Eastern Montana: Waiting for rain, justice

By Roger Muggli - 06/23/2004

I woke the other morning with the excitement of a kid at Christmas.

Rain!

The puddles that brought jubilance the night before had doubled in size, bringing with them the promise of green alfalfa fields and fresh irrigation water.

Like the signing of a new business deal or birth in the family, rain promises a new future — especially in southeastern Montana where just 8 to 12 inches fall each year. With so little rain, we give thanks for every drop.

Unfortunately, my excitement over the rain is overshadowed by my anger over the state of Montana's cavalier attitude toward the wasting and degrading of our water by the coal bed methane industry.

Many of us who farm and ranch in coal bed methane

country have asked Montana Gov. Judy Martz to protect our clean water and productive agricultural land from irresponsible development practices. We've had no

success.

I personally gave the governor a tour of my family farm and the irrigation ditch I manage, all in an effort to make her understand the value of our water and the need to safeguard it.

The governor's recent

advocacy for protection of the Flathead Basin — an "environmental treasure" — from a coal bed methane project across the border in Canada is like salt in the wound for those of us who have watched her turn a blind eye to our requests for assistance.

Instead of protection, the Martz Administration has given us the runaround on everything from enforcement of water

quality standards for our rivers to protection of aquifers — the sole source of drinking water for most people in southeastern Montana.

Rather than take any action to protect the Tongue River Valley, the Martz Administration has done everything possible to speed up methane development — including excluding the public from the decision-making process.

Gov. Martz has sanctioned the wasting of billions of gallons of groundwater by methane companies, and has cleared the way for the harmful practice of spraying high sodium methane wastewater onto fields or into unlined pits as a way to "dispose" of the water.

All of this means an uncertain future for those of us who rely on clean water from the Tongue River to irrigate our crops.

Waiting for rain when your livelihood depends on it is an emotional rollercoaster I don't wish on anyone. Watching your government turn a blind eye to the wasting and contamination of the little rain we get is worse.

Knowing your governor is willing to stand up for some "special" places — such as the Flathead Basin — while sacrificing others, such as the Tongue River Valley, is downright insulting.

As I look out over my fields, gleaming from the new rain, I have to think that the Tongue River Valley is an environmental treasure worthy of the governor's attention.

While we don't have mountain peaks, turquoise lakes and grizzly bears, we have plenty else to make us proud: 30,000 acres of irrigated meadows, hundreds of family farms and ranches, abundant wildlife and our prairie rivers.

From my vantage point, that's treasure enough to warrant a few common-sense development standards — such as requiring methane operators to pump wastewater back into the ground so that it'll be there for our kids and grandkids.

Roger Muggli and his family run a farm and pellet feed operation near Miles City. He manages the Tongue

& Yellowstone Irrigation District and sits on the Northern Plains Resource Council's methane task force.