Flathead Lake flows past Polson, Montana, and into the Flathead River, one of the Columbia River's tributaries. The lake is key line of defense to ensure zebra and quagga mussels don't spread into the Columbia River Basin, which is the last U.S. river system free of the invasive mollusks. (Patrick Reilly)

By Patrick Reilly | For The Oregonian/OregonLive

POLSON, Mont. -- This small town marks the spot where Flathead Lake narrows into a river and resumes its long meander toward the Pacific. Its docks and ramps, now bare and icy, will soon hum with recreational boats. And that gives Erik Hanson cause for concern.

As the aquatic invasive species coordinator for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, Hanson stands at the forefront of an expensive, high-stakes effort to keep those boats from carrying invasive zebra and quagga mussels into the Columbia River's headwaters.

The Columbia Basin, whose eastern edge runs through Montana, is now the last U.S. river system free of these mussels. In Hanson's view, everyone in the 259,000-square-mile basin "should be extremely concerned about what Montana is doing" to stop them.

"Once they get into the Flathead Basin, there's nothing that can be done to prevent them from infesting the rest of the Columbia River Basin."

Zebra and quagga mussels, two distinct but closely related species, pose an unlikely threat to the Pacific Northwest. Both originated in Eurasia. Their microscopic larvae, called veligers, reached the United States by way of the Great Lakes in the late 1980s, probably as stowaways inside a freighter's ballast tanks.

The mollusks glue on to surfaces and consume the tiny particles that native species feed on. Capable of releasing up to a million eggs a year and with few natural predators in North America, they can inflict major damage on the waterways they reach.

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Zebra mussels have attached to this young Higgins eye pearlymussel, an endangered species found in the Mississippi River. (U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service)

HIGH COST OF INFESTATION

It's been 30 years since mussels were first detected in Michigan; today, some parts of Lake Erie are covered with 70,000 mussels per square meter. That kind of mass can cripple large industrial systems, said Professor Steve Bollens, an ecologist at Washington State University Vancouver.

"The threat to hydropower infrastructure is huge," he told The Oregonian/OregonLive. "All of the pipes and pumps of infrastructure would be subject to fouling by these encrusting mussels."

The Great Lakes region spends an estimated $500 million a year scrubbing them from docks, pipes and intakes. If the species reaches the Columbia, the cost to hydroelectric facilities alone could run from $250 million to $300 million a year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service warned in 2012.

Oregon's $144 million commercial fishing industry, and its many sport fishermen, could also pay a steep price.

Mussels feed on the plankton and algae at the base of aquatic food chains. "These mussels change that system," Bollens said, creating one "where the energy and materials stay more closely associated with the bottom."

In the late 1980s, mussels began this transformation in Lake Huron. In the 2000s, its multibillion-dollar salmon fishery crashed.

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Quagga mussels usually have dark concentric rings on the shell and are paler near the

hinge. (U.S. Geological Surv ey)

WATER ENTHUSIASTS ALSO LOSE

Recreational water-users, too, lose in an infestation. Mussels damage motorboats from within by clogging pipes and intakes. Swimmers can't go barefoot when the mussels' razor-sharp shells coat a shoreline.

These challenges have spread far beyond the Great Lakes. Veligers move downstream with the current but can also hitch rides in motorboats' tanks and paddles. Adults can glue onto their hulls. Boaters have inadvertently towed the mussels from one watershed to another.

Flathead Lake, which begins 30 miles southwest of Glacier National Park, may be the largest, most-visited node in the Columbia River network. Bollens doesn't share Hanson's belief that a mussel arrival here will automatically doom the entire basin, but he cautioned that "it is extremely difficult to stop the spread of these organisms downstream."

That reality has loomed large since November 2016, when scientists announced the discovery of a quagga mussel shell in Tiber Reservoir, just a few hours east of Flathead.

"It was extremely disheartening and really abrupt," Hanson remembered. "We weren't ready for it in a lot of ways."

But the prospect of an infestation spurred quick action. Early in 2017, new state regulations banned transporting surface water, and required inspections for all boats entering Montana and crossing the Continental Divide. The state went from running 19 of these stations in 2016 to about 35 last year.

"Our whole livelihood in the Flathead Valley is at stake if we get mussels," said state Rep. Mark Noland, R-Bigfork.

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Inspectors at the Ravalli station in Montana check watercraft for zebra and quagga mussles, which can inflict substantial and lasting damage on waterways. (Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks)

MONTANA TAKES ACTION

In 2017, Noland and his colleagues in the Montana Legislature added fees to fishing permits and hydropower production to fund boat inspection stations. These were expected to raise nearly $7 million per year, to support education, inspection and decontamination.

The Salish and Kootenai Tribes, whose reservation covers the southern half of Flathead Lake, ran one of the state's busiest inspection stations, on U.S. Highway 93, under an agreement with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

Its staff, Hanson said, had to have an eye for detail. "The reality is when we're looking for boats that have new mussels on them, they may be the size of a grain of rice, so it's very detailed. It takes a long time to ensure a boat is free of mussels."

Boats found with mussels, or at high risk of carrying them, got decontaminated with pressure washers.

For this year's boating season, legislators aimed to bolster these safeguards for western Montana. In 2017, House Bill 622 created the Upper Columbia Conservation Commission to coordinate the area's federal, state, local, tribal, and nonprofit agencies.

An existing state group, the Flathead Basin Commission, already does similar work for its namesake region. Working under a mandate from HB622, it has drafted regulations that would require inspections for all boats entering the basin. The program, which would be financed by requiring local boaters to purchase stickers, now awaits approval by the rule-making Fish and Wildlife Commission.

All of these steps have encouraged observers downstream. "We've seen that the state of Montana really upped their game in terms of prevention activities," said Stephen Phillips, aquatic invasive species senior program manager at the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission in Portland. "It was impressive."

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Zebra mussels are scooped from Lake Pepin, some 60 miles downstream of Saint Paul, Minnesota, where they form a deep carpet on the lake's bottom. (Minnesota Department of Natural Resources)

INSPECTIONS REQUIRED

But not all is well on the ground. Both Hanson and Jan Metzmaker, past chair of the Flathead Basin Commission, estimate that 20 percent of boats simply bypass the inspection stations, and want more enforcement and longer hours to close that gap.

Paying for it is proving difficult. In November, state lawmakers stripped most of the Flathead Basin panel's funding to balance Montana's budget. In a turn that bodes ill for its fee program, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks is now arguing that it can't legally require boaters to buy the stickers. And Lori Curtis, chair of the Upper Columbia Conservation Commission, remarked last month that this proposal "adds a layer of confusion" for the larger effort.

"It's certainly left us scrambling for funding," Hanson said. "We have found some outside resources and outside funding to fill those gaps, but it's not as much as we had hoped to get [from] that sticker fee."

For the moment, the Tribes are working with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks on a regulation requiring inspections before vessels are launched into the basin - essentially, a local version of rules already in place for the state.

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"WE DO HAVE A CHANCE"

They aim to have Highway 93's inspection/decontamination station running again in mid-March and open a decontamination site in Polson. But "with a lot of these stations, they only run 12 hours a day, so we don't know what's traffic's being missed.

As boating season draws closer, Hanson's mindful of what could happen if Montana doesn't adequately enforce its rules.

"If we don't do our job out here, it doesn't matter what they do down there," he said, referring to sites downriver. "Once they get in … it's going to completely change how people use waters."

But WSU's Bollens points out that "the beauty of our situation is that they're not yet - to our knowledge, anyway - they're not yet in the Columbia River Basin."

"We need to take a basin-wide approach to protecting the CRB," he continued, one that combines boat inspections, water monitoring, and research.

"If we take that kind of approach, I think we do have a chance" of keeping them out. "But it's a major challenge."

-- Patrick Reilly

For The Oregonian/OregonLive

