Governor Vetoes Bad Coal Bed Methane Bill

One of the session’s most misguided bills, HB 575 (Rep. Bill McChesney, D-Miles City), was passed by both chambers of the legislature (in the House 56-44, in the Senate 30-20) but was vetoed by Governor Schweitzer. The bill had originally been stalled in the House Agriculture Committee on a 10-10 vote, but was revived after two representatives changed their minds more than a month later and voted to pass it out of committee and on to the House floor.

The bill would have turned 100 years of water rights law on its head by reclassifying ground water pumped to the surface during coal bed methane (CBM) extraction as “surface water,” and allowing CBM companies to obtain special temporary permits to use or sell this water.  The intent of this bill was to reverse a December 2008 ruling by former district court judge Thomas Honzel that CBM water is, in fact, ground water and that water rights are valuable property rights protected by the Constitution.

Under the bill, developers would have been able to sell CBM water to ranchers for irrigation, dust suppression, and livestock watering. This provision threatened water quality because CBM water is extremely saline, and it ignored the numerical standards set by the Board of Environmental Review in 2003 to limit the amount of salt in water discharged during CBM development.

The bill also would have given authority over the ground water pumped during CBM extraction to the Board of Oil and Gas Conservation. By doing so, it circumvented a Montana district court ruling that the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation has the duty to manage CBM groundwater for beneficial purposes.

Despite the CBM industry’s claims that the water could benefit landowners, ranchers and senior water rights holders in southeastern Montana’s Powder River Basin strongly opposed the bill because it jeopardized their existing water rights.
Like many bad bills this session, the fate of HB 575 came down to the Governor. By vetoing the bill, Gov. Schweitzer defended long-standing senior water rights, upheld over a century of Montana water law, and protected Montana’s precious water quality.