This article was written by Josh Mahan for Lowbagger.org. Click here for the full article.

Photo by Lowbagger.orgState DEQ Fails To Regulate Illegal Sewage Lift

GARDINER, Mont. – Watch for the flashing red lights on the sewage lift stations here at the headwaters of the Yellowstone River.

When one lights up it means that unscreened raw sewage is spilling out of a 12-inch, white PVC pipe and into the river violating the state Water Quality Act, a serious legal violation by the Gardiner Sewer District that hasn’t been enforced by the Montana Department of Environmental Quality.

From out of the pipe an assortment of tampon applicators, condoms, syringes, dead rats, hair brushes, shampoo bottles, lighters, wads of toilet paper, and actual raw sewage spill down a steep rocky bank and into the Yellowstone River. It’s straight from the toilet to the river with no stops in between.

These discharges of sewage from Gardiner and Mammoth have been happening for decades, including a three-day spill in the late 1990s that dumped 220,000 gallons of waste into the river.

The most recent discharge, a 2,600-gallon release, happened earlier this summer on June 27 in the middle of the afternoon, and forced some commercial rafting outfits to cancel their float trips. The site of the recurring discharges is the notorious Water Street lift station, located on Yellowstone National Park’s boundary. The stretch of river the sewage spills into is a popular commercial whitewater and fishing stretch known as the “Town Run.”

The lift station requires power to lift sewage from Mammoth and part of Gardiner high enough to allow it to gravity feed into the town’s settling ponds. But the station’s backup generator is under-equipped and doesn’t kick in automatically, even though the sewer district’s state water discharge permit requires that they have back-up power to prevent discharges into surface water. Whenever the power goes down in Gardiner, or if mechanical failure occurs, the sewage spills straight into the river until the generator can be started manually.

Gardiner Sewer District Manager John Wahoff said he knows the system is “100 percent illegal,” but neither the state nor county has made him change it, so he hasn’t.

Wahoff and Park County Director of Environmental Health Randy Taylor both admit that discharges of sewage are not desirable, but they counter quickly that it’s not something to worry too much about because the river has so much water in it that it dilutes the sewage and the solids. They don’t notify residents or river runners when a discharge occurs.

“I’m not required to, so I don’t,” Wahoff said.

Big Sky Whitewater owner Cory Ackerman was alerted to the June 27 spill by a friend who works for the state. He then alerted Gardiner’s other commercial rafting outfits to the spill and potential danger.

Ackerman said he wants the county to alert people when the discharges occur, so that clients can be notified.

“We should be warned by the health department or some governmental organization to ensure that people don’t get infected with sewage waste,” Ackerman said.

Taylor ultimately notifies the public if he feels the spill poses a health threat. But he doesn’t see the raw sewage as a public health hazard. He would rather not think of the syringes, saying that he has faith in the medical community to properly dispose of needles. But Taylor did admit that syringes from intravenous drug users could slide out of the pipe at Water Street.