What You Can Do

We all live in a watershed, and every choice we make has an impact on our water. When each of us plays our part to protect water quality one action at a time, we have the collective power to protect and preserve our beautiful, pristine waters for generations to come.

While Montana has some of the cleanest waterbodies in the country, we are facing distinct challenges to water quality. There are three main sources of pollutants that influence water quality.

Point sources are discharges from an identifiable outlet, such as municipal and public sewage discharge, stormwater outfalls, and industrial discharge.
Nonpoint sources are unidentifiable, dispersed sources, including excess erosion from roads, agriculture and forestry activities, and construction, as well as unregulated stormwater discharges, individual septic systems, and municipal sewer leakage.
Natural sources include sediment and nutrients from forest fires and naturally high concentrations of metals and chemicals from rock and soil that leach into surface and groundwater.

Point and nonpoint sources are the products of human influence on the landscape. The greatest percentage of stream and lake impairments in Montana come from nonpoint sources.