A Sickening Betrayal

Montana Renewables, the company that turns beef tallow and oilseeds into jet fuel, received a $1.44 billion taxpayer-funded loan guarantee to expand operations.

I, for one, believe we need to move intelligently toward renewable fuels, so I congratulate Montana Renewables on taking a big step.

But the devil is in the details.

I feel betrayed, patronized and bullied by those details.

Montana Renewables is the largest U.S. supplier of renewable aviation fuel, yet it leaves a huge mess in its wake.

It’s like watching a brilliant toddler design a massive pyramid from an assortment of toys and then giggle as Mom steps on the Legos scattered across the floor.

The agonizing Legos scattered at Montana Renewables come in the form of the wastewater.

Instead of treating it, the company wants to inject it under high pressure into the Madison Aquifer.

The Madison Aquifer is vast, deep and complex.

Some portions hold oil while others provide pristine drinking water.

Nobody knows how those pools are kept separate except that limestone and shale separate them sometimes.

Limestone and shale both crack under pressure, leaving drinking water vulnerable to sickening contamination.

For some reason, even though the technology to treat wastewater onsite is readily available, Montana Renewables won’t clean and reuse the billions of gallons of water they intend to use while cooking jet fuel.

Oh, the company talks about treating some of the water, but not nearly all of it.

Instead, they hire diesel trucks to haul wastewater at least 80 miles to railcars and dump it in other states while they wait for approval to inject it into Pondera County wells.

Meanwhile, corporate suits refuse to share the chemical makeup of that wastewater.

Honestly, I understand why Montana Renewables acts this way.

After all, it is a for-profit enterprise.

And plans are going awry – gummy sludge clogs, dissolved stitches on workers’ boots, highway spills and the urgent need to sell a portion of the company to maintain cash flow come to mind.

Their spokespeople dodge and obfuscate in the name of private enterprise.

They discount concerns as if they are so much smarter than the person who wants to drink clean water.

I feel betrayed by the bureaucratic machine that is supposed to protect water that belong to all of us.

The Environmental Protection Agency and Montana Department of Environmental Quality have yet to ask the questions or do the math that originate from public statements and documents.

Shame on them.

Montana DEQ abdicates any responsibility, despite our constitutional right to clean water.

The EPA has yet to grant permission to inject wastewater into the Madison, although no doubt that decision will be issued soon after the election. After all, an EPA bureaucrat said publicly that politicians influence its decisions.

However, a perfunctory environmental assessment was scratched out – probably in crayon – as a part of the Department of Energy’s review before awarding $1.44 billion to Montana Renewables. Apparently, nobody bothered to calculate that the company will generate much more wastewater than it plans to treat, according to the EA.

Everyone who irrigates or drinks water from the Missouri River should feel bullied, betrayed and patronized, too.

Montana Renewables does not own enough water rights to make the renewable fuel that they already produce, much less expand production by 10 times, as they have touted.

Last year, they bought almost $1 million of water from the City of Great Falls’ limited supply.

The worst gut punch comes because there’s such as easy solution.

Montana Renewables could avoid all of the childish bullying, patronizing and betrayal by installing the right onsite water cleaning and recycling plant.

Nobody is perfect, but Montana Renewables needs to try harder.

For all of us.