Local Watchdog Group, Tribes Lead Effort to Block Expansion of Wastewater Treatment Plant
Citizens for a Better Flathead and the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes are seeking a preliminary injunction to halt the Lakeside County Water and Sewer District's discharge. A separate lawsuit alleges the sewer district violated public participation laws.
By Zoë Buhrmaster
Two separate legal challenges are underway to block expansion plans for the Lakeside County Water and Sewer District (LCWSD) on the basis of protecting Flathead Lake’s water quality and safeguarding public participation laws.
The first case is a joint lawsuit by the local watchdog group Citizens for a Better Flathead (CBF) and the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes (CSKT), who have challenged the Montana Department of Environmental Quality’s (DEQ) decision to approve a groundwater discharge permit for LCWSD.
The permit in question authorized the district to move forward with the first of a two-phase plan to build a new wastewater treatment facility, including a septage receiving plant for Flathead County. The lawsuit raises objections to the property’s location two miles north of Flathead Lake, citing concerns over the wastewater treatment project’s environmental impacts to local tributaries and threats to water quality in the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi.
Next week, Flathead County District Court Judge Danni Coffman will preside over a hearing on a motion for a preliminary injunction to determine whether to temporarily block the expansion project until the lawsuit is resolved.
“If granted, this preliminary injunction will provide a vital pause, and a chance for the court to address the merits of the case, which involve the strong likelihood that the LCWSD’s new discharge permit will harm local water quality in Ashley Creek and Flathead Lake,” Mayre Flowers, CBF’s executive director, said in a prepared statement.
In response to the motion for a preliminary injunction, DEQ Attorney Aaron Pettis pushed back on its claim of urgency, writing that the agency’s permit does not currently allow the district to discharge wastewater into the groundwater as it lacks the physical infrastructure to do so and “has not even initiated the application process necessary to begin constructing that infrastructure.”
“It will take years before discharges under the permit will even begin,” Pettis wrote. “Plaintiffs are at no risk of any harm today, let alone irreparable harm.”
A hearing is scheduled for Oct. 14 at 1:30 p.m.
In a separate lawsuit, the watchdog group CBF and Lakeside district ratepayer Bruce Young are suing the water and sewer district for allegedly violating public participation laws. The group alleges that the board did not provide “reasonable opportunity” for ratepayers to participate during the approval process surrounding the expansion project at the wastewater treatment plant and the Flathead Lake Club, a proposed luxury resort in Lakeside that the district has agreed to service.
Flathead County District Court Judge Paul Sullivan denied the group’s application in August for a preliminary injunction to halt the expansion project, writing that the sewer district did not violate the state constitution and issued appropriate information to CBF when requested.
In response, CBF and Young on Sept. 18 appealed Sullivan’s decision, in addition to filing a petition for a writ of supervisory control to the Montana Supreme Court. A ruling on the case, which seeks to compel the LCWSD to adhere to public participation laws, is still pending and a hearing has not been scheduled.