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Water Quality
MEIC's Water Quality Program
Water is the lifeblood of Montana. It providesfor our blue-ribbon fishing, irrigates crops and pastures for farmers and ranchers and, of course, drinking water. Yet many in Montana are willing to pollute our water and waste it in enormous volumes.
MEIC is working to protect Montana's water resources in several areas:
- Ending Perpetual Water Pollution and Treatment. Working with the Fort Belknap Community Council, MEIC has taken the simple yet groundbreaking concept from an idea to a rule-making petition that no new mines should be permitted that require perpetual water treatment. Montana would be the first state—and first place anywhere in the world—to have such progressive mining reform in place.
- Coal bed methane development. MEIC is involved with two ongoing legal challenges to inadequately regulated coal bed methane development. The first opposes a plan of development for coal bed methane wells without appropriate environmental review. The second is a federal suit filed under the Clean Air Act that argues the development of coal bed methane will result in significant harm to the pristine air quality in Class 1 areas in Montana and Wyoming. These areas include such treasures as Yellowstone National Park, the Absaroka Beartooth Wilderness, and the Gates of the Mountains Wilderness.
- Protecting the Federal Clean Water Act.
- Upholding Montanan's Constitutional Right to a Clean and Healthful Environment.
SEE ALSO
Audits Reveal DEQ Inadequacies (Sept. 2008)