file a petition to the environmental regulators in Montana, requesting them to weaken a new water quality standard that has been agreed by the authorities. The Vancouver-based mining company is challenging the site-specific standard on the grounds that it is too stringent in comparison to federal guideline for selenium, a chemical by-product called which has been detected at elevated levels in fish tissue samples obtained from Koocanusa reservoir and the Kootenai River.
According to Kurt Moser, an attorney from the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) of the state of Montana, the agency disagrees with the company’s claims and intends to oppose the petition. “I just wanted to let you know we are intending to intervene in this petition, and should be filing something fairly soon along those lines,” he told members of the DEQ’s Board of Environmental Review (BER), during the meeting. “I guess I’d rather not comment any more, other than to say I am aware that in the Board’s record, there is an analysis that was done that the Board adopted already, and the Board has already concluded that the selenium standards that were adopted were not more stringent than federal.”
Meanwhile, David Lehnherr, a BER member, pointed out that the petition was “a waste of the Board’s time”, since it is not logical to consider if the company responsible for the very pollution which the Department is attempting to mitigate should be allowed to bypass the state’s rulemaking process.
