Nutrients, Algae, & A Chance for Public Comment
Data entry is finished for the 2021 field season and I am……. relieved. It’s an eye-crossing & mind-numbing way to start the year.
But, the final submission to the state water quality portal each year is the culmination of a season’s worth of hard work, thousands of miles driven, and support from you.
Once complete, attention turns to writing grant applications for lab analysis expenses for the next year’s data collection. And webinars, lots of webinars.
Speaking of online learning, today I tuned into a lunchtime Facebook Live event (Click Here) hosted by the Montana Environmental Information Center (MEIC) about the change in water pollution rules in Montana. If you follow environmental issues in MT, you’ve probably heard about SB358. Groups such as MEIC and Upper Missouri Waterkeeper (UMWK) have been vocal in getting the word out and describing what’s at stake with respect to clean water protections. The basic gist is that this bill, signed into law in early 2021, removes numeric water quality standards and directs DEQ to re-adopt “narrative” standards to track the level of nutrient pollution in our waterways.
Of course, this doesn’t make much sense. Montana was one of the first states to adopt numeric standards in 2015 and you would expect that, as a headwater state, we would take water quality very seriously. After all we have a huge outdoor recreation economy, based largely on the renown of our rivers and fisheries management (i.e. wild fish). And let us not forget, each one of us depends on clean water for life. But it turns out nutrient pollution in waterways is a pretty significant concern here, as it is throughout the U.S.
In Montana, 35% of our stream miles and 22% of our lake acres are impaired by nutrient pollution, primarily nitrogen & phosphorus. That is a serious problem that threatens human & animal health, ecosystem integrity, the recreation industry, and the constitutional right of Montanans to a clean and healthful environment.
That’s why BHRF started this entire program; to annually monitor nutrients & sediment from source to mouth of this world-class watershed because nobody else was collecting this important data consistently. And you can’t make good management decisions without good data.
Without completely rehashing all of the outreach we and others have done regarding nutrient pollution and its negative health, environmental, and economic impacts -- email me and I’ll send you a Powerpoint presentation -- nutrient pollution can result in river-wide algal blooms, toxic HAB’s (Harmful Algae Blooms), hypoxia, excessive water treatment costs, declining real estate values, lost recreation/tourism income, sick cattle, sick dogs, sick people, remediation costs, etc, etc, etc.
A visual illustration:
Beaverhead River - Harmful Algae Bloom (HAB)
Sept. 2019
Big Hole River - August 2020
Big Hole River - August 2021
Gallatin River - Summer 2020
photo: UMWK
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In 1999, the Montana Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Montanans’ constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment (Article IX, Section 1) is a fundamental right. Justice Trieweiler held that: “Our constitution does not require that dead fish float on the surface of our state’s rivers and streams before its farsighted environmental protections can be invoked,” and concluded that “the delegates’ intention was to provide language and protections which are both anticipatory and preventative,” establishing that the right is preventative in nature.
So where do numeric standards & SB358 come in?
There is a defined numeric threshold, above which you could expect to see negative impacts to beneficial uses….like the algae blooms shown above.
For nitrogen, that threshold is 0.3 mg/L. For phosphorus, it’s 0.03 mg/L. ——- Easy, right?
Numeric standards for water quality ensure we have thresholds to determine impairment and alert us to current/ongoing/future issues, as well as a defined target to preserve the beneficial uses of aquatic life, recreation, irrigation, and drinking water, in accordance with the federal Clean Water Act. They also naturally complement the science-based system (background, methods, quality control, replicability, etc) to accurately collect this data, all included in a programmatic SAP - Sampling & Analysis Plan.
On the contrary, narrative standards are not really standards at all. Ambiguous, subjective, and reactionary, they alert us to problems only after they appear, flying in the face of the preventative intent in the state constitution and all of the best science available. It’s a regressive approach that eliminates the established scientific metric for judging the health of our waters.
SB358 is being challenged, on process and merit, and I’ll let the legal experts hash that out.
But in the meantime, it’s important for us as folks whose lives, livelihoods, and joy is directly tied to clean water to provide feedback to our lawmakers on something so critical for Montana’s health & economy.
So, the purpose of this blog post is to provide you with relevant resources (links below) and an opportunity to submit comments to make your voice heard. And I hope you will.
Cheers,
Brian
MEIC - Nutrient Pollution & SB358
UMWK - SB358 Rulemaking Fact Sheet
