Prior to any data center development proposals approvals, baseline and commonsense water use and pollution protections should be established at the state and local level. Many states and counties across the country are establishing commonsense water protections. For an arid…
1. What happened to Montana’s numeric nutrient criteria?In Spring 2025, the Montana Legislature passed and Governor Gianforte signed HB 664, a piece of legislation that rolls back numeric nutrient water quality standards for all water pollution control and water restoration…
Taking EPA to Court to Defend Montana’s WatersThis week, Upper Missouri Waterkeeper and Flathead Lakers filed a lawsuit against the Trump Administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for approving Montana’s repeal of science-based limits on nutrient pollution for our waterways. EPA’s…
State’s Refusal to Use Available Data to Identify Impaired Waters is Egregious and Unlawful Last week, Upper Missouri Waterkeeper submitted a letter to the Montana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) in response to its call for public comment on the 2022-2024…
DEQ Proposal Disregards Best Available Science This week, conservation groups Upper Missouri Waterkeeper and the Montana Environmental Information Center submitted a comment letter to the Montana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) highlighting major deficiencies in the proposed assessment methodology for…
Published in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, Daily Interlake, Missoulian. Recent op-eds argue against litigation as a mechanism to protect our rivers and water rights. They claimed that litigation supporting instream flows for river health limits state agency flexibility and that…
On November 17, 2025, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Army Corps announced a proposed rule that will narrowly define “waters of the United States” (WOTUS) in a way that will drastically eliminate federal Clean Water Act…
Upper Missouri Waterkeeper has filed a new lawsuit against the Montana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to defend Montanans’ constitutional rights to meaningful public participation opportunities in government decision-making, and to demand comprehensive environmental reviews for significant public sewage infrastructure…
What is this lawsuit about?This case is about government transparency, public participation, and environmental accountability. It challenges DEQ’s June 2025 approval of a new sewer pipeline in Big Sky that was authorized without any public notice, opportunity for public participation,…
Agreement Reaffirms the Importance of Fee Recovery for Public-Interest Litigation Last week, Upper Missouri Waterkeeper reached a settlement in the Horse Creek Hills case, recouping the multi-year costs necessary to securing a precedential victory that protected senior water property rights…
