The Narwhal
The intricacies of how big corporations lobby government bodies can be hard to untangle. But at a recent environmental review board meeting in Montana, those efforts were in plain sight. For years, Canadian mining giant Teck Resources has been fighting against U.S. water standards, which target pollution flowing from its Elk Valley coal mines in southeast B.C. downstream to the Kootenai watershed in Montana and Idaho.
Those standards were approved by the Montana’s Board of Environmental Review in 2020. It was a process the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency commended “for collaborating with multiple stakeholders for over five years.” The state’s adopted standards were based on “sound science” specific to Lake Koocanusa, the Environmental Protection Agency wrote in its approval.
But by fall 2022, the same board that adopted those standards made a complete about-face. They voted to ask the Environmental Protection Agency to remove the standard.
The board is a quasi-judicial, government-appointed body tasked with making impartial decisions related to protecting Montana’s air and water quality. The make-up of the seven person board has almost completely changed since it voted to adopt the standard.
For the rest of this article: https://thenarwhal.ca/teck-montana-lake-koocanusa-epa/