Ray Muggli Guest-Opinion in The Prairie Star: Coal bed methane companies impact quality of water in Eastern Montana

By RAY MUGGLI, Northern Plains Resource Council Friday, July 20, 2007 8:15 AM MDT
 
As a farmer, I understand the devastating effects salt can have on soil.
When the soil becomes contaminated with salt is clay, the negative impacts are multiplied.

As an irrigator, water is the lifeblood of my operation. My neighbors and I can't afford to let coal bed methane companies drastically increase the salt levels of the water I irrigate with.

In order to extract methane gas from coal seams, methane drillers are pumping out our ground water.

However, there is a problem.

In eastern Montana, water from the coal seams is naturally salty. This is satisfactory for livestock and domestic uses, but isn't fit for irrigation, or even watering your yard on a regular basis.

There is longstanding scientific knowledge that the water from coal seams in Southeastern Montana is high in salinity (EC), and sodicity (SAR).
 
The science has proven that when this water is put onto clay soils, it decreases the infiltration rate, which limits the amount of water a crop can absorb.

Recently, a study was released that proved this point. According to a peer-reviewed, interagency study published in Agriculture Water Management in 2006, an SAR increase from 2.0 up to 4.0 will result in significantly decreased infiltration rates, and reduced yield.

The methane industry's problem is that there's a lot of this water - far more than all the cattle in Montana could drink. Methane companies have avoided treating or re-injecting this water, so it needs to be put somewhere.

So far, they have used a variety of methods, including storing it in huge ponds that leak, and discharging it directly into the river from which I draw my irrigation water.

Members of Northern Plains Resource Council have been aware of the science and seen the impacts both from the ground and from the air. We have taken constructive steps to do something about it.

In 2003, the Northern Plains Resource Council, Tongue and Yellowstone Irrigation District, and the Tongue River Water Users' Association worked for over a year to convince the Montana Board of Environmental Review (BER) that we needed standards to protect us when salts in the water were reaching the limits that crops can tolerate.

While we aren't completely satisfied that the limits they imposed would fully protect us, they are the only protections we have against the saline and sodic water from methane development.

As any eastern Montanan knows, we live in a state that is divided both physically and culturally.

It seems a good part of the public would rather spend energy conserving western Montana than our part of the state.

We are seeing this now as the public has rallied against coal bed methane drilling and the Cline coal mine, both proposed in the Canadian headwaters of the Flathead River.

It sometimes seems as if protecting our agricultural heritage in Eastern Montana is not a priority. That's not right.

Regardless of the way people view Eastern Montana, we need to understand that it is the right of citizens to establish important protections for their quality of life. It is just as important for us to step up and enforce laws that protect our quality of life, especially the quality of our water!

Several energy companies and the state of Wyoming have sued Montana and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for adopting the 2003 standards to protect the rivers we depend on.

The methane industry claims Montana's standards "lack scientific justification." However, when the BER met in 2003 and again in 2006, they went through several months of testimony from the public, industry representatives, and scientific experts, which established a record on the importance of developing these standards. The citizens who petitioned for these standards bore the burden of proof to establish the need for these standards, and we proved without a doubt that these protections were necessary.

Northern Plains, the Tongue River Water Users Association, and Tongue and Yellowstone Irrigation District are doing some of the heavy lifting, providing excellent legal counsel and hydrologic information to defend these standards.

But it's really the role of the state to ensure that a comparatively short-lived industry doesn't destroy another industry that is the long-term lifeblood of the state's economy.

Irrigators, if you live downstream from coal bed methane development and you want your place to survive so you can pass it on to your kids and grandkids, you need to speak up. Call the governor today and tell him to hold firm against Wyoming and the methane companies. Tell him it's the state's job to defend us.

The governor and his departments have many demands on them and, unless we make ourselves heard, eastern Montana will get left in the dust, literally.

(Tongue River irrigator Ray Muggli, a pilot and photographer who has made dozens of flights over coal bed methane fields, is chair of Northern Plains Re-source Council's coal bed methane task force.)

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