Court voids Mont. water discharge permit for mine

HELENA, Mont. - A Montana Supreme Court ruling voids a state water discharge permit for the Rock Creek Mine in northwestern Montana, further delaying the proposed copper and silver mine that would tunnel beneath the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness.

The court on Thursday ruled 5-2 that Montana's Department of Environmental Quality failed to sufficiently analyze the degradation that would occur to Rock Creek and the Clark Fork River due to wastewater discharge from the mine. The permit gave the mining company the right to perpetually discharge wastewater from the mine into Rock Creek, which flows into the Clark Fork.

DEQ "made an arbitrary and capricious decision" by issuing the permit and did not adhere to standards for review when there is the potential for water degradation, Justice John Warner wrote for the majority.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Jim Rice said the court had failed to give due deference to the DEQ's expertise in environmental analysis.

"Despite acknowledging that a court should not substitute its judgment for that of an agency, the Court puts on its environmental hat and does just that," Rice wrote.

Chief Justice Karla Gray joined in Rice's dissent.

The ruling sends the case back to District Judge Jeffrey Sherlock in Helena with instructions to refer the matter to DEQ for further review.

"It's a big wake-up call for DEQ," said Garrett Budds, a staff attorney in Missoula for the Clark Fork Coalition, one of the plaintiffs. "I think it absolutely sets a new standard against which all new (mining) proposals will be measured."

The mine is proposed by Revett Minerals Inc. of Spokane, Wash., and the additional delay will frustrate the company's plans to put from 250 to 300 people to work on the project, said Carson Rife, vice president of operations for Revett.

"In these tough times, jobs are not that easy to come by," Rife said. "We feel the environmental analysis has been very extensive and thoroughly done. It's unfortunate that the project continually gets delayed."

The Supreme Court ruling came in a lawsuit against DEQ filed by the Clark Fork Coalition, Trout Unlimited, the Rock Creek Alliance, Cabinet Resource Group and Montana Environmental Information Center.

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