by Derf Johnson
This spring, the Montana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) released a Draft Programmatic Environmental Assessment (EA) for the construction and operation of subsurface wastewater treatment systems, a.k.a. septic systems. As with the programmatic EA for opencut mining, this is a solution that will cause more harm for the environment than good.
The rule would allow for an application that contains up to 300 septic system drainfields to basically receive a rubber stamp for their construction — bypassing the environmental review process for determining potential water pollution impacts. Domestic wastewater is a major and growing source of pollution in Montana and increasingly is becoming a major issue for our rivers and streams.
As residential development expands, the cumulative impacts of many individual septic systems degrade water quality, harm fisheries, and threaten public health and drinking water supplies. What DEQ is proposing is to basically assume that, provided an applicant for a septic system meets basic engineering requirements, that an applicant receives a permit. There will no longer be a site-specific analysis of water quality pollution potential, the current state of the receiving water, and the cumulative impacts that have or will occur in the watershed. This is especially problematic in a state as vast and diverse as Montana, with significant differentiation in our watersheds regarding soils, water quality and composition, and the impacts from development and growth.
DEQ’s proposed draft programmatic EA, however, proposes gutting the permitting for most domestic wastewater discharged to groundwater, instead of using strong science and site-specific considerations to evaluate permitting decisions, as required by Montana laws and our Constitution. Hopefully DEQ will scrap this problematic proposal and instead pursue a science-based approach to permitting septic systems. We’ll see.
This article was published in the June 2026 issue of Down To Earth.
