Montana’s Large Cities Preparing for Costs of New Storm Drain Permits

By January 1, 2017 the State of Montana’s Department of Environmental Quality and a number of the state’s larger cities are expected to have a new MS4 storm water management permitting process in place. According to Water Protection Bureau Chief Dr. Jon Kenning the discussion is the result of a move by the EPA.

"The EPA has been under a lot of pressure throughout the 2000s to raise the bar on storm water in some of the larger cities in the state," Kennign said. "That has trickled down to us. We are working on a new permit to satisfy some of those federal requirements. We know that budget is an issue, we know a lot of other things are issues for the communities effected by this so we formed a stakeholder group that includes all of the communities."

The members of the stakeholder group include, Missoula, Great Falls, Butte, Bozeman, Helena, and Billings. Kenning said that many of the state’s cities have already had storm water regulations for many years and that the specifics of the new permit will likely be under debate until mid-summer.

"We are trying to go line-by-line through the old version of the permit to see what can be boosted. We talk about all kinds of topics from what the cities are already doing, to what resources the state has available to help the cities."

At this point, little is known about the costs of the permitting process on the communities involved. Engineering firm Wright-Pierce deals with MS4 permitting in New England According to them “Communities reviewing the draft permits predict that program costs could range from one hundred thousand dollars per year to more than a million dollars depending on municipality size and system complexity.”