Industry News
A Federal jury has dismissed a lawsuit brought by the Cottonwood Environmental Law Center against the Yellowstone Club, alleging that the Yellowstone Club has been discharging treated wastewater into the Gallatin River without a proper permit. For years, the Yellowstone Club has used treated wastewater from its private wastewater treatment plant to irrigate parts of its golf course, recycling the water. Cottonwood has challenged this practice in state and federal court on several occasions, alleging that a permit is required under the Clean Water Act for discharge of pollutants, and that the wastewater could be contributing to algae blooms in the Gallatin River, but none of its legal challenges have been successful.
Over the last five years, several lawsuits have been filed by Cottonwood against various entities in the Big Sky area over water quality concerns, including the Yellowstone Club, Big Sky County Water and Sewer District, and Big Sky Resort. Cottonwood has yet to succeed in any of these challenges. Big Sky County Water and Sewer District told Explore Big Sky that it has spent roughly $3 million in legal fees over the last five years, depleting its cash reserves. The district has indicated it will need to raise rates on the roughly 4,000 accounts to recoup some of its losses.
John Meyer, Cottonwood’s Executive Director, was arrested for trespassing in 2023 after hiking up the Gallatin River with a contractor to collect water samples from Yellowstone Club property. Montana law allows travel and use of streams and rivers within the high water mark, and the criminal case was dismissed. Water samples downstream of the Yellowstone Club’s golf course collected during that trip contained elevated levels of nitrogen compared with a sample from further upstream. Cottonwood obtained a court order that allowed further study of the area that was alleged to be the site of over irrigation and subsequent pollution, but lawsuits stemming from that study have been unsuccessful.
The dispute over using treated wastewater for irrigation parallels a legal battle between the Hopi Tribe and Arizona Snowbowl over use of treated wastewater for snow making, which ended in 2018 after years of litigation. That dispute centered on religious objections to the use of wastewater for artificial snow making in the San Francisco Mountains, considered a sacred area by the Hopi Tribe. A 2018 decision by the Arizona Supreme Court went against the Hopi Tribe, ruling that they could not bring a public nuisance case against Arizona Snowbowl and the City of Flagstaff.
