by Michael Howell
A petition signed by a dozen Montana conservation organizations and almost a thousand individual citizens was recently submitted to Montana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) Director Sonja Nowakowski asking that DEQ pause any new or renewed pollution discharge permits pending completion of revised nutrient implementing rules.
Montana was one of the first states in the nation to adopt science-based numeric standards for determining water quality in 2014 after a decade of stakeholder involvement and scientific review. Numeric criteria are the means for protecting desired conditions (i.e., designated uses) of waterways. Numeric nutrient criteria are conservative, science-based judgments based on decades of science and monitoring defining, on a site-specific basis, what is necessary to protect healthy waterways from nuisance algal blooms and related harmful water quality conditions. Numeric criteria allow regulators and permittees to detect and reduce pollution before harm occurs, and to judge waterway health with a high degree of accuracy.
Montana’s adopted standards were controversial from the beginning with many industry interests and municipalities expressing concerns that the new standards were unattainable and too expensive to implement.
In response the Montana legislature began trying to ease the burden on industry and in 2022 passed a law eliminating the numeric nutrient standards and leaving only the “narrative standards” that were to regulate nutrient pollution that were still on the books. But the goals and tools for controlling and restoring surface water across the country set forth under the federal Clean Water Act include the requirement that EPA approve or deny any revision of water quality standards. In this case the EPA found Montana’s narrative standard too vague and did not sufficiently protect Montana’s waters and rejected the change in standards. Court cases also established that protective water quality standards can only be eliminated when a proposed revision is accompanied by an equally protective replacement. If there’s no equally-protective replacement proposed, the law says the most protective science-based criteria remain on the books.
As a result the legislature formed a working group including industry, municipal, non-governmental conservation organizations, local governments, the EPA and other federal agencies and members of the public to fashion new narrative standards. All these parties failed to come to consensus on any proposed new narrative standards and in 2025 the legislature passed new legislation – HB 664 – eliminating numeric standards once again. This time, however, under the Trump administration, EPA approved the changes.
According to Guy Alsentzer of Missouri Water Keepers, his group began circulating a petition requesting DEQ to pause any new or renewed pollution discharge permits pending completion of revised nutrient implementing rules.
“It’s true that Montana still has a narrative rule prohibiting harm, including harm from nutrient pollution, on the books as a matter of law,” said Alsentzer. “The problem is that narrative rule, specifically ARM 17.30.637, is general in character and lacks any site-specific methodology or guidance for how to translate the prohibition against causing harm to local water quality into practice.”
He said state law passed under the 2025 Legislature requires the elimination of numeric nutrient criteria from every aspect of water pollution control regulation, including prior pollution control and restoration plans (impairment determinations) and pending or future pollution permit actions. At the most practical level this categorical elimination will mean backsliding in existing pollution control plans as already-established pollution treatment upgrades or compliance plans based on numeric criteria are revoked and stayed.
“DEQ retains the authority to use biological response variables, nutrient translator models, and other evolving techniques to craft a rule package providing critically needed information and guidance for permit writers, permittees, and restoration partners. EPA’s October 3, 2025 Action Letter approving Montana’s repeal of numeric nutrient criteria explicitly contemplated the state’s development and adoption of a narrative replacement rule package,” said Alsentzer.
“Montanans depend on clean and healthy water for public and private water supplies, recreation, agriculture, and to support our multi-billion dollar outdoors economy. Protecting these uses and our shared values should not depend on a single, subjective, vague, and imprecise rule,” states the petition letter. “In closing, the undersigned respectfully call on DEQ to pause any new or renewed permits and related Clean Water Act decisions involving nutrient pollutants until a narrative nutrient replacement rule package is in place that provides a transparent mechanism for protecting and restoring waterway health in Montana.”
Montana DEQ has not yet responded to requests from the Bitterroot Star with respect to the petition.
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