The Montana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) is accepting public comment on its draft programmatic Environmental Assessment (EA) for the construction and operation of subsurface wastewater treatment systems (SWTS).
Here are the top five issues with the EA as proposed:
- Streamlining development over environmental scrutiny – The Programmatic EA is seeking to create an expedited framework for DEQ to quickly approve wastewater discharges, and specifically septic systems, associated with residential development applications, rather than perform rigorous site-specific environmental reviews.
- Reliance on engineering standards – The Programmatic EA treats compliance with SWTS engineering standards as proof of no environmental harm, despite clear evidence that these systems still discharge nutrients, bacteria, and viruses to waterways that could cause or contribute to negative water quality conditions or degrade local surface water uses, such as fisheries, irrigation, and recreation.
- Failure to consider cumulative impacts – The Programmatic EA assumes impacts from SWTS are generally nonsignificant, except in extraordinary circumstances, which are not defined and are discretionary determinations. This presumption is contrary to an exhaustive body of scientific evidence demonstrating septic systems are a leading sector contributing to polluted surface water quality across the State of Montana, much less the Nation. The Programmatic EA also lacks clear metrics, thresholds, or methods to evaluate cumulative impacts across watersheds.
- Disregard for existing water quality impairments and degraded waters – The Programmatic EA fails to account for the reality that over 30% of assessed Montana rivers and lakes are already impaired by the same pollutants it seeks to categorically exempt from site-specific review, does not prohibit or limit new SWTS in nutrient- impaired watersheds, and does not take existing pollution reduction assumptions and commitments from binding Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs) for impaired waterways into account when approving new SWTS.
- Undermines Montana’s constitutional guarantees – By failing to consider cumulative impacts, the Programmatic EA undermines Montanna’s constitutional right to affirmative, preventative and anticipatory decision-making that protects any diminution in water quality by DEQ. Essentially, the EA proposal inverts the burdens of proof from an applicant and the agency needing to thoroughly demonstrate a new development proposal will not harm local water resources, into a burden on the public, neighbors, and concerned interests to make such demonstrations. Every authorization by DEQ must entail both a hard look at the water resource baseline, the proposed activity, and thorough evaluation of direct, secondary, and cumulative impacts.
Submit public comments to DEQ opposing the Draft EA here.