HIGHLIGHTS FOR 1981-90 

 Monitoring information collected in Canada and the United States has been 

 officially exchanged on a quarterly basis during the past 10 years. 

 Sampling schedules, frequency of collection, and parameters were modified 

 throughout this period as recommended by the Bilateral Monitoring 

 Committee. These modifications were documented in Technical Monitoring 

 Schedules that were updated annually. 



Divisions of transboundary waters on the East Poplar River have been 

 carried out by Saskatchewan and Montana according to apportionment 

 recommendations made in 1976 by the Poplar River Task Force of the 

 International Souris-Red River Engineering Board. Only unintentional 

 minor deviations from the prescribed formula have occurred. The water 

 divisions were done voluntarily without a formal apportionment agreement 

 between the two countries. 



Regional drought prevailed during much of the 1980' s with conditions 

 worsening in the last half of the decade. Using the Poplar River at the 

 International Boundary as an indicator of basin runoff conditions, the 

 years of 1987, 1988, and 1989 had respective flow volumes of 27, 7, and 

 28 percent of long-term averages. The 1990 runoff was 35 percent of 

 long-term average. Recent volumes of Cookson Reservoir remain much less 

 than full supply volume and rely to a large extent on contributions of 

 ground-water pumpage from the abandond Coronach mine. 



The concentrations of total dissolved solids and boron on the East Poplar 

 River at the International Boundary have remained below short-term and 

 long-term objectives as recommended by the International Joint 

 Commission (IJC) . Calculations of trends from the 10-year data base 



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