Fort Smith, Montana, is home to “maybe the best trout fishing in the world,” said Dr. Alan Shaw, a retired physician and fishing guide along the Bighorn River on the Crow Indian Reservation. The economic lifeblood of this unincorporated town in southeastern Montana is the Blue Ribbon trout fishery below the Yellowtail Dam.

“The reason for us to be there, for almost anybody to be there, is to fish,” Shaw said.

This small fishing community recently faced an existential crisis. Its wastewater treatment system was failing, causing sewage backups and leakage into groundwater and the river. The state and federal government put a moratorium on new hookups, stymying new development. “It became critically obvious that we would have to replace the entire wastewater treatment system, or it would get shut down,” Shaw said.

Sewer clogs regularly took the whole system offline, and tree roots infiltrated old clay pipes. On the north side of the highway, nine buried railroad tank cars served as septic tanks. They were starting to deteriorate.

On the south side, a sewage lagoon had gone dry and was growing up with trees and vegetation. “Where is the flow going if it’s not going into the lagoon”? Shaw asked. “It’s going into the ground.”

The Bighorn River registered higher levels of nitrogen and phosphorus as a result of Fort Smith sewage, Shaw said. “It was a significant health hazard, not just to the river, but to the community.” Sewage leaks into groundwater could endanger Fort Smith’s drinking water. 

As chair of the Fort Smith Water and Sewer District, Shaw and fellow board members spent years finding funding and planning a wastewater treatment system critical to their  community’s survival. They spent long hours seeking and preparing grant applications from multiple county, state and federal sources, receiving $2 million from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) and $1.1 million from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) through the Environmental Protection Agency.

Construction finally started on a new system in late 2023. It was fully operational in late 2024, ahead of schedule and under budget. The board is still seeking funding to lower its remaining loan amount of more $1.5 million, as each Fort Smith household will be paying about $600 annually to pay off this loan. 

Shaw said that some residents do not want more tourism or development in Fort Smith, but the public has largely supported the wastewater treatment upgrade. “I think the general consensus throughout the community is that this needed to be done,” he said. “We’ve had to present different issues to the community for votes on this, and there’s never been a close vote on whether we should proceed on this. It’s always been overwhelmingly positive.”

The new wastewater system cost about $9.1 million in total. “Nine million dollars is a lot of money for a low-income community,” Shaw said. The system has 239 users. Only about 160 people live there full-time, according to the 2020 Census. About a third of residents are Native American Indian.

Work on wastewater treatment often goes unnoticed and unthanked, as long as the toilets flush. “A lot of people will take it for granted,” Shaw said. “That’s OK. We know in our hearts what we did was the right thing.”

The town was built near the site of historic Fort C.F. Smith to house the workers who built the Yellowtail Dam. “It’s not a picturesque community,” Shaw said. The town is the jumping-off point, however, to extraordinary natural beauty. The steep walls of Bighorn Canyon rise 2,500 feet above the river, which is home to abundant fish and wildlife.

Fishing and recreation here generate an estimated $98 million in economic activity, with $93 million coming from out-of-state visitors, according to the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks and the Bighorn River Alliance.

The new sewer system will lift the prohibition on new sewer hookups, allowing the community to grow and change. A tribal member can now pursue a residential housing development that had previously been on hold. New businesses can begin to serve visitors and residents.

Tourists come to the Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area to learn from guides like Shaw. With essential infrastructure in place for Fort Smith’s future, Shaw looks forward to spending more of his time guiding novice anglers. “I just get great pleasure taking people fishing and helping them be successful,” he said.

“I’m 81 years old, and I’ve been retired for a while, and I enjoy recreating and where we live,” Shaw said. He and other board members have spent many long hours working toward the new sewer system because they want to keep Fort Smith healthy and help it thrive.

“I do this because it’s important for my community,” he said.

The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) was passed by Congress and signed into law on March 11, 2021. The $1.9 trillion stimulus package helped  fight the pandemic and support families and businesses struggling with its public health and economic impacts, maintain vital public services even amid revenue declines locally, and to build a strong, resilient, and equitable recovery by making investments that support long-term growth and opportunity. 

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), passed by the 117th Congress is a piece of federal legislation that aims to reduce inflation by lowering the cost of prescription medications, investing in domestic energy production, and promoting clean energy, among other objective