A petition submitted by Lincoln County commissioners to ease selenium standards in Lake Koocanusa met resistance at a public meeting held by the Montana Department of Environmental Quality on Wednesday.

About a dozen attendees on Aug. 13, including representatives from environmental and outdoor organizations, local fishing guides and private citizens, spoke in opposition of the proposal, which would raise the maximum allowable amount of dissolved selenium in the lake from 0.8 micrograms per liter to 1.5 micrograms per liter. 

“In terms of the benefits of weakening the standard, I’m kind of scratching my head trying to figure out what they might be,” said Derf Johnson, deputy director of the Montana Environmental Information Center. 

While selenium is considered an essential nutrient, large amounts of the metalloid can lead to neurological and reproductive defects in fish. In humans, excess levels of selenium can cause gastrointestinal distress, organ failure and, in rare cases, death. 

The Environmental Protection Agency typically recommends that selenium concentrations in still freshwater environments like Lake Koocanusa not exceed 1.5 micrograms per liter. 

The Department of Enviornmental Quality adopted the stricter 0.8 microgram per liter standard in 2020 after samples taken from the eggs and ovaries of several fish showed potentially dangerous levels of selenium. At the time, the department stated that water samples showed an average concentration of about 1 microgram of selenium per liter.  

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, fish egg and ovary samples are “the most robust and consistent measurement” for determining selenium toxicity. The federal agency recommends that data from egg and ovary samples should take primacy over other sampling techniques.  

Several participants at the meeting described the process for setting the current standard as scientifically rigorous and argued that ongoing sampling proved the stricter standard was necessary to protect fisheries in Lake Koocanusa.  

In fall 2023 and spring 2024, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks gathered egg and ovary tissue samples from 82 fish in Lake Koocanusa as part of ongoing monitoring efforts. Lab testing revealed that 14 of those fish, including eight red shiners, one westslope cutthroat trout and five peamouth, had excess selenium in their reproductive tissue. 

“Our livelihoods, the experience we provide to visitors and residents alike, depend on clean functioning ecosystems,” said Mark Fuller, owner of local outfitter Wild Montana. “If these standards are weakened, our visitors and Montana’s youth may never know what a clear river and a wild trout looks like.” 

A study conducted by the United States Geologic Survey found that selenium concentrations in the Elk River, one of two major tributaries to Lake Koocanusa, increased by 581% between 1980 and 2020 as a result of several open pit coal mining operations in the region. Rainwater and runoff flush selenium from the mines’ “waste rock” into nearby streams, and the metalloid is then carried downstream, first to the Elk River and then to Lake Koocanusa. 

“We do understand there is a water quality issue. We do know that. We do recognize that,” said Lincoln County Commissioner Noel Duram in his opening statements to the Montana Department of Enviornmental Quality. “The headwaters of the Koocanusa does have pollution coming in from an entity on the other side of the border that we have no control over.” 

But Duram argued that current regulations on selenium concentrations were overbearing and stifled economic development in the county.  

“We want to make sure that we have all the tools in our toolbox available to us to bring out economic development in the future without undue regulation,” he said. 

Duram was the only attendee to speak in favor of the petition. 

This is the second petition that Lincoln County has filed against the site-specific selenium standard for Lake Koocanusa. In 2021, both the Lincoln County Board of Commissioners and Teck, the Swiss corporation that owns the mines in British Columbia, submitted petitions to the Department of Environmental Quality that argued the agency had used faulty modeling and inaccurate sampling techniques to arrive at the 0.8 microgram per liter standard. 

In April 2022, the Board of Enviornmental Review, the quasi-judicial body that oversees environmental permit disputes, ruled in favor of Teck and Lincoln County. The Department of Environmental Quality subsequently sued. The Board of Enviornmental Review is scheduled to review the case on Aug. 21. 

The Department of Environmental Quality is required to issue a decision regarding the current petition by Sept. 2, 2025. 

Reporter Hailey Smalley can be reached at 758-4433 or [email protected].