This agreement provides funding to montana to carry out its program to maintain, protect, and improve the water quality of its rivers, lakes, streams, groundwater, and other waterbodies

EPA Region 8 awarded $353,925 to the Montana Department of Environmental Quality on March 20, 2026, under the Water Pollution Control State, Interstate, and Tribal Program Support program (CFDA 66.419) to maintain, protect, and improve water quality across Montana's rivers, lakes, streams, groundwater, and other waterbodies, including participation in the National Wetland Condition Assessment.

The award funds expansion of water quality standards development and refinement statewide, including narrative and numeric standards. Montana DEQ will broaden its monitoring and assessment initiatives across the state. Field sampling activities include site reconnaissance, crew training, sampling preparation, field methods implementation, and associated travel costs under the Field Operations Manual. Laboratory analysis activities encompass laboratory methodologies and procedures for indicators of interest, documentation of laboratory capacity, quality assurance and quality control plan adherence, laboratory audits, independent confirmations, outside consultations such as round-robin analyses, and electronic data submission.

The program aims to prevent degradation of unimpaired waterbodies and reduce the number of impaired waterbodies in the state. The period of performance runs from the award date through December 31, 2027. Work is performed in Montana.

IT also includes participation in the the nation wetland condition assessment as part of the greater national aquatic research surveys. The environmental benefits of this program include preventing degradation of unimpaired waterbodies and reducing the number of impaired waterbodies in the state.activities:the activities under this grant include the following: - MT DEQ will use this funding to expand water quality standards development and refinement across the state. WQ standards include narrative and numeric. - MT DEQ will use this funding to broaden our program initiative to support more monitoring and assessment projects statewide. - field sampling: this activity pertains to all processes, procedures and travel costs to be incurred when implementing the field operations manual, such as, site reconnaissance, crew training, sampling preparation activities, field methods, and shipping instructions. - lab analysis: this activity pertains to laboratory methodologies and procedures for the indicators of interest as contained in the laboratory methods manual and includes documenting lab capacity, adherence to the QA/QC plan, laboratory audits, independent confirmations, outside consultations (e.g., round-robins) and electronic submission of data.subrecipient:- this activity pertains to all processes, procedures and travel costs to be incurred when implementing the field operations manual, such as, site reconnaissance, crew training, sampling preparation activities, field methods, and shipping instructions. - this activity pertains to laboratory methodologies and procedures for the indicators of interest as contained in the laboratory methods manual and includes documenting lab capacity, adherence to the QA/QC plan, laboratory audits, independent confirmations, outside consultations (e.g., round-robins) and electronic submission of data.outcomes:the anticipated deliverables under this grant include the following: - a technical report for each project will be available when all data has been compiled and analyzed. These are multi-year projects. - report of the data collected for these projects will be available in the water quality integrated report conforming the data is compiled and analyzed. - montana DEQ's contractor will conduct the plant vouchers as part of the national wetland condition assessment.