devastation, and the resulting impact on tribal culture cannot be overstated."^ The 

 BLM does dispute this statement and claims that, in litigation thus far, the Tribes have 

 not shown any damage to their trust resources from the mines for which the BLM is at 

 fault/ The Tribes dispute the BLM's conclusion. 



In January 2004, the Tribes filed a federal Clean Water Act complaint in federal 

 District Court in Missoula against the DEQ, the BLM, and Mr. Luke Ployhar who 

 recently purchased 71 private mining claims totaling 1,080 acres from the Pegasus 

 bankruptcy trustee and who now owns much of the mine property. The complaint 

 alleges that the defendants discharged pollutants in excess of water quality standards 

 and that they failed to obtain or issue state or federal water quality discharge permits 

 as required by law.^ The suit and its exhibits cite numerous instances in which 

 watersheds have been contaminated by acid mine drainage and provide selected 

 sampling data that allege violations of certain water quality standards for nitrates, 

 cyanide, selenium, manganese, copper, and iron. 



In response to another pending lawsuit, the DEQ admits that acid mine drainage, 

 cyanide, selenium, and nitrates impact surface and ground waters that are 

 hydrologically connected to the mines and that the impacts from acid mine drainage 

 will continue in the long term.' The agency also claims that it is capturing and 

 treating all waters that are hydrologically connected to the mines. However, the Fort 

 Belknap tribal community, through comments and litigation, has repeatedly expressed 

 its concern about the mines' impact on the water quality of the reservation. 



Studies of reservation domestic water supplies prepared by the federal Agency for 

 Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) in 1998 concluded that based on a 

 review of available data, there was no apparent public health hazard to the residents 

 of the Fort Belknap Reservation from mine activities.^" The study found no evidence 

 that people on the reservation were exposed to dangerous levels of contaminants in 

 sediments, surface water, or ground water. Hydrologic studies conducted in 1983 and 

 1993 found that natural water quality on the reservation away from the mountains 

 was naturally variable and often poor, but none of the studies cited mine activities as 

 contributing to poor quality of the aquifers,^' Further, at the request of the Tribes, 

 the EPA conducted a sampling study of domestic water supplies and streams on the 

 reservation in June 2000 and found no evidence of impacts to water resources from 

 the mines. No cyanide was detected in any of the wells sampled on the reservation. 

 Water quality in the reservation wells closest to the mines showed no exceedences of 

 drinking water standards. ^^ There are a number of public water supplies owned and 

 operated by the Tribe in the Hays and Lodgepole area. Hays is downstream from the 



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