Upper Missouri Waterkeeper has sued the Montana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) alleging an unconstitutional failure of public process and lack of environmental review for a major sewer pipeline in Big Sky.
Waterkeeper, a nonprofit with a mission to protect and restore water in the Upper Missouri River Basin, said the DEQ is taking up smaller portions of a major regional wastewater system individually, but it said the agency must review the project as a whole.
Waterkeeper recently announced a Gallatin County District Court judge found the DEQ didn’t take a “hard look” at water quality impacts on the Gallatin River in a different case the nonprofit had filed about a proposed subdivision.
Also in Gallatin County District Court, the most recent lawsuit brings challenges related to the new pipeline that’s part of the larger Gallatin Canyon Sewer Project, a regional wastewater collection, treatment and disposal plan the plaintiffs estimate will push disposal gallons per day from as much as 120,000 gallons to an estimated 600,000 gallons.
The plan is jointly proposed by the Gallatin Canyon County Water & Sewer District and Big Sky County Water & Sewer District. The DEQ has permitting and review authority over it.
The lawsuit said the pipeline project entails roughly 5,000 linear feet of sewage line and a second, treated effluent main line (two pipelines) adjacent to Highway 64 and running parallel to “reaches of the West Fork Gallatin River.”
The project collects sewage in Big Sky’s Canyon Area, a development corridor along the Gallatin. It moves it for treatment up to the Big Sky County Water & Sewer District, and then moves the treated wastewater back to the Canyon Area for disposal through a groundwater discharge permit being considered by the DEQ, the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit alleges the DEQ has failed to provide for meaningful public participation in the project, in violation of the Montana Constitution, and it’s making decisions before completing an analysis of significant environmental impacts.
The lawsuit also alleges the project could increase harms to the middle segment of the Gallatin River, already impacted with algal blooms, and even be a detriment to drinking water for people downstream.
Parts of the river are considered impaired by the Environmental Protection Agency.
In a statement, Guy Alsentzer of Upper Missouri Waterkeeper said the DEQ is blocking the public from participating in decisions that have significant public interest and deserve transparency.
For example, an impairment determination and related restoration plan for the Gallatin River drew more than 1,000 public comments, the lawsuit said.
“Massive infrastructure projects being approved behind closed doors, without public participation, is antithetical to democracy,” Alsentzer said in a statement. “DEQ is stacking the deck by considering pieces of a regional wastewater system in isolation.
“The public deserves—and the Montana Constitution guarantees—a transparent decision-making process that reviews the whole picture.”
He said the pipeline is integral to a pending new municipal-scale discharge permit application, but the public is being illegally shut out of decisions about it.
The lawsuit said the nonprofit only learned about the DEQ’s decisions in November from a public records request it filed under the Right to Know of the Montana Constitution.
But that was months after the DEQ approved a critical application for the pipeline, one at which the project would become viable or would stop, the lawsuit said. And the approval took place June 18 without any public notice or public participation opportunities and without any published environmental reviews, the lawsuit said.
It alleges the DEQ failed to perform any review under the Montana Environmental Policy Act, or MEPA, for the pipeline project, and it also failed to complete a review of the larger wastewater project.
In fact, the lawsuit said DEQ has been reviewing multiple segments of the same project, without meaningful environmental review or public participation, in an action the plaintiff alleges is a “systemic failure” that ignores the potential the overall project could be “cumulatively significant.”
In an email, a spokesperson for the DEQ said the agency does not typically comment on litigation and does not have comment at this time.
The Waterkeeper is asking the court to declare the DEQ violated the right to know and right to participate under the Montana Constitution; that it violated MEPA by failing to perform environmental analysis and by segmenting its reviews of the wastewater project; and that its “informal pattern” of exempting smaller projects from public participation requirements is unconstitutional.
The Waterkeeper also asks the court to vacate the approval of the pipeline project application and remand it for public processes. It asks the court to stop the DEQ from authorizing any action connected to the wastewater project until after it has completed environmental reviews. — Keila Szpaller, Daily Montanan
Republished under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
