How my community protected our water from a huge water-bottling plant
A big win for water and a reminder that citizens can make a difference
In the early days of 2016, my husband and I received a notice in the mail. The notice and enclosed form were hard to decipher but the gist was that someone nearby was developing a water-bottling plant. They had applied for and been granted a water permit. The amount of water permitted was listed in acre-feet further confounding our understanding of how much water was being granted. According to the notice, our well was close enough to possibly be affected by the loss of water from the bottling plant’s extraction. The letter was from the Montana DNRC (Department of Natural Resources and Conservation), the agency responsible for allocating and supposedly protecting Montanans’ water. The DNRC notice informed us that were allowed to object to the permit and listed the conditions under which we were allowed to object. These conditions were indecipherable to me and my husband and notably, the form had a signature line for one’s lawyer. To object we had to pay a fee. My husband and I discussed what to do and not knowing how to reply we set it aside. Of course, we were very concerned about a possible water-bottling plant in our area, but I recall saying with sadness, “No one here is going to care.” Fortunately, I was proven wrong.
This county in western Montana is well known for its conservative, independent bent. Policies and beliefs trend heavily toward the ideas “A guy can do whatever he wants on his own land,” and “Government should leave us alone.” Montana was established as an extractive (or natural resource-rich) state with a long history of mining, logging, large ranches, and struggles over water. A lot of early land ownership was established by people homesteading under very harsh conditions, so the pioneer spirit runs strong[1]. Given the harshness of the weather and the isolation of rural life, people tend to be self-reliant by necessity, but also rely on and band together with neighbors when trouble strikes.
Thus, soon after we received that DNRC notice, we received a phone call from our elderly neighbor who lives about a mile down the road. She implored us to call another neighbor across the slough, because we needed to follow very specific legal language in filling out our objection paperwork. We all needed a lawyer in order to object, she said, and our neighbor across the slough had found a lawyer to help. Perhaps we could all band together, share the lawyer, and object, she said, but we definitely needed to object to protect our wells and landscape. We had never met the neighbor across the slough, but we gave her a call right away. She gave us some initial information. The next day, another neighbor came to our door and gave us a handout with the legal instructions that would help us navigate filling out our objection. Soon, someone organized a meeting to discuss what to do.
And with that began a 7 ½ -year odyssey that would end with our neighbors and us protecting our water from a water-bottling plant, one that was intended as one of the largest in North America. That odyssey would include meetings, community organizing, education, fund raising, testifying before state legislative committees, a voter initiative, and three lawsuits with multiple appeals. Through twists and turns of responding to this threat we met our neighbors and community members. We learned that people here deeply love their water and were willing to do what was necessary to defend it.
I certainly did not want to spend my time on this cause. I doubt any of us did. But no one was going to fight it for us [2]. No outside organization was coming to save us. If we didn’t do what was necessary, we would have to live with the consequences of a Super-Walmart sized water-bottling plant in our lovely, quiet area of farmland and farmhouses next to the Flathead River (see photo above). The company planned to bottle 1.2 billion 20-oz bottles of water a year – a huge amount. It would have been one of the largest bottling plants in North America. That level of water extraction would have drawn down area wells, likely compromising the artesian flow, and rendering some wells unusable. And people could do nothing about that because drawing down wells was not considered a significant consequence by permitting agencies. Natural springs providing important ecosystem support, Egan slough - the oxbow body of water I live on - and perhaps even the river could be affected by the water loss. And the company would be allowed to dump their plastics-contaminated wastewater into a stream that emptied into the Flathead River nearby. (The red mark on the photo above shows where the bottling plant was going to be. The curving body of water is the Flathead River. The large body of water in the distance is Flathead Lake).
Unlike much of the West, in our county we are blessed with a lot of water. Our deep and shallow aquifers are filled from snowmelt runoff from the mountains of Glacier National Park and other mountains, flowing into three rivers and recharging the aquifer. Some of our aquifer water is deep underground from glaciers that melted during the last ice age…truly ancient water. We and many of our neighbors are blessed to have artesian wells that allow us access to this delicious and clean water for drinking and other needs. The quality of the water made it a target for extractors. This is the water the owners of the bottling plant wanted to market and sell all over the world. And surely, they would have eventually sold to one of the big corporate water extractors[3].
We are very aware that we cannot take our water for granted. Just because we have seemingly abundant water now, we know that abundance is not guaranteed. As the climate warms, our area will get less and less snow, and so the source that feeds our aquifer will steadily diminish in the future. We know that other large aquifers have been depleted from over extraction. The Ogalala aquifer of the central plains or the aquifer of the Central Valley of California are examples. Our aquifer is much smaller than these, and poorly studied, but certainly at high risk of depletion from overuse. After all, despite our rivers and aquifer, our climate is high desert with risk for worsening forest fires and desertification as the climate changes and development proceeds without much planning. Nonetheless, the DNRC, supported by the state legislature, has declared that the aquifer is infinite to make granting permits easier. They declared this based on no scientific information, rather, they just declared it to be so. These short-sighted, industry biased conditions were what we were up against. But this was too ridiculous, too unfair to let just happen without a citizen challenge.
In the beginning there was a self-organizing character to how we all responded. We asked one another questions that none of us knew the answers to. What the heck? Why would someone build a water bottling plant there of all places, miles down dirt roads away from any highway? What would a water-bottling plant on that farmland mean for us as individuals? What would it mean for our valley’s water? How can they do that? The agency did what? What could we do?
And so, people banded together to figure out how to object to that huge water permit (remember – enough for 1.2 billion 20oz bottles/year) the DNRC had already granted to the bottling plant. By the time any of us learned of this, the owners of the water bottling plant had already built a first building about the size of a farm equipment shed and, of course, the DNRC had already granted the water permit. Soon, the DEQ, without any investigation, would grant a discharge permit to allow the plant to dump wastewater, likely plastic contaminated, into a stream that emptied into the valley’s major river about ½ mile from the plant. And so, we organized together, hired a legal firm, and objected to the water permit. The agency tried to make objecting very difficult and only considered some filed objections (mostly those filed by people with lawyers) to be valid. Soon, a sizable group of neighbors and community members formed a group, Water For Flathead’s Future, that eventually gained non-profit status and was the home for organizing and lawsuits around the environmental and water permits. From there, we went to hearings, people gave talks, we hired studies and models of the water systems. The photo below shows just one of the many times the community packed county meetings and court rooms, showing their concern for water. In our small community, this is a packed room.
People showed up in Montana slush to demonstrate in support of our water and in protest against the bottling plant permitting.
We learned more that most ever cared to know about water and environmental law, regulation, permitting, legal briefs, and court filings. We hosted community events, films, rallies, fundraisers. We challenged the permits first in agency hearings and then through the courts. We would win, the plant and the agencies would appeal, repeat.
We also had to learn about zoning. Where we live, much of the countryside, including my land, remains unzoned - it’s that “a guy can do what a guy wants on his land” thing. And of course, the bottling plant was on unzoned land. However, near the bottling plant, land had been zoned earlier to keep the farm sizes to 80 acres or more to protect some of the best farmland and topsoil in the nation, preserving it for farming, food production, and ecosystems. One of our neighbors, who was part of that earlier zoning effort, had the idea to work with neighbors near the bottling plant to expand the existing zoning district to better protect farms and water, hopefully helping to contain (or prevent) the water bottling plant.
This turned out to be a big deal, because the county, historically indifferent to citizen-based zoning, threw all kinds of roadblocks in the way of the effort. In response we came together, and with the help of over 100 volunteers, got citizen signatures and completed all the necessary things steps for a ballot initiative. This was a huge amount of work. We formed another organization called Yes! For Flathead Farms and Water for this purpose. This ballot initiative put the question of whether to expand the zoning area to protect the farms and land around and including the water bottling plant site before the voters of the county for them to decide. We were pleasantly surprised that despite the pushback from local government and despite the general conservative, non-interventionist lean of our county, people here really care about water and land. Our ballot initiative passed with almost 70% of the vote!
There were many twists, turns, and legal challenges to the zoning district, but the Montana Supreme Court upheld the legality of the zoning. Thus, this particular large area of farms and ecosystems is protected from future industrial development as the Egan Slough Zoning District.
In the end, we were lucky. The agencies that issued the permits didn’t even follow their own rules or the state laws. Because they broke their own rules and laws, our legal challenges to the water permit ultimately prevailed both at district court and at the Montana Supreme Court despite several appeals by the DNRC and bottling plant. The bottling plant’s water permit was voided and without that permit, the company can’t bottle enough water to be viable. We won[4]! But the road to that win was a long and uncertain 7 ½ years of determined effort by many people, excellent work of lawyers, perseverance, good ideas, and a lot of money.
This as a short telling of a very long story, of how a core group of a couple dozen people, helped by at least a hundred others, came together around our love and concern for our water. It was a long, often irritating, sometimes discouraging, and very expensive journey. We also met wonderful people. We learned a lot about how the systems work and don’t work. We met and became close to our neighbors. Different people stepped in at crucial times to do what needed to be done. Some special people passed away before they could see our final victory. We remember them with great gratitude. Some people’s lives that took them out of the area. Every single person was vital to what happened.
We defended our water. Together, we won.
None of us wanted to being doing this with our time and money. None of us wanted to be in this fight or to have to fight at all. But as my husband and I often said in those moments of frustration, anger, or disappointment when we wanted to quit - this is the fight before us. This was ours to do. We didn’t want to do it, but we knew if we didn’t, no one else would and we would have an enormous water bottling plant on these farmlands, extracting the precious water from beneath our land. Frankly, we often thought we’d lose, but we all kept trying – for ourselves, for our families, and for the people of the future – for our water. When someone faltered, someone else had the strength or an idea to carry the rest forward.
We have won this particular fight, but the conditions in our state and country haven’t changed. Our state has since passed legislation and changed the agency rules to try to close the “loopholes” that allowed us to win in court. They made new rules to make granting permits easier for the agencies and to make objecting to them more difficult which means people will have to challenge these in court again. The legislature and agencies work consistenly to exclude the citizens of Montana more and more from participating in decisions affecting our home areas. They seem to try to wear us down, so we citizens give up and go away.
Because we persisted, we won this round for water. As a bonus, we have made new friends and value our neighbors in new ways. None of us could have done this alone, but together we prevailed. The work is hard, but I believe, worth it.
I hope this gives encouragement and hope to others in similar circumstances. Though the road is long, people working together can still make a difference in our country. No one has to do everything, rather each person needs to do what is before them, what is theirs to do.
Let’s work together to ensure we continue to have a say in our communities, states, and country. Let’s do what we need to do and do it peacefully but with perseverance, determination, and compassion.
[1] I’m talking here about white settlers. The land had belonged to the Native Americans here for thousands of years before the US Government began recruiting (mostly) white people from further east to settle what would become Montana. Native American’s were fought and displaced, often brutally to make white settlement possible.
[2] For the record, I don’t like to fight. But try as I might, I couldn’t reframe this experience as anything other than a fight against something happening. Yes, we were protecting our water, but to do that, we had to fight through the courts.
[3] Having a privately held small business start a water-bottling plant and get all the permits then sell to one of the corporate water water-bottling giants is a well-known strategy in the water extraction industry.
[4] Here is an article in our local paper about the Supreme Court voiding the water permit…which means we won.
I was supporting that "fight" from the other end of the valley. Had that guy won, it would have opened up a can of worms. I think we still need to be vigilant in protecting the water. Up here there have been so many new wells drilled that people are starting to have problems with their wells. Thanks for writing about this. It was a time when people agreed about what was important.
Having walked with you through this 7 year process of protecting the waters near you in Montana from greed and an extraction-at-any-cost-mentality has been a total inspiration to witness. And i do so pray that your tenacity and courage will be a model for hope and focus for other community groups to gather and mobilize for preservation of the beauty and sanctity of the Earth! I feel like if each one of us would choose ONE front to make a stand for the Earth, as you did with water, we truly would have a huge impact for awakening others to the need for respect and reverence for the Earth!! A big bow of thanks and appreciation for this WIN for the EARTH!!! ariel spilsbury