Lincoln County commissioners filed a petition last year to undo safeguards protecting Lake Koocanusa from the mining contaminant selenium. Plaintiffs accused local officials of “doing the bidding for a foreign mining company.”
By Tristian Scott, Flathead Beacon
An environmental organization is suing the board of commissioners in Lincoln County for refusing to disclose public information surrounding their petition to weaken water quality standards at the U.S.-Canada border, where pollutants leaching out of piles of coal-mining waste in British Columbia are contaminating the international watershed at Lake Koocanusa.
The Montana Environmental Information Center (MEIC) filed the lawsuit Jan. 23 in Lincoln County District Court alleging the commissioners failed to respond to an information request for documents related to the commissioners’ June 2025 petition to the Montana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ). The petition sought to roll back existing water quality criteria in favor of more permissive water quality standard for the mining byproduct selenium. Agency officials denied the petition last September, with DEQ citing broad public support for the state’s current site-specific selenium standard at Lake Koocanusa, which was adopted in 2020 as a defense against the Canadian mining toxins flowing from B.C.’s Elk River Valley and across the border into waterways spanning Montana and Idaho.
