Answering All Your Quarry Questions

by Quincey Johnson

No doubt you’ve heard about the impaired Gallatin River and the proposed multi-phase Quarry Subdivision in Big Sky’s Canyon Area a lot over the last few years. As the public is faced with yet ANOTHER new source of pollution proposed for the middle segment Gallatin River, let us break down the various proposals, the current status of this subdivision, major issues with the development, and what you can do right now to speak up for the Gallatin River.

Timeline & History of the Quarry Subdivision:

The Quarry Project is a multi-phased planned unit development (PUD) for new residential and commercial construction located at the old gravel pit just off Highway 191 and adjacent to the Gallatin River in Big Sky’s canyon area. 

In 2019, Gallatin County approved a PUD for Phase 1 of the Quarry Project despite significant public opposition due to potential negative impacts to the Gallatin River, including its proposed use of septic systems for wastewater treatment and disposal to groundwater. Upper Missouri Waterkeeper partnered with Trout Unlimited, American Rivers, Gallatin River Task Force, and the Greater Yellowstone Coalition in opposing the county’s approval, twice. 

In early 2022, the gravel pit officially ceased operations, and the developer immediately sought approval to move the subdivision forward. Remember, this was amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and little to no meaningful scrutiny was being applied to many development projects; in fact, there was a steady state government and federal government focus on growing and investing in business, including water resource infrastructure. Fast-forward to December 2022, when DEQ published an Environmental Assessment (EA) for a proposed Certificate of Subdivision Approval (COSA) on Phase 1 of the project. DEQ sought to review the project as an engineering exercise under its Sanitation in Subdivision Act and Public Water Supply Law authorities, instead of the Water Quality Act (which has strict requirements on new pollution sources), and from the get-go treated the subdivision and its new wastewater pollution as a foregone conclusion. 

Waterkeeper found several critical flaws in the EA and DEQ’s review of the proposed wastewater collection treatment, and disposal plans, including the Department’s failure to evaluate the cumulative impacts of adding new pollution to the watershed against the existing baseline, as well as the agency’s segmented analysis of individual building phases, all a means to the end of avoiding a robust assessment of human development’s aggregate impact on the Gallatin River. 

In March 2023, Upper Missouri Waterkeeper filed a complaint against DEQ for authorizing the new wastewater discharges from the Quarry Phase 1 without performing an assessment of cumulative impacts and degradation potential, for violating the Montana Environmental Policy Act, the Administrative Procedures Act, and the Montana Water Quality Act. In its authorization of the Quarry Phase I subdivision, DEQ repeated several of the same mistakes that the District Court ruled unlawful in November 2022, in our challenge against the authorization of the wastewater discharge permit for the Lazy J South subdivision. That case is fully briefed in the 18th Judicial District and awaiting a court order.

Step back for a moment and recall that as far back as summer 2018 the Gallatin River has experienced unprecedented, neon-green nuisance algal blooms adjacent to and downstream of Big Sky’s Canyon Area for several miles. Concurrent with Upper Missouri Waterkeeper’s advocacy at the county and agency levels pushing for best-available pollution treatment, our team was also documenting summer algal blooms. That multi-year project culminated in Upper Missouri Waterkeeper petitioning the DEQ to determine the middle segment Gallatin River as “impaired” due to its inability to fully support its aquatic life and recreational uses. In May 2023, DEQ responded by granting the petition, and the Gallatin River was officially declared “impaired” by nuisance algal blooms under the federal Clean Water Act. This determination is a legal recognition that the river has exceeded an ecological tipping point and restoration was now needed. The primary culprit of nuisance algal blooms, a phenomenon called “eutrophication”, is the addition of unnatural nutrient loads. Primary sources of unnatural nutrient loads in Montana include human-based wastewater and large-scale agriculture. For the middle segment Gallatin and a watershed comprised overwhelmingly of forested federal public lands, agriculture is not the problem, whereas residential, commercial, and institutional land use development has increased at breakneck speed since the Great Recession.

In March 2024, the Gallatin County Commission irresponsibly approved Phase 2 of the Quarry, which again proposed the use of community scale septic systems approximately a ½ mi upgradient from the Gallatin River. When the County originally considered the Quarry PUD in 2019 the applicant’s own engineers demonstrated that groundwater receiving new wastewater discharges would flow from the subdivision, to the Gallatin River, in approximately 23 days.  Despite the known connectivity of groundwater to the river, and despite the lack of a safe and proven wastewater disposal plan for the Big Sky community, including affirmative proof that new wastewater and related growth won’t harm the Gallatin River, the County punted its own review in favor of DEQ’s pending review. Environmental groups asked DEQ to conduct a public process on the impacts to the river, but the request went unanswered.

Most recently on November 18, DEQ published an EA for Phase 2 of the project, once again repeating many of the same legal and scientific flaws we’ve fought (and won on) before or are currently challenging. Even worse, it sat on its decision and didn’t provide notice to the public until November 25, meaning the public is being afforded exactly 27 days – during the busiest holiday season of the year – to comment on yet another new threat to the Gallatin River. Our initial review of the EA for the Quarry, Phase 2 indicates that once again DEQ and county commissioners are ignoring any and all impacts of new Canyon Area development on the Gallatin River.

Major Concerns with Phase 2:

  1. DEQ failed to conduct any analysis on the cumulative impacts or synergistic effects of new sources of nutrient pollution against the local ecological baseline. Similarly, the agency failed to evaluate, much less make any demonstration, regarding the degradation potential of new wastewater discharges from the subdivision on the Gallatin River in light of its algal blooms and impairment determination. According to its EA, DEQ’s failure to do any analysis for Phase 2 stems from the alleged, newfound authority to exempt certain new wastewater systems from any review of impacts to adjacent surface water if they are that are more than 1/2 mile from surface water and certain soil profiles are present in the receiving subsurface aquifer. What is omitted from the EA is the fact that DEQ retains the discretion to, nonetheless, determine new subdivision discharges significant and require robust scientific analyses to prove no harm under ARM 17.30.715(2), and the Supreme Court has ruled in analogous cases that DEQ must, in every instance, act to prevent river pollution in the first case. 
  2. DEQ and Gallatin County Commissioners should not and cannot authorize any additional wastewater discharges in the Canyon Area until there is a legally enforceable, science-based, plan for reducing nutrient pollution in the Gallatin River. There is no reasonable dispute that when a developer applies for a groundwater permit in Big Sky’s Canyon Area, that discharge enters a shallow alluvial aquifer which is hydrologically connected to the Gallatin River. Like Phase 1, the Quarry Phase 2 proposes discharging wastewater into groundwater that will end up in the downgradient Gallatin River. The Gallatin is already impaired by algal blooms, and algal blooms are caused by the presence of the very nutrient pollutants that will be discharged into groundwater via wastewater. Ignoring the connectivity of groundwater and surface water based on unscientific, political metrics is not only contrary to citizens’ constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment, but is also arbitrary. 
  3. DEQ is also inappropriately segmenting Phase 2 into four (4) separate septic systems to avoid permitting requirements. Under DEQ’s recently revised groundwater discharge rules, a septic system that discharges less than 1 lb avg of nitrogen per day does not require a pollution permit. And, as noted above, new state law says if that septic system is also positioned just one inch above ½ mi from the river, then the new source of pollution is legally said to be ‘nonsignificant’ and exempted from review. Aside from the utter lack of science supporting these presumptions, when DEQ breaks apart the collective wastewater volume of Phase 2 of the Quarry, much less allows segmentation of wastewater from the eight septic systems in Phase I (and who knows how many others from Phase 3 and 4), the agency is making arbitrary decisions about what is nonsignificant without a scientific basis linked to a demonstration that those new sources of pollution will not, in fact, cause or contribute to degradation of a receiving waterbody.
  4. Montanans have a constitutional right to a “clean and healthful environment,” and likewise, DEQ has a constitutional obligation to be “anticipatory and preventative” in its decision-making, including applying the precautionary principle to ensure degradation does not occur. Put simply, Montanan’s don’t have to wait until dead fish float in our rivers to apply reasonable pollution controls to prevent harm in the first place. For the Quarry Phase 2, DEQ is solely relying on new, unscientific state law allegedly exempting the subdivision from review, refusing to exercise its authority to evaluate cumulative impacts, ignoring its own determination that the Gallatin River is unhealthy, and refusing to provide any evidence of why the river can accept infinite new development-based pollution without becoming increasingly degraded. 
  5. DEQ has scheduled the 30-day public comment period for Quarry Phase 2 overlapping both the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. This timing puts a chilling effect on meaningful public awareness and participation. To remedy this, the agency should provide at least a 30-day comment extension.

How to Take Action:

Public comments can be submitted:

The comment deadline is December 27, 2024 at 5:00pm unless an extension is granted.