Our friends to the west in the Elk-Kootenai watershed just won and important victory . . .
A long-running dispute over a Montana water-quality standard that involves a Canadian coal mine, a border-straddling waterway, and a suite of local, state and federal officials drew to a close this week.
Montana District Court Judge Kathy Seeley ruled on April 8 that the selenium standard the Montana Department of Environmental Quality adopted for Lake Koocanusa in 2020 can stand. The Lake Koocanusa standard, which involved an extensive scientific and rulemaking process, is 0.8 micrograms per liter.
Selenium, a chemical element that’s toxic to fish above certain thresholds, has been accumulating in the Kootenai River watershed for decades as a result of a massive coal-mining operation in British Columbia. Precipitation releases the selenium that naturally occurs in mine waste, and treatment technologies have demonstrated limited success for removing it.