Suing the Montana DEQ for failing to do its job.
In September 2021, Cottonwood filed a complaint with the Montana DEQ and asked the agency to investigate the volume of treated sewage leaking from the Big Sky Water & Sewer District’s holding ponds. Before filing the complaint, Cottonwood placed a dye tracer in the holding ponds and found the dye being discharged from the sewer treatment plant’s pipe into the West Fork of the Gallatin River 26 hours later. Six months after the complaint was filed, the Montana DEQ responded that it could not determine the volume of treated sewage that was leaking from the holding ponds and referred the matter to the engineering division to make the determination. The DEQ engineer had previously stated a mathematical equation can be used to determine the volume of treated sewage leaking from the holding ponds. Cottonwood filed a lawsuit against the DEQ in December 2022, more than one year after it filed its initial complaint, because the agency never completed the mathematical equation and investigated the volume of sewage leaking from the holding ponds.
After the lawsuit was filed, Cottonwood filed an expert report that raised flags about the volume of treated sewage that the Sewer District told a federal jury it exported to Spanish Peaks Mountain Club to irrigate its golf course. The manager of the Sewer District and its attorney had previously told a jury during a Clean Water Act trial that it exported 12.06 million gallons of treated sewage to Spanish Peaks, but its excel spreadsheet states it only exported 3.47 million gallons. When Cottonwood asked the manager of the Sewer District about the discrepancy, he told the truth—the facility’s recording monitors broke in 2020 and the data that was previously presented to the jury and the DEQ investigators was never actually recorded. The manager of the Sewer District and its attorney never told the jury the data it was providing them was “estimated.”
The manager told a local reporter the 2020 “estimates” were based on historical data. The manager of the Sewer District acknowledged that the data recorded for 2015 and 2016 show the Sewer District exported millions of gallons of treated sewage more than actually comes into the plant—a physical impossibility. Cottonwood’s expert determined the holding ponds leaked 9 million gallons of treated sewage in 2018 and 23.97 million gallons in 2019. The Sewer District and its attorney told a federal jury and DEQ investigators that the holding ponds only leaked 270,000 gallons in 2020. The manager of the Sewer District has admitted that number is based on data that was never recorded.
Cottonwood has uncovered the fact that the Sewer District did not actually record the data it provided a federal jury and DEQ investigators. The DEQ will not take action against the Sewer District. The U.S. EPA criminal Division has begun an investigation.