Montanans Mobilize to Protect Waters from Nutrient Pollution
Today, Upper Missouri Waterkeeper, a coalition of conservation organizations, and 900 citizens and a dozen organizations submitted a petition to the Montana Department of Environmental Quality requesting the agency pause any new or renewed pollution discharge permits until a lawful, science-based plan is in place to protect Montana’s waterways from nutrient pollution.
The Gallatin River Task Force, Bitterroot River Protection Association, Citizens for a Better Flathead, Montana Environmental Information Center, Gallatin Wildlife Association, Clark Fork Coalition, Flathead Lakers, Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Madison River Foundation, and the Sierra Club Montana Chapter are all signatories on the petition.
“Nearly a thousand Montanans have already spoken up urging DEQ to pause on new pollution permits until there’s a real plan to implement narrative criteria that will protect our waterways and rivers,” said Guy Alsentzer, Executive Director of Upper Missouri Waterkeeper. “This pollution rule rollback affects every one of us that rely on clean water. We hope DEQ will take this call seriously and do what’s right for Montana’s waterways – and that starts with a halt on all discharge permits for the state’s largest polluters, not issuing permits with significantly increased discharge limits, as we recently saw with the Stillwater Mine.”
The petition comes in response to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) October 3, 2025 approval of Montana’s House Bill 664 and repeal of numeric nutrient water quality standards. Before EPA’s approval of HB 664, DEQ was required to utilize a well-developed body of science, including numeric nutrient criteria, to inform all Clean Water Act nutrient pollution decisions. With the repeal of numeric criteria and all related guidance, the agency now lacks any implementation plan detailing how it will apply narrative nutrient criteria across the State.
EPA’s approval letter emphasized that the state should develop narrative nutrient implementing rules based on evolving science and the expectation that DEQ would submit those prospective rules for federal review. The petition calls on DEQ to do as requested before proceeding with permitting actions.
According to DEQ’s 2020 Integrated Report, 35% of assessed Montana waterways are already impaired by nutrient pollution. Nutrient pollution causes and contributes to neon-green and toxic algal blooms that decrease dissolved oxygen, degrade water quality, and harm fish, aquatic life, drinking water supplies, and the state’s $1.3 billion cold-water fishing economy, not to mention the tens of thousands of jobs dependent on cold, clean rivers.
Among the foreseeable consequences of using a narrative-only approach to nutrient regulation are inevitably subjective permit and restoration decisions, absent the best-available measuring stick for judging and preventing harm and without science-based sideboards detailing how to protect and restore local water quality for a diversity of site-specific pollution issues across the State. Similarly, new or renewed pollution permits lacking clear, defensible metrics for preventing nutrient-caused harm arguably violate legal requirements of the federal Clean Water Act and Montanans’ constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment, creating serious liability for permittees who could be subject to permit legal challenges.
The petition specifically requests that DEQ “pause any new or renewed permits and related Clean Water Act decisions involving nutrient pollutants until a narrative nutrient replacement rule package is in place that provides a transparent mechanism for protecting and restoring waterway health in Montana.”
The petition has been submitted to DEQ but will remain open until the end of the year – we encourage Montana citizens, groups, and businesses to sign on in support of clean water and DEQ developing a plan for implementing narrative standards before issuing any pollution discharge permits.