By Micah Drew, Daily Montanan
MEIC says county failed to provide public records related to Lincoln County’s request to lower water quality standards for Lake Koocanusa
MEIC said they filed the lawsuit to ensure the state constitution is being followed.
“We’re in the business of holding our elected officials and corporations accountable,” Derf Johnson, deputy director of MEIC, said in a press release. “When our public resources are offered up as sacrifice to a foreign, for-profit corporation with a history of polluting and leaving a mess, we definitely want to know what happened behind the scenes.”
Lake Koocanusa has long been the center of a fight between environmental groups and industry backers over the leeching of the element selenium into the Elk River in British Columbia from Canadian coal mines. The mining pollution flows downstream into Koocanusa, where concentrations are documented to have quadrupled in the last three decades and threaten aquatic species, including West Slope Cutthroat Trout and White Sturgeon.
