Nutrients made news again this summer when extensive algal blooms appeared in the Big Hole and other regional rivers. The algae posed risks to fish and other aquatic life.
A longstanding debate about nutrients pollution acquired new urgency in rivers found to have declining populations of trout.
That debate continues, as evidenced by two sparring press releases this week.
In one, Sonja Nowakowski expressed gratitude to the EPA and Trump appointee Cyrus Western, the EPA’s regional administrator.
In response, Guy Alsentzer, executive director of Upper Missouri Waterkeeper, was not in a similarly celebratory mood.
Nowakowski, director of the Montana Department of Environmental Quality, was reacting to EPA’s approval of DEQ’s reliance on narrative, as opposed to numeric, water quality standards for nutrients in Montana’s wadable streams and select segments of larger rivers.
DEQ announced EPA’s approval of the narrative standards in an Oct. 6 press release.
Nowakowski said the EPA’s nod allows DEQ to “move forward with water quality permitting and planning for permittees while also protecting our treasured water resources.”
In turn, Waterkeeper said the narrative standards for nutrients are vague, arbitrary and reactive. The organization described the repeal of numeric standards as a giant step backward that fails to hold polluters accountable and puts Montana’s water resources at increased risk of pollution.
EPA provides this definition: Water quality criteria can be numeric — for example, the maximum pollutant concentration levels permitted in a water body. Or they can be narrative — for example, a criterion that describes the desired conditions of a water body being free from certain negative conditions.
Meanwhile, nutrients pollution, during a time of climate change, has been tied to significant algal blooms in some of Montana’s most cherished rivers. The algae can cause a decrease in dissolved oxygen that fish and aquatic insects need.
“This is another gift to polluters and developers at the public’s and environment’s expense,” Alsentzer said in a news release about the repeal of numeric standards. “There is no scientific or legal basis for abandoning numeric nutrient standards that prevent nutrient pollution in our rivers and streams.
“The state of Montana and Gov. Gianforte are throwing away the measuring stick used to determine when water quality is being degraded and what’s necessary to protect clean water, which further undermines polluter accountability and enforcement,” he added.
In May, Gianforte signed House Bill 664, which reestablished narrative nutrient water quality standards.
Beginning in 1998, the EPA had encouraged the adoption of numeric nutrient standards and they were adopted by DEQ in 2015.
Yet House Bill 664 reported EPA never approved a general variance for private sector dischargers and noted that other provisions of numeric standards created challenges. A private sector discharger is anyone who is not a publicly owned discharger. Privately owned mines, refineries and concentrated animal feeding operations are some examples.
Yet narrative standards present a host of challenges when compared to numeric standards, said Quincey Johnson, outreach director for Waterkeeper.
“Numeric standards are proactive, science-based, measurable concentrations, while narrative standards are descriptive, reactive, subjective standards that don’t trigger action until a pollution event has already occurred,” she said.
She likened using narrative criteria to a physician determining blood pressure solely through a patient’s symptoms.
“If a patient is told to keep their blood pressure at 120 systolic millimeters of mercury but the doctor won’t measure blood pressure until the patient experiences chest pains, difficulty breathing or even a stroke, damage that could have been prevented has likely already occurred,” Johnson said.
Yet DEQ said the narrative standards offer key advantages.
“Narrative standards describe conditions to be avoided and allow DEQ to identify impairments and develop plans to improve water quality,” the agency said in its Oct. 6 news release. “The new law provides regulatory predictability for permittees and ensures DEQ uses the best science available to protect water sources based on the agency’s understanding of local, site-specific conditions.”
DEQ noted that the repealed numeric standards never applied to many of Montana’s waterbodies.
“A return to narrative nutrient standards will allow DEQ to take a localized approach and better tailor water quality assessments and permits to the specific stressors of a watershed and protect its beneficial uses,” Nowakowski said.
Not so, said Alsentzer.
“EPA, under this administration, is clearly picking winners and losers based on politics rather than science,” he said. “By approving Montana’s rollback, the EPA is siding with polluters at the expense of Montanans’ clean water, public health and outdoor heritage.”
Johnson noted that study results recently released by Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks found that resident and non-resident anglers spent a combined $1.27 billion on fishing trips in Montana in 2024.
“Unfortunately, narrative criteria create a scenario where Montana’s rivers and waterways will become degraded or severely polluted before regulatory agencies know or are required to act,” she said.
Waterkeeper, which is no stranger to litigation, said it is reviewing EPA’s decision.
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