Algae bloom on the Gallatin River. Photo: Upper Missouri River Keeper.
“Mayday, mayday, mayday” is not a celebration of the first day of May, but “an emergency procedure word used internationally as a distress signal” for a life-threatening emergency. And right now, it’s the once-pristine Gallatin River crying “mayday” as it faces the life-threatening emergency of being further — and most likely permanently — degraded by the Big Sky area’s sewage and nutrients.
How bad is it? Well, the Department of Environmental Quality just approved yet another application for a 45-condo development using septic systems within a quarter mile of the already-hammered river. Mind you, this is after the Gallatin was formally declared “impaired” last year due to nutrient overload which now feeds the neon green algae blooms in this once gin-clear river downstream from Big Sky.
The state agency is obviously ignoring the fact that putting even more nutrients in the Gallatin will only exacerbate its “impaired” status — the exact opposite of what “regulatory” agencies are supposed to do to uphold Montanans’ “inalienable right to a clean and healthful environment” (according to the state’s constitution, Article II, Section 3), as well as the constitutional mandate that “the state and each person shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations.” (Article IX, Section 1)
It’s tough to find any other interpretation of those plain language constitutional guarantees than if there’s already an environmental pollution problem, the onus is on the state to “maintain and improve” the environment, not approve and allow even more pollution.
Gov. Greg Gianforte, a religious man, swore an oath on the Bible to uphold the Constitution — but that obviously doesn’t mean much when the big money at Big Sky wants yet more overdevelopment and more pollution.
This is the second phase of the Quarry development which, as reported by Brett French, wants “136 single-family condos, 130 multifamily condos and 11 mixed-use buildings.” Yet, that’s just a tiny fraction of the 1,354 additional homes the Big Sky Resort Area District says it will need in the next three years as housing for their underpaid workers.
What’s even more shocking is the fact this decision comes only days after the release of a hydrogeologic study by Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology that compared the undeveloped side of the Gallatin with the Big Sky side. Their conclusion? The aquifer is “shallow, unconfined, and vulnerable to contamination.” In other words, the septic effluent has a short trip from the drain field to the aquifer to the Gallatin.
In the meantime, DEQ is claiming that most of the nitrogen polluting the Gallatin is “natural” — and that septic effluent is only a minor input. Which begs the question: How was it possible that the Gallatin ran clear and clean for thousands of years before Big Sky, the Yellowstone Club, and the ever-growing cluster of real estate developments started dumping their waste on the mountain and in the river?
It’s no mystery where the nutrients causing the algae blooms are coming from — and no, it’s not from the bison in Yellowstone National Park. It’s from the pollution emanating from this bizarre enclave of the wealthy stuffed into a narrow canyon with nowhere for their waste to go but down to the Gallatin.
In short, what we’re seeing is an abject failure of Montana’s so-called “environmental regulatory” agency — aided and abetted by the Gallatin County Commissioners who, when the rich say “jump,” they jump to approve.
As for a “clean and healthy environment for present and future generations of Montanans” — without enforcement that prescient mandate of our Constitution is just words on paper as the Gallatin River cries “mayday, mayday, mayday” to deaf ears.
