said Michael Jamison, NPCA's Crown of the Continent program manager based in Kalispell, Montana. "We would like them to talk to us about avalanche sheds, new tanker car technologies, and speed limits and staffing, and braking, automated braking and automated control systems. There are all kinds of things we would like to talk about that we think are on the front end of the prevention question. They don’t want to have that conversation. They seem to be stuck on really talking about how great their record is and what they will do after the oil is in the water in response."

What Mr. Jamison would like to see BNSF Railway do is conduct spill response training in the actual weather conditions they're likely to encounter.

“The railroad will come in and they’ll pick a nice late June, early July day and they’ll have all the crews on hand and everyone will be equipped and everyone will be briefed and it will be early in the morning before the river has any traffic and it’ll be a nice sunny day and they’ll gather us all up and they’ll show us how well they can deploy their booms and how quickly they can respond and everything," he said.

"I’m just sitting there thinking, the day the avalanche comes, by definition it’s in the middle of a storm, because that’s when the avalanches go, on big storm cycles. It’s not a nice late June, early July morning where everyone’s prepped. Everyone’s home in bed and it's 3 o’clock in the morning and there’s a blizzard blowing outside and its 20 below and the snow is coming sideways as it has been for three days, and it’s dark and you can’t get to the river because there’s 10 feet of snow and even if you can get to the river there’s an ice shelf on top of the river that you can’t get out on top of, and half your team is in Missoula and the other half is in Kalispell."

Or, Mr. Jamison continued, a spill might occur in the middle of August at midday, when there are several thousand people rafting on the river and the forests are tinder-dry from drought. How would response crews handle such a scenario, he wondered?

Responding to an oil spill into the Middle Fork of the Flathead River in winter would pose some challenges for crews, according to NPCA/Rebecca Latson file photo

Back at American Rivers, Mr. Irvin also raised concern over the Trump administration's approach to the Clean Water Act, having rescinded an Obama administration rule pertaining to coal mining wastes deposited in streams, and its lack of support for the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which can be tapped for conservation projects.

Topping the group's most endangered list is the Lower Colorado River

America’s Most Endangered River, the lower Colorado, provides drinking water for 30 million Americans, irrigates fields that grow 90 percent of the nation’s winter vegetables and slakes the thirst of growing cities including Los Angeles, San Diego, Las Vegas and Phoenix. But the water demands of Arizona, Nevada and California are outstripping supply, the impacts of climate change are becoming acute, and the river is at a breaking point. The water level of Lake Mead reservoir behind Hoover Dam is dropping by an average of 12 feet per year. This spring’s snowmelt will ease the drop this year, but the long-term trend is not altered by one wet winter. If the long-term deficit is not addressed, the Bureau of Reclamation will be forced to cut water deliveries, with severe economic impacts to farms and cities across Arizona, Nevada and California.