Flathead Lakers Public Comments on Lakeside County Water & Sewer District Wastewater System Improvements Project, Phase 2
April 23, 2026
Montana Department of Environmental Quality
Water Quality Division
1520 E. Sixth Avenue
Helena, Montana 59620
RE: Public Comment, Draft Environmental Assessment and Finding of No Significant Impact, Lakeside County Water & Sewer District Wastewater System Improvements Project ,Phase 2
Dear Montana Department of Environmental Quality Water Quality Division Staff and Decision-Makers,
The Flathead Lakers, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving and protecting Flathead Lake and its watershed, respectfully submits these comments in opposition to DEQ’s Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) for the Lakeside County Water & Sewer District (LCWSD) Wastewater System Improvements Project ,Phase 2.
After careful review of DEQ’s Draft Environmental Assessment (dated April 9, 2026), the Phase 1 Final EA, independent hydrogeological studies, and the applicable statutory framework, we find that the FONSI is not supported by the record, is internally contradicted by DEQ’s own language in the Draft EA, and that the Phase 2 project will have significant adverse impacts on groundwater in the shallow aquifer, on connected surface waters including Wiley Slough and Ashley Creek, and ultimately on Flathead Lake itself. The FONSI also reflects a fundamental failure to take the ‘hard look’ MEPA requires: it relies on project cost data that is off by $45 million, omits a taxpayer-funded rate study from the public record, ignores documented seismic hazards at the site, and fails to analyze PFAS contamination in the septage this facility is explicitly designed to treat.
We urge DEQ to rescind the FONSI, require a full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), extend the public comment period by 60 days, consider alternative project sites, and conduct the independent hydrogeological and economic analysis this project demands before approving any Phase 2 discharge permit.
I. Project Background: Scale, Purpose, and Development Context
Phase 2 of the LCWSD Wastewater System Improvements Project would construct a Sequencing Batch Reactor (SBR) treatment facility and three Rapid Infiltration Basins (RIBs) capable of handling flows up to 716,036 gallons per day, with an ultimate system design oriented toward 900,000 gallons per day. Treated effluent would be discharged to the shallow groundwater through the RIBs rather than to surface water. The facility is located approximately one to two miles north of Flathead Lake and one-quarter mile from Wiley Slough, a direct tributary of Ashley Creek, which flows into Flathead Lake.
Understanding the full scope of what this facility is designed to do is critical. Flathead County has faced a growing septage disposal crisis for years. There are approximately 30,000 septic tanks in Flathead County with roughly 700 new permits issued in 2022 alone and between 20,000 and 40,000 gallons of septage is pumped from those tanks every single day. Historically, septage was managed through land application or composting at regional facilities. But permitted land application sites are ‘at a premium’ due to rapid valley growth, and Glacier Gold Composting, one of the only large-scale enterprises in the region still accepting septage waste, has hit capacity. Flathead County Commissioners, facing this crisis with no good options, signed an interlocal agreement with LCWSD in September 2023, revised in March 2024, effectively passing the entire county’s septage problem to the district. This is not simply a sewer expansion for Lakeside residents. It is a facility that will receive and discharge into a shallow deltaic aquifer adjacent to Flathead Lake between 20,000 and 40,000 gallons of septage per day from 30,000 septic systems spread across the entire Flathead Valley.
Layered onto this county crisis is an opportunistic private interest. Territory 1889 Golf & Lake Club, a proposed 1,800-acre, 359-home luxury resort development on Flathead Lake’s west shore backed by CrossHarbor Capital Partners and Discovery Land Company (local applicant: Flathead Friends LLC, operating as Flathead Lake Land Club, or FLLC), wants a convenient sewer hookup and has backed the county’s plans accordingly. This private development is not the reason Flathead County needed a septage facility. But it is the reason the capacity being built is as large as it is, and it is the reason an agreement allocating approximately 200,000 gallons per day of Phase 2 capacity to FLLC, nearly half the incremental new capacity, was approved by the LCWSD Board without public review, cost-benefit analysis, or any examination of how a private development commitment of that size affects the rates and service quality of the district’s 1,500 existing ratepayers. The DEQ EA does not examine this agreement or its financial implications.
In the 2025 Montana Legislative Session, Rep. Courtenay Sprunger (R-Kalispell) introduced House Bill 534, allowing water and sewer districts to connect new developments to systems operating beyond rated capacity via an ‘approved development plan,’ and creating new MEPA exemptions. This is the mechanism Territory 1889 is using to attach to an over-capacity system. The LCWSD board voted to service Territory 1889 on March 18-19, 2025, while HB 534 was still moving through the legislature.
II. The FONSI Is Directly Contradicted by DEQ’s Own Draft EA Language
The strongest case against this FONSI comes from DEQ’s own Draft EA. The following verbatim passages from the April 9, 2026 Draft EA establish, in DEQ’s own words, a direct and documented pathway from the RIB discharge site to Flathead Lake:
“the >50-year phosphorus breakthrough, and the specific travel times to receiving surface waters”
DEQ Draft EA, April 9, 2026, p. 5 (emphasis added)
“typical of the deltaic deposits left from the Flathead River flowing into Flathead Lake”
DEQ Draft EA, April 9, 2026, p. 21 (describing site soils)
“their potential to influence groundwater and nearby surface waters such as Wiley Slough”
DEQ Draft EA, April 9, 2026, p. 25
“The Phase 2 WWTF is expected to reduce overall nutrient loading to groundwater and connected surface waters”
DEQ Draft EA, April 9, 2026, p. 25 (emphasis added)
“Wiley Slough area is located approximately one-quarter mile north of the facility property boundary”
DEQ Draft EA, April 9, 2026, p. 37
“tribal water quality standards in downstream receiving waters”
DEQ Draft EA, April 9, 2026, p. 47
“Downstream surface waters were specifically evaluated in the April 2025 Final EA”
DEQ Draft EA, April 9, 2026, p. 47
These are not the words of project critics. They are DEQ’s own characterizations, in the document before us. DEQ acknowledges that the site geology consists of deltaic deposits directly connected to Flathead Lake; that there are “specific travel times to receiving surface waters,” meaning DEQ has calculated how long it takes for discharged water to reach those surface waters; that phosphorus will breach to connected surface waters, though projected at greater than 50 years; that Wiley Slough, a direct tributary of Ashley Creek and Flathead Lake, is 1,320 feet from the facility boundary; and that “tribal water quality standards” apply to the downstream receiving waters. Then DEQ concludes there is no significant impact. These findings cannot be squared with a conclusion of no significant impact.
III. Unlawful Segmentation: Phase 1 and Phase 2 Cannot Be Reviewed in Isolation
A central legal defect in the Phase 2 FONSI is DEQ’s treatment of Phase 1 and Phase 2 as independent projects subject to separate environmental review. In legal briefs filed in the Eleventh Judicial District Court (Case No. DV-15-2025-0000846-OC), Citizens for a Better Flathead and the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, who jointly brought suit against DEQ, argue that the agency is ‘segmenting’ its decisions by treating the discharge permit (Phase 1) as separate from the construction and operation of the chosen treatment technology (Phase 2).
This segmentation is both legally impermissible and factually absurd. Phase 1, the pollution permit, is inseparable from Phase 2, the wastewater treatment technology and infrastructure. You cannot meaningfully analyze the environmental impact of a discharge permit without knowing the volume, concentration, and composition of the discharge, all of which are determined by the Phase 2 treatment technology and design. DEQ’s own Phase 2 Draft EA makes this plain by deferring its water quality analysis to the Phase 1 Final EA by reference on pages 24-25, citing it no fewer than three times as the basis for Phase 2 water quality conclusions.
The problem is compounded by scale. The Phase 2 project will discharge at flows up to 3.5 times greater than what was analyzed in the Phase 1 EA. A FONSI based on water quality modeling conducted for a project operating at less than one-third of Phase 2’s design capacity cannot legally support the conclusion that Phase 2, which would discharge at maximum month flows of up to 716,036 gpd, will have no significant impact on the same groundwater system. MEPA requires independent analysis of Phase 2’s impacts, not a citation back to a prior document produced for a categorically different operational scale.
This problem is made worse by the fact that the Phase 1 permit and its underlying EA are currently the subject of active litigation, with a judge having denied DEQ’s motion to dismiss. Basing Phase 2’s FONSI on an EA that is itself under active legal challenge is procedurally untenable. DEQ should stay Phase 2 proceedings until the Eleventh Judicial District Court determines whether the Phase 1 EA satisfied MEPA’s ‘hard look’ requirement.
IV. Flawed and Oversimplified Groundwater Modeling
The EA’s groundwater analysis relies on the MOUNDSOLV modeling tool and identifies a ‘305-foot mixing zone’ as the basis for concluding nutrient concentrations will be adequately diluted before reaching sensitive surface waters. Independent hydrogeologists retained by community groups and the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes have found that the hydrogeologic conditions associated with the shallow aquifer were ‘completely oversimplified.’ Specifically, the model:
Assumes uniform subsurface soil conditions in soils the DEQ itself describes as “typical of the deltaic deposits left from the Flathead River flowing into Flathead Lake”, an inherently heterogeneous and highly permeable geological formation that invalidates uniform-soil modeling assumptions;
Fails to adequately evaluate contaminant travel times and fate-and-transport for nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus), pathogens, and emerging contaminants, despite DEQ acknowledging “specific travel times to receiving surface waters” in the EA itself;
Does not model the increased hydraulic pressure and accelerated transport that will result from discharging up to 716,036 gallons per day through three RIBs into a shallow, highly permeable deltaic aquifer;
Relies on a simplistic 305-foot mixing zone that has not been validated by site-specific tracer tests or peer-reviewed against the MBMG’s documented shallow aquifer characteristics in the Flathead Lake Basin; and
Entirely fails to model PFAS fate and transport, a contaminant class present in septage that is not removed by conventional treatment and that the EA does not address.
The fact that DEQ’s own model predicts “>50-year phosphorus breakthrough” to connected surface waters while simultaneously issuing a FONSI reveals the inadequacy of the analysis. A 50-year phosphorus loading event is not a no impact event. It is a deferred, potentially irreversible impact to Flathead Lake, a waterbody that the University of Montana Biological Station has documented as extremely sensitive to phosphorus inputs for over 100 years.
V. The Site Geology Confirms Direct Hydrological Connectivity
DEQ’s own characterization of the site geology settles this question. The Draft EA states the site soils are “typical of the deltaic deposits left from the Flathead River flowing into Flathead Lake” (p. 21). Deltaic deposits are among the most permeable geological formations in alluvial systems, consisting of coarse-grained sands and gravels deposited as the Flathead River entered Flathead Lake. These formations are specifically characterized by rapid groundwater flow, high hydraulic conductivity, and direct hydrological connectivity to adjacent surface water bodies.
Research by the Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology (MBMG) documents this connectivity explicitly for the Flathead Lake Basin. The shallow groundwater flow system is local in character, with water moving from recharge areas to nearby lakes and streams. Surface water quality during low-flow conditions is largely a function of shallow aquifer groundwater quality, meaning that what enters the aquifer determines the water quality of adjacent streams and, through them, Flathead Lake. MBMG studies have also documented interaction between deep and shallow aquifers in the valley, meaning contamination risks are broader than the EA acknowledges.
DEQ acknowledges the potential for groundwater to “influence groundwater and nearby surface waters such as Wiley Slough” (p. 25), and that the Phase 2 facility is expected to affect “connected surface waters” (p. 25). Wiley Slough is 1,320 feet from the facility boundary. Ashley Creek, listed as impaired under the Clean Water Act for nitrogen, phosphorus, chlorophyll-a, excess algal growth, dissolved oxygen, and water temperature, flows directly from Wiley Slough to Flathead Lake. This hydrological connection is both scientifically documented and explicitly acknowledged in DEQ’s own EA.
VI. PFAS and Emerging Contaminants: A Critical Unanalyzed Threat
The Phase 2 EA contains no meaningful analysis of PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) or other emerging contaminants. This is not a minor gap. It is the central analytical failure of the FONSI. The county’s septage disposal crisis, real, urgent, and years in the making, is the primary reason this facility is being built. But urgency does not excuse a failure to analyze what happens to the PFAS in that septage after it is discharged into the ground next to Flathead Lake.
The documented facts are as follows. Flathead County has approximately 30,000 septic tanks, with 700 or more new permits issued annually. Between 20,000 and 40,000 gallons of septage is pumped from those tanks every day. Permitted land application sites have become scarce due to rapid growth throughout the valley. Glacier Gold Composting, one of the only large-scale enterprises in the region still accepting septage and biosolid waste, has hit capacity and is closing its Olney facility. With no good regional solution in place, Flathead County Commissioners signed interlocal agreements with LCWSD in 2023 and 2024, transferring the county’s septage problem to the district. The LCWSD Phase 2 facility is the county’s answer to this crisis. Every gallon of the 20,000 to 40,000 gallons pumped daily from Flathead County’s 30,000 septic tanks has to go somewhere. Under this project, it goes into the deltaic aquifer connected to Flathead Lake, without PFAS treatment.
PFAS is present throughout the regional septage and biosolids stream and is growing as a documented concern. Kalispell’s own municipal wastewater system ,which handles conventional sewage with far less concentrated septage than a dedicated regional facility, already tests at 2 parts per billion of PFOS/PFOA in its biosolids, according to engineering reports by AE2S. Flathead County has begun imposing new moisture content restrictions on biosolids at the county landfill specifically because of the growing PFAS-contaminated biosolids volume entering the system. The regional septage stream, which is more concentrated than municipal biosolids and comes from households across the entire valley using PFAS-containing products, will carry a PFAS load substantially higher than what Kalispell’s municipal system produces.
Septage from septic systems carries significantly higher concentrations of PFAS than conventional municipal wastewater. This is because septage accumulates the concentrated waste of households that use PFAS-containing consumer products, cookware coatings, food packaging, firefighting foam, stain-resistant textiles, without the dilution that occurs in a conventional sewer collection system. A regional septage receiving facility processing waste from Flathead County septic systems will handle a concentrated PFAS load that municipal systems do not face.
Critically, PFAS treatment is explicitly NOT included in Phase 2. LCWSD General Manager Rodney Olson has acknowledged publicly that the district is ‘looking at’ adding a membrane bioreactor to treat PFAS and pharmaceuticals, but this technology is not part of Phase 2 and would require additional DEQ review. This means DEQ is being asked to issue a FONSI for a facility that will receive a concentrated regional PFAS load and discharge treated effluent, with PFAS largely intact, into the shallow groundwater connected to Flathead Lake, without any analysis of PFAS fate, transport, or long-term accumulation in the lake.
PFAS is not removed by conventional secondary treatment. Unlike nitrogen and phosphorus, PFAS does not degrade in the environment. It accumulates in groundwater, sediment, fish tissue, and drinking water. It has been detected in Flathead Lake fish in other contexts. The ‘>50-year phosphorus breakthrough’ that DEQ’s own model acknowledges is serious enough. PFAS, unlike phosphorus, does not have a self-limiting breakthrough timeline. Once PFAS enters the deltaic aquifer beneath this site, it will reach Flathead Lake. The EA provides no analysis of this outcome and no plan to prevent it.
VII. Ashley Creek Is Already Impaired, Phase 2 Will Worsen Its Condition
Lower Ashley Creek is listed as impaired under the Clean Water Act for multiple parameters including nitrate/nitrite, total nitrogen, total Kjeldahl nitrogen, chlorophyll-a, excess algal growth, dissolved oxygen, and water temperature. A DEQ water quality assessment estimates that more than 3,350 existing septic systems in the Lower Ashley Creek watershed already contribute 15% of the nitrogen and 20% of the phosphorus loads to the creek. The Flathead Lake TMDL, approved by EPA in 2014, mandates a 25% reduction in nitrogen and phosphorus loads to the lake.
Adding a groundwater discharge of up to 900,000 gpd of treated wastewater into the shallow aquifer directly connected to this already-impaired watershed, where DEQ’s own model predicts phosphorus will eventually reach surface waters, directly contradicts the mandatory nutrient reduction goals of the TMDL program. DEQ cannot lawfully approve a project that will foreseeably increase nutrient loading to a water body for which a federally mandated reduction is legally required.
This conflict is compounded by the 2025 Montana Legislature’s passage of House Bill 664, which repealed Montana’s numeric nitrogen and phosphorus water quality standards that had been in place since 2014. DEQ’s own Draft EA references “tribal water quality standards in downstream receiving waters” (p. 47) as a relevant benchmark, standards the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes hold under their 1855 Hellgate Treaty rights to harvest fish from Flathead Lake. HB 664’s repeal of the numeric nutrient standards is itself the subject of a federal lawsuit filed January 26, 2026, by the Flathead Lakers, CSKT, and Upper Missouri Waterkeeper. DEQ should not finalize a FONSI while the validity of its own nutrient standards framework is under active legal challenge.
VIII. Flathead Lake Is Extremely Sensitive to Additional Nutrient and Contaminant Inputs
Flathead Lake is one of the largest natural freshwater lakes in the western United States and is classified as oligotrophic, nutrient-poor, making it extremely sensitive to additional nutrient loading. The University of Montana’s Flathead Lake Biological Station has monitored the lake for over 100 years and documented a growing imbalance between nitrogen and phosphorus. Phytoplankton in the lake are phosphorus-limited for much of the year, meaning even small incremental additions of phosphorus can trigger disproportionate ecological responses.
This is not theoretical. In the 1970s and 1980s, human-driven nutrient inputs caused significant algal blooms in Flathead Lake, triggering emergency management responses including one of the nation’s first bans on phosphorus-containing laundry detergents and a multimillion-dollar overhaul of regional wastewater treatment facilities. The precedents from Lake Tahoe and Lake Washington, where regulators concluded that the only protective measure was to physically remove wastewater discharge from the watershed, are instructive. Both lakes required a fundamental change in approach, not incremental permitting at an inadequate location.
A Phase 2 discharge of up to 716,036 gpd of treated wastewater, carrying measurable nitrogen, phosphorus, and unanalyzed PFAS, into a shallow aquifer DEQ itself connects to Flathead Lake, represents precisely the kind of decision that caused the Tahoe and Washington crises. The EA does not include a cumulative nutrient loading analysis modeling the combined contribution of Phase 2 discharges, regional septic inputs, and atmospheric deposition to the lake. This is a fundamental analytical gap that the FONSI does not and cannot excuse.
IX. DEQ’s Economic Analysis Fails the ‘Hard Look’ Standard
MEPA requires DEQ to take a ‘hard look’ at the economic impacts of a proposed project, including the true cost burden on the public. The Phase 2 EA fails this standard in multiple concrete and documented ways.
$45 Million Cost Discrepancy: The DEQ’s April 9, 2026 EA relies on an uncited Phase 2 project cost of $13.4 million. However, LCWSD’s own June 17, 2025 Project Expansion Budget, obtained via public records request, lists the actual total project cost at $58,457,000. The DEQ asked the public to comment on a project description that is off by $45 million. A FONSI premised on a cost figure that understates the actual project cost by more than 400% does not reflect a ‘hard look’ at economic impacts.
Suppressed Ratepayer-Funded Rate Study: LCWSD used $75,000 in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds to commission a rate study analyzing the full financial impact of this expansion on district ratepayers. That study has not been released to the public for months, despite a 61.7% sewer rate hike already imposed on the district’s approximately 1,500 ratepayers. DEQ’s EA does not reference or incorporate this study. The public has a right to this information before commenting on a project that will directly affect their utility rates.
ARPA Funds Already Committed: Flathead County Commissioners have committed approximately $23 million in ARPA funds to this $58 million expansion, and Congressman Ryan Zinke has secured an additional $3 million in federal Community Project Funding. Allowing the district to spend these public funds while the project’s legality is being determined by the courts, and while the FONSI is premised on a cost figure off by $45 million, is a waste of public resources that DEQ’s environmental review should address.
We note that the Flathead County septage disposal crisis is genuine and the need for a regional solution is real. The Flathead Lakers do not dispute this. What we dispute is the location. The fact that significant public money has already been committed, and that institutional momentum is strong, does not transform a hydrographically flawed site into an acceptable one. MEPA’s hard look requirement exists precisely to prevent sunk costs and project momentum from overriding honest environmental analysis. The prior errors in site selection and the logic that led to them must be confronted directly, not papered over with a FONSI that contradicts DEQ’s own findings.
Secret Benefit to Private Developer: The EA does not analyze the financial agreement between LCWSD and Flathead Lake Land Club (FLLC/Territory 1889), under which approximately 200,000 gpd of Phase 2 capacity was allocated to a private luxury development. Only the LCWSD board saw this agreement before voting on it. DEQ should require a cost-benefit analysis of whether this allocation increases costs for existing ratepayers, and whether it is in the public interest for a publicly subsidized system to devote nearly half its incremental capacity to a single private development.
X. Infrastructure and Site Safety Deficiencies
The Phase 2 EA does not adequately address several serious infrastructure and safety deficiencies at the existing and proposed facility site.
Existing Lagoons Never Sludged: The district’s 40-year-old existing lagoons have reportedly never undergone sludge removal. DEQ Circular 2 establishes standards for lagoon operation and maintenance; failure to periodically remove accumulated sludge is a violation of those standards and threatens the operational integrity of the existing system. DEQ cannot responsibly approve a major Phase 2 expansion while the existing Phase 1 infrastructure is operating in a potentially non-compliant condition.
Seismic Hazard / High Liquefaction Potential: Geotechnical reports prepared in 2022 document ‘high’ liquefaction potential at the project site. Liquefaction during an earthquake can cause rapid ground failure, infrastructure collapse, and the release of untreated or partially treated wastewater directly into the environment. The DEQ has not provided a facility design that demonstrates the proposed infrastructure can withstand seismic events consistent with the documented site hazard. This is a public safety failure that the FONSI does not acknowledge or address.
Site Selection Never Rigorously Evaluated: The EA does not rigorously evaluate alternative sites for the expanded facility. A site that sits in deltaic deposits directly connected to Flathead Lake, within 1,320 feet of Wiley Slough, in a high-liquefaction seismic zone, with existing lagoons in questionable condition, is not an acceptable location for the region’s primary wastewater and septage treatment facility without a thorough comparative analysis of alternatives located further from the lake.
XI. Legal and Legislative Integrity Concerns
A. Active Litigation
Three active lawsuits arising from the same LCWSD expansion and its associated permits are currently pending:
Citizens for a Better Flathead and Bruce Young v. LCWSD (Flathead County District Court, Case No. DV-15-2025-0000846-OC): Challenges the LCWSD board’s March 18-19 and April 9, 2025 decisions as procedurally deficient, alleging the board failed to provide adequate public notice before voting to service Territory 1889 and award a construction bid. Montana Supreme Court declined to intervene November 2025; core claims pending.
Citizens for a Better Flathead and CSKT v. DEQ (District Court): Challenges DEQ’s issuance of Phase 1 discharge permit MTX000307. CSKT Tribal Council Chairman Michael Dolson described the permit as ‘an attempt to circumvent the plain requirements of the federal Clean Water Act.’ Court denied DEQ’s motion to dismiss. Core MEPA and arbitrary-action claims pending full review.
Flathead Lakers, CSKT, and Upper Missouri Waterkeeper v. EPA (Federal Court, filed January 26, 2026): Challenges EPA’s October 2025 approval of Montana’s weakened nutrient standards (enacted via HB 664) as inconsistent with the Clean Water Act. HB 664’s repeal of numeric nitrogen and phosphorus standards directly affects the “tribal water quality standards in downstream receiving waters” that DEQ’s own Phase 2 Draft EA explicitly acknowledges.
B. Legislative Context
The 2025 Montana Legislature passed two bills that directly and specifically removed barriers to the Territory 1889 development and the LCWSD expansion:
House Bill 534 (Rep. Courtenay Sprunger, R-Kalispell): Allows water/sewer districts to connect new developments to systems operating beyond rated capacity via an ‘approved development plan,’ and creates new MEPA exemptions. This is the precise mechanism through which Territory 1889 is being connected to an over-capacity LCWSD. Environmental advocates flagged HB 534 as creating ‘a perverse incentive to rubber-stamp any engineering plan.’
House Bill 664 (Rep. Bill Mercer, R-Billings): Repealed Montana’s numeric nitrogen and phosphorus water quality standards that had protected Flathead Lake since 2014, replacing them with subjective narrative standards. This repeal directly weakens the protections DEQ’s own EA cites as applicable to downstream receiving waters.
When the legislative backdrop for a project’s environmental review has been shaped by interests with a direct financial stake in its approval, DEQ’s independent obligations under MEPA are heightened, not reduced.
XII. Requests and Recommended Actions
Based on everything documented above, the Flathead Lakers respectfully request that DEQ:
Rescind the FONSI and prepare a full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) that comprehensively and independently evaluates the impacts of Phase 2 discharges on the shallow deltaic aquifer, Wiley Slough, Ashley Creek, and Flathead Lake, at Phase 2 design flows and not by reference to Phase 1 analysis.
Stay all Phase 2 proceedings until the Eleventh Judicial District Court determines whether DEQ’s Phase 1 EA satisfied MEPA’s ‘hard look’ requirement (Case No. DV-15-2025-0000846-OC), and until a corrected EA based on the true project cost of $58.457 million is issued.
Extend the public comment period by 60 days to allow the public meaningful time to hire independent experts and provide informed comment on thousands of pages of technical data, time that the current schedule does not provide.
Immediately release the $75,000 ARPA-funded rate study and incorporate its findings into a corrected EA. Ratepayers who have already absorbed a 61.7% rate hike have an unambiguous right to this information.
Commission an independent hydrogeological study using site-specific boring logs, hydraulic conductivity measurements, tracer tests, and peer-reviewed fate-and-transport modeling before any Phase 2 permit is issued. The study must address the deltaic deposit geology DEQ itself identifies and the documented shallow water aquifer interaction in the Flathead Valley.
Require a full PFAS analysis including baseline groundwater PFAS monitoring, modeling of PFAS fate and transport from RIB discharge through the deltaic aquifer to connected surface waters, and a determination of whether Phase 2 can proceed without PFAS treatment technology in place.
Require a public cost-benefit analysis of the FLLC/Territory 1889 capacity agreement documenting how the allocation of 200,000 gpd to a private developer affects the rates, capacity, and service quality of the district’s 1,500 existing ratepayers.
Conduct a seismic safety review demonstrating that the proposed facility design can withstand earthquake events consistent with the ‘high’ liquefaction potential documented in the 2022 geotechnical reports.
Conduct a TMDL-consistency analysis demonstrating how Phase 2 nutrient loading is consistent with the Flathead Lake TMDL’s mandate for a 25% reduction in nutrient loads, accounting for the >50-year phosphorus breakthrough to connected surface waters DEQ’s own model predicts.
Apply applicable tribal water quality standards and conduct meaningful government-to-government consultation with the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes before any Phase 2 permit decision.
Evaluate alternative sites and technologies including locations not situated in deltaic deposits connected to Flathead Lake, and advanced nutrient removal and PFAS treatment technologies consistent with TMDL requirements. The Lake Tahoe and Lake Washington models, where wastewater was physically removed from the lake’s watershed rather than discharged into it, should be examined.
XIII. Conclusion
DEQ’s own Draft EA uses the words “deltaic deposits,” “connected surface waters,” “specific travel times to receiving surface waters,” “>50-year phosphorus breakthrough,” and “tribal water quality standards in downstream receiving waters.” These words describe a site that is hydrologically, geologically, and legally connected to Flathead Lake. A Finding of No Significant Impact cannot be reconciled with this language.
The project’s problems go beyond groundwater modeling. DEQ is asking the public to comment on a $13.4 million project that actually costs $58.457 million. It is withholding a taxpayer-funded rate study from the public while those same taxpayers absorb a 61.7% rate hike. It is ignoring documented seismic hazards at the site. It is issuing a FONSI for a regional septage facility serving all of Flathead County’s 30,000 septic tanks without any PFAS analysis, in a location where treated effluent will reach Flathead Lake. And it is doing all of this in a manner that treats the prior, flawed assumptions of Phase 1 as settled, because reversing course now would require acknowledging that the wrong site was chosen for a facility that will define the water quality of Flathead Lake for generations.
The water quality gains won by prior generations of environmental protection now face a serious threat. This project has been driven by luxury development interests, enabled by targeted legislation, and approved through a FONSI that leans on prior analysis conducted for a project operating at one-third of Phase 2’s scale. Flathead Lake deserves better. A complete, independent, and scientifically rigorous Environmental Impact Statement is the only review adequate to the stakes. We welcome the opportunity to participate in that process.
Respectfully submitted,
Coby Gierke
Executive Director
And
Brian S. Campbell
Board President
Flathead Lakers
lakers@flatheadlakers.org
April 23, 2026
References and Supporting Sources
DEQ, Draft Environmental Assessment, LCWSD Wastewater System Improvements Project ,Phase 2 (April 9, 2026). Cited pages: pp. 5, 21, 24-25, 37, 47.
DEQ, Finding of No Significant Impact, LCWSD Wastewater System Improvements Project ,Phase 2 (April 9, 2026). Signed Rachel Clark, P.E.
DEQ, Final Environmental Assessment, LCWSD Wastewater System Improvements Project ,Phase 1 (April 2025). MGWPCS Permit MTX000307.
DEQ Phase 1 Fact Sheet, LCWSD MGWPCS Permit MTX000307 (Dec. 2024): aquifer ‘hydrologically connected to surface waters.’
LCWSD Project Expansion Budget, June 17, 2025 (obtained via public records request): Total project cost $58,457,000.
Citizens for a Better Flathead, Formal Demand Letter to DEQ (April 2026): documents cost discrepancy, suppressed rate study, lagoon maintenance, seismic hazard.
Eleventh Judicial District Court, Case No. DV-15-2025-0000846-OC: Citizens for a Better Flathead + CSKT v. DEQ (Phase 1 permit challenge, motion to dismiss denied).
Flathead County, Regional Septage Treatment Facility Agreement with LCWSD (2023): flatheadcounty.gov/department-directory/commissioners-office/project-and-engineering/septage-treatment
Flathead County Health Department / Flathead County Commissioners: approximately 30,000 septic tanks in Flathead County; 700+ new permits in 2022; 20,000-40,000 gallons septage pumped daily; Glacier Gold Composting has ‘hit capacity’; land application sites ‘at a premium.’ Source: County reporting via Daily Inter Lake and Flathead Beacon, 2023-2024.
Daily Inter Lake, “Kalispell City Council to consider fast-tracking wastewater plant upgrades” (Feb. 24, 2025): Glacier Gold Composting Olney facility closing Sept. 30, 2025; PFAS in regional biosolids; Kalispell biosolids at 2 ppb PFOS/PFOA (AE2S report).
Flathead County, Interlocal Agreement with LCWSD for Regional Septage Treatment Facility (Sept. 2023, revised March 19, 2024): County to fund construction; District to build and operate.
Daily Inter Lake, “Flathead County flushes out new biosolid restriction for landfill” (March 8, 2026): County imposing 18% solids moisture requirement in response to growing PFAS-contaminated biosolids volume.
Daily Inter Lake / Flathead Beacon reporting on LCWSD General Manager Rodney Olson: PFAS membrane bioreactor not included in Phase 2; would require additional DEQ review.
Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology, Ground-Water Resources of the Flathead Lake Area (MBMG Groundwater Assessment No. 2). mbmg.mtech.edu/pdf/GWA_2.pdf
University of Montana Flathead Lake Biological Station ,40-year nutrient dynamics study.
DEQ, Flathead Lake Watershed Restoration Plan (Dec. 2014): 25% nutrient reduction mandate.
Montana Legislature, HB 534 (2025): legiscan.com/MT/text/HB534
Montana Legislature, HB 664 (2025): legiscan.com/MT/bill/HB664/2025
Flathead Lakers + CSKT + Upper Missouri Waterkeeper v. EPA, Federal Court (filed Jan. 26, 2026): challenges EPA approval of HB 664 nutrient standard repeal.
Citizens for a Better Flathead + Bruce Young v. LCWSD, Flathead County District Court (Case No. DV-15-2025-0000846-OC, filed April 16, 2025).
Citizens for a Better Flathead + CSKT v. DEQ, District Court (Phase 1 permit, 2025).
See also: Supplemental Addendum ,“Political and Corporate Connections Underlying the LCWSD Wastewater System Improvements Project ,Phase 2” (Flathead Lakers, April 23, 2026).