County commissioners, health board to discuss respective roles

by Michael Howell

The Ravalli County Commissioners met on June 27 to consider the decision made by the Board of Health not to accept this year’s ground water monitoring results due to drought conditions. The meeting was called following an opinion issued by Ravalli County Attorney Bill Fulbright stating that the ultimate reviewing authority in the matter was the Board of Commissioners and not the Board of Health. According to Fulbright, a new law adopted by the 2021 Montana Legislature shifted that authority which was previously held by the Board of Health to the County Commissioners.

Confusion arose, however, over whether the law also applied to decisions concerning appeals and variances to the regulations.  

The Commissioners were urged by some, including Board of Health member Skip Chisholm, to respect the decision made by the Board of Health and urged by others, including attorney Joan Mell, who claimed to represent some realtors and other stakeholders, to reverse the Board of Health decision. The Commissioners made no decision at the June 27 meeting and instead scheduled a joint meeting on Tuesday, July 9th  at 10 a.m., inviting Board of Health members to help work out some sort of appeal process related to whatever decision is finally made. 

Some new data was submitted by the Environmental Health Department that wasn’t available to the Board of Health at the time it made its decision and some questions were raised about the use of Snotel readings alone rather than precipitation data in making the decision since any direct relation between snowpack and groundwater levels has not been clearly established.

Chisholm stated that he had spoken with the sponsor of the bill that changed the law, Representative David Bedey (R-Hamilton), and that Bedey had told him that it was not the intention of his bill to remove all decision-making authority from the Board of Health. 

Commissioner Jeff Burrows, who sits on the Board of Health, also expressed reluctance on the part of the Board of Commissioners to take on the enormous workload involved in hearing every appeal and request for variance that is brought before the Board of Health. He said the Commissioners would need to develop and adopt some sort of appeals process before making any decision. He said that he, too, had talked to Beady and that his understanding was that the law would give the Commissioners ultimate authority in terms of making regulations, but implementation and enforcement would remain with the Board of Health.

“So, we do have a little bit of conflict in what the language says and what DEQ 4 regulation [the state minimum standards for subsurface wastewater treatment systems] says and the intention of the bill. Whether we get some clarification in the next legislature, I don’t know, but he said absolutely variances, groundwater monitoring and implementation and enforcement of the regulations, the intention was to have that done by the Board of Health. So that’s where we are caught at a kind of loggerhead about the County Attorney opinion and the language in the bill and DEQ 4 and the intent of the bill,” said Burrows.

Commissioner Greg Chilcott said he believed that the Board of Health and the County Commissioners can work together and come up with a process.

“We have more data now than the Board of Health had when they made their decision,” said Chilcott. “I think we will see some movement on this.”

Several people expressed an urgency for some sort of decision, but Burrows noted that any decision would still require that the current monitoring run its course and produce results showing that the water levels in the pipes had reached a peak and were declining. He said there was time for the Commissioners to figure things out and get some sort of appeals process in place before that occurs. In the meantime, monitoring is proceeding as usual.