Cheyenne – Seeking to protect natural-gas production, Wyoming filed a federal lawsuit Monday against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency seeking to force the agency to reject Montana water-quality regulations.
Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal said Monday that the Montana rules would impose a water-quality standard on the Powder River, Little Powder River and Tongue River below the naturally occurring water quality for much of the year.
Freudenthal said the rules are “unacceptable to Wyoming and are a direct threat to Wyoming’s CBM industry.”
Gas producers pump water from the ground during the production of coal-bed methane, and much of that is allowed to flow into rivers and streambeds.
Freudenthal said he’s hopeful that the EPA will follow through on earlier indications that it would help resolve the dispute between the two states. He said Wyoming remains committed to finding a solution that allows continued gas production while maintaining existing water quality in the river drainages involved.
But he said Montana’s proposed rules “do not even come close to achieving that result.”
Richard Opper, director of the Montana Department of Environmental Quality, said Monday that he hadn’t seen Wyoming’s court filing and couldn’t comment on it.
“Obviously, Montana looks at this issue a little differently than our neighbors to the south,” Opper said. “We’d like to work this out in venues other than the court, but it doesn’t look like that is going to happen now.” Opper said Montana’s intention is to protect irrigation and other long-standing uses of the Powder River.
“The non-degradation standard that our board passed in 2006 is designed to protect an increment of high-quality water in the river,” Opper said.
He noted that the Tongue River becomes saltier as it goes downstream to the north. “Our concern is that meeting the water-quality standards at the border may not be good enough to protect beneficial uses downstream,” he said.
Freudenthal in April wrote to the EPA asking the agency to reject the Montana regulations. But Wyoming Attorney General Pat Crank said Monday that the EPA failed either to reject or approve Montana’s proposed regulations within specified periods after it received them.
The state’s lawsuit, assigned to U.S. District Judge William Downes in Casper, asks the federal court to review the EPA’s failure to disapprove the Montana regulations on time.
“If EPA were to adopt these standards that we feel are not scientifically based or necessary, they could have an effect on our (pollution discharge) permits that we issue here in Wyoming, to discharge water during coal-bed methane operations,” Crank said.
“We feel it’s a Wyoming issue, and important to Wyoming, and we would like to have a judge in Wyoming decide the question,” Crank said.
