Bottling plant debated in Helena

About a dozen Flathead residents opposed to a controversial water-bottling plant proposed in Creston testified in the Montana State Capitol Wednesday afternoon, lending their support to legislation that would subject the facility to an additional environmental review before it can be approved.

Sen. Bob Keenan, R-Bigfork, is sponsoring Senate Bill 215, which would add water-packaging plants permitted to consume more than 100 acre-feet of drinking water per year to the list of projects subject to the state’s Major Facility Siting Act. The Montana Artesian Water Co. plant, which initially proposed the plant in late 2015, has requested a permit to use up to 710 acre-feet of water per year, 588 acre-feet of which could be bottled.

Creston resident Sheila Zohrer told the Senate Natural Resources Committee that she’s been frustrated by the limitations of the state’s current regulatory process. She argued that the existing requirements for the company to obtain a water right permit and a wastewater discharge permit fail to fully evaluate the impacts of the plant and its effects on nearby landowners.

“I understand the [company’s] property right, but the surrounding neighbors have property rights as well and they are being steamrolled,” she said. “Let’s be smart about this and let’s have a little foresight and a little vision and let’s make sure we have water for generations to come.”

The Major Facility Siting Act applies mainly to the utility industry, and requires power plants, electric transmission lines and oil and gas pipelines to undertake an environmental review overseen by the Department of Environmental Quality.

Department spokeswoman Kristi Ponozzo told the panel that the added layer of regulation would potentially require an additional public-review process if officials determined the project warranted a more stringent review.

“It would depend on the nature of the impacts and whether or not we determine the impacts are significant. If we determine the impacts are significant, we would undertake an environmental impact statement,” Ponozzo said.

Local opponents of the plant have long asked the DEQ to undertake that deeper environmental review as it considers a permit application for the company to discharge effluent from rinsing the plastic bottles — which would be manufactured on-site — into a tributary to the Flathead River.

Department regulators are still evaluating public comments submitted during the preliminary review, and have yet to determine whether to require an environmental impact statement. The company’s water-right permit also has yet to be finalized. It is going through the state’s objection process after dozens of residents and agencies filed challenges to the preliminary permit last year.

Keenan said he drafted the bill after hearing from constituents on the local issue, which he said “brought me to understand that we have a loophole in our statutes and our water law.”

“I was frustrated at that point that the people that were affected didn’t feel like they had any input,” Keenan said.

John Waller, who lives next to the property on which the plant is proposed, said current law gives residents little recourse to weigh in on a large-scale project that could reshape their community.

“As we came to understand the magnitude of this project, it became clear to us this would ... destroy our property values, it would destroy our livelihoods,” Waller said. The bill “provides an opportunity to meaningful and substantive review of a proposed project. That’s all it does, and I think the people of Montana deserve that.”

Three people spoke in opposition to the bill. David Brown, chief executive of the Source Giant Springs bottling plant in Great Falls, argued that the change in law would scare away investors interested in helping him expand operations beyond the 100-acre-foot threshold.

Representing the Montana Artesian Water Co., lobbyist Darryl James said that existing permitting requirements already allow sufficient regulatory and public review.

“Senate Bill 215 is an attempt to target one company by placing additional regulatory hurdles on one water use,” James said. “... Putting MFSA on top of this does not solve the problem.”

He added that water-intensive agricultural products currently grown and shipped out of state could arguably be added to the list under the same logic.

“What if we decide next year we don’t like alfalfa?” He asked. “What if we decide that’s not appropriate? Do they have to go through the MFSA process?”

Committee Chairman Sen. Chas Vincent, R-Libby, also suggested that Keenan’s characterization of the proposed water use as “egregious” could be applied to the agriculture industry, a far greater consumer of groundwater in the state.

“What is more egregious than doing that with barley?” Vincent asked. “We have thousands of acre-feet every summer that is consumed and then exported out of this state.”

Keenan responded that using water to create a separate product is a different issue, and argued that his bill would save Montana from a future proliferation of water-bottling plants, as has happened elsewhere in the country.

“The problem that we have seen and the way it has been handled in other states tells me we have an opportunity in Montana right now to get ahead of this issue,” he said.

The committee is scheduled to vote on the bill Friday at 3 p.m.

Reporter Sam Wilson can be reached at 758-4407 or by email at swilson@dailyinterlake.com.