A trio of bills Montana lawmakers passed earlier this year to loosen water quality standards is the focus of a legal action taken recently by Upper Missouri Waterkeeper, an environmental group based in Bozeman, MT.
In a 60-day notice of intent to sue, Upper Missouri Waterkeeper alleges that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has violated the Clean Water Act by failing to act on a petition to review three bills legislators passed this spring.
“It’s been over sixty days since we petitioned the EPA to disapprove Montana’s unlawful weakening of laws to protect clean water. During this time, our rivers and streams continue to suffer from unchecked pollution and government action,” Upper Missouri Waterkeeper Executive Director Guy Alsentzer wrote in a press release.
In its June petition to the EPA, Upper Missouri Waterkeeper argued that there is “no rational basis on which EPA can approve” the three bills in question. The group included in its petition the text of three bills, all signed by the governor in May, that it described as failing to protect Montana’s rivers with defensible, science-based standards.
House Bill (HB) 664, sponsored by Rep. Bill Mercer (R-Billings), would give wastewater treatment plants and industrial facilities that discharge nitrogen- and phosphorus-laden wastewater into Montana rivers more latitude to comply with water quality regulations by striking regulations that reference numeric limits for these nutrients. Nitrogen and phosphorus can contribute to algal blooms that throw aquatic ecosystems out of balance by depriving fish and the bugs they feed on of the dissolved oxygen they need to thrive.
HB 685, sponsored by Rep. Steve Fitzpatrick (R-Great Falls), revises laws dealing with Montana’s nondegradation policy, which was established to “protect all high-quality state ground and surface waters,” according to a handout produced by the Montana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), which regulates water quality in Montana. HB 685 seeks to replace references to “nondegradation” with “feasibility allowance.”
Fitzpatrick also passed HB 736, establishing a nutrient credit trading framework. It allows a wastewater discharger struggling to meet water quality standards to work on pollution mitigation measures elsewhere within their basin. Proponents of HB 736 described it as an innovative, cost-effective attempt to improve water quality standards. Opponents argued that the measure won’t ensure the efficacy of nutrient-reduction efforts.
Upper Missouri Waterkeeper’s petition also outlines how DEQ has approached water quality standards in recent years. The environmental group outlines “serious concerns” about the state’s “failure to faithfully apply numeric nutrient standards,” focusing on the Big Hole River in particular.
In early April, Upper Missouri Waterkeeper petitioned the DEQ to designate the Big Hole River, one of the state’s most popular trout fisheries, as impaired by nitrogen and phosphorus. A couple of weeks later, DEQ denied the petition, arguing that it “cannot grant” the petition due to Senate Bill (SB) 358, a bill lawmakers passed in 2021 that sought to replace numeric nutrient standards with narrative standards. SB 358 from 2021 is similar to HB 664 from the recent legislative session.
The year after the 2021 legislature adjourned, the EPA—acting at the behest of Upper Missouri Waterkeeper—rejected SB 358. In an April 24 letter to Montana Free Press, EPA spokesperson Marisa Lubeck wrote that numeric nutrient criteria that the EPA approved in 2015 “remain in effect for Clean Water Act purposes.”
In a July 31 meeting of the Legislature’s Water Policy Interim Committee, DEQ Water Quality Division Administrator Lindsey Krywaruchka, fielded questions from lawmakers about the status of HB 664 and DEQ’s support of the bill. Krywaruchka said she didn’t know when the EPA would finish reviewing the bill.
“If I was betting, I would say before the end of the year,” she said. Krywaruchka added that the agency has not been re-evaluating expired wastewater permits to assess their compliance with numeric nutrient standards in the meantime.
Those permits are on an “administratively continued” holding pattern while the DEQ waits to see what the EPA does with HB 664, she said. — Amanda Eggert, Montana Free Press
Republished from Montana Free Press.
