Yellowstone floodwaters threaten water supplies in Montana

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — Damaging floodwaters that tore through Yellowstone National Park menaced communities downstream where residents cleaned up from the mess and kept an eye on rising river levels while others braced for the economic fallout while the park remains closed.

After wiping out miles of roads and untold number of bridges in the park and swamping hundreds of homes in surrounding communities, the roiling waters threatened to cut off fresh drinking water supplies to Montana's largest city.

Officials asked Billings residents Wednesday to conserve water because it was down to a 24- to 36-hour supply after a combination of heavy rain and rapidly melting mountain snow raised the Yellowstone River to historic levels that forced them to shut down its water treatment plant.

“None of us planned a 500-year flood event on the Yellowstone when we designed these facilities,” said Debi Meling, the city’s public works director.

While expressing optimism the river would drop quickly enough for the plant to resume operations before tanks were drained, the city of 110,000 stopped watering parks and boulevards, and its fire department filled its trucks with river water.

Cory Mottice, with the National Weather Service in Billings, said the river was expected to crest Wednesday evening and drop below minor flood stage, 13.5 feet (4.1 meters), by mid to late Thursday.

The unprecedented and sudden flooding earlier this week drove all but a dozen of the more than 10,000 visitors out of the nation's oldest park.

Remarkably no one was reported hurt or killed by raging waters that pulled homes off their foundations and pushed a river off course — possibly permanently — and may require damaged roads to be rebuilt a safer distance away.

On Wednesday, residents in Red Lodge, Montana, a...