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DEQ: water, sewer projects must meet engineering, capacity standards; SRF loan forgiveness tied to federal guidance (House Bill 11)
Summary
The Department of Environmental Quality told Appropriations Subcommittee F that drinking-water and wastewater projects in House Bill 11 must meet DEQ engineering and treatment standards adopted by rule; members pressed on capacity standards, asbestos concrete pipe replacements, reverse-osmosis waste streams and how the SRF loan-forgiveness rules
Lindsay Krivaruchka, division administrator for water quality at the Montana Department of Environmental Quality, told Appropriations Subcommittee F that the department reviews water and wastewater projects for both engineer design and treatment standards and enforces requirements adopted in DEQ circulars and rule.
"I'm the division administrator for water quality at the DEQ," Krivaruchka said, and she told the committee: "Those are standards that are in our circulars, which are adopted by rule and absolutely open to public process." She said DEQ examines not only pipe sizing and layout but also treatment time and capacity, and it evaluates whether systems can meet peak or maximum daily demands with the highest-capacity well out of service.
Committee members raised multiple implementation concerns. Senator Esp asked whether DEQ or engineers discover deficiencies (Krivaruchka said engineers design projects but DEQ reviews the treatment and capacity data) and warned that small communities of 20 to 100 residents may face requirements beyond their ability to pay. Representative Benton asked whether DNRC and DEQ coordinate on funding and technical review; DNRC representative Autumn Coleman said the state's State Revolving Fund (SRF) is co-administered and "DNRC... act[s] as kind of the loan officer," while DEQ performs technical reviews.
Coleman said loan forgiveness has been more generous recently because federal infrastructure funding increased SRF capitalization: "loan forgiveness recently has been very generous due to the money that was given to the states from the, federal infrastructure bills," she said, and added that earlier calculations used EPA guidelines to set forgiveness formulas. She could not guarantee future EPA guidance timing and said DNRC would need to review future guidelines annually.
Lawmakers flagged technical questions that could increase project cost: several projects request replacement of concrete-asbestos pipe; committee members asked DEQ to confirm whether state standards require such replacement. Senator Esp asked staff to check whether a small town, Hinsdale, is planning a reverse-osmosis system and how that project will handle the saline or brine effluent. Krivaruchka said UV disinfection is treated case by case: it is not universally required and can be cost prohibitive for some systems, and she offered to follow up with engineering staff on specific systems.
The subcommittee left House Bill 11 open through the end of the next day to allow additional witnesses (including DNRC and other technical staff) to appear and address outstanding technical and funding questions.
