Montana
Diverse coalition challenges Montana’s exempt wells
Laura Lundquist
(Missoula Current) As Montana’s streams continue to dwindle in the continuing drought, a diverse group of organizations and individuals are once again challenging Montana’s rule on exempt wells, saying the state has repeatedly ignored court rulings.
On Wednesday, six Montana organizations and three individuals filed a complaint in Lewis and Clark County district court alleging that the Montana Department of Natural Resources Conservation has ignored court rulings and the rights of senior water-right owners by continuing to allow subdivision developers to exploit Montana’s exempt well law.
The plaintiffs include the Clark Fork Coalition, Montana League of Cities and Towns, Montana Farm Bureau Federation, Trout Unlimited, Montana Environmental Information Center, Association of Gallatin Agricultural Irrigators and Mark Runkle, a housing developer.
“From rapid growth to ongoing drought, Montana’s water resources and water users are facing unprecedented challenges,” said Andrew Gorder, Clark Fork Coalition legal director. “The cumulative impact of over 100,000 exempt groundwater wells can no longer be ignored. We’re asking the court to conserve our limited water resources and ensure that the constitutional protections afforded to senior water rights, including instream flow rights, are preserved.”
Over the years, especially since 2006, the Legislature has considered more than a dozen bills, most with the intent of enabling the proliferation of small wells – those that pump less than 35 gallons per minute – that the state has exempted from needing a water right or permit. The few bills proposed to keep exempt wells in check have usually failed in the Legislature while the DNRC has been reluctant to insist on regulation. So the incorporation of exempt wells in new subdivisions has exploded at a time when the state, particularly western Montana, is struggling with dwindling water supplies.
According to the complaint, census data show Montana’s population increased by almost 203,000 residents between 2000 and 2021. Over 87% of that growth occurred in six counties—Gallatin, Yellowstone, Flathead, Missoula, Lewis and Clark, and Ravalli – and those are also the counties where hundreds of new wells are pulling huge amounts of water out of their respective aquifers.
The complaint says Ravalli County is the most extreme example of population influx and exempt well development. Census data show 10,000 people moved to Ravalli County between 2000 and 2021, and 84% of the 6,000 new homes were built outside of incorporated areas. As a result, there are now more than 24,000 wells in the county and only 288 are for municipal or public water supply systems. So it’s not surprising that household wells, such as those south of Lolo, were running dry this summer in the Bitterroot Valley.
So many unregulated, unmetered wells together are using more water than agricultural producers who are required to have water rights before they can use water for irrigation or stockwater. If such water rights holders don’t receive their full amount of water, they are allowed to ask other users junior to them to stop using water. But that system doesn’t work when they try to make a call on a subdivision full of exempt wells. So, as courts have found, exempt wells violate Montana’s first-in-time, first-in-right system of water rights.
Over the decades, the number of water rights granted in each river basin account for more water than the basin holds, so starting in the 1990s, the state closed several basins to new water rights, including the Upper Clark Fork, Blackfoot and Bitterroot river basins. Eventually, groundwater rights were limited too when the courts ruled groundwater and surface water were linked. But that hasn’t stopped developers from drilling more household wells.
Back in the 1960s and ‘70s when Montana had only a half-million residents, exempt wells weren’t as much of a problem. But as the population surged and subdivisions multiplied in the 1980s, some Montanans could see danger, and a 1982 state conference recognized the threat to water supplies posed by an increasing number of unregulated wells.
In 1987, the DNRC developed a rule prohibiting the combined appropriation or use of exempt wells from a single aquifer without a water right, which should have stopped subdivisions from installing multiple exempt wells. But real estate and contracting lobbies were gaining strength. In 1993, the DNRC changed the definition of “combined appropriation” to require that the wells be physically joined before being required to get a water right, giving developers an out to use individual household wells.
A 2008 DNRC report, written for the newly created Legislative Water Policy Interim Committee, found that “exempt wells had become a major source of unregulated groundwater use in closed basins, areas with high population growth and increasing subdivision development.” The DNRC acknowledged that water rights owners could have their water use curtailed while subdivision exempt-well use continues unabated.
The Water Policy Interim Committee would conduct two additional studies of exempt wells in 2012 and 2018, which would find exempt wells problematic for water supplies and water law, but prompted no action.
Finally in 2009, a group of water rights holders, including the Clark Fork Coalition and rancher Katrin Chandler, petitioned the DNRC to rewrite the 1993 rule to protect senior water rights. When the DNRC refused, they went to court. In October 2014, a district judge ruled in their favor, saying the 1993 exempt well rule violated Montana’s Water Use Act. The state appealed, and meanwhile, the Legislature tried to pass laws to bolster the 1993 rule even though many legislators say they’re pro-agriculture.
In September 2016, the Montana Supreme Court upheld the district court finding that the 1993 rule on combined appropriation was inconsistent with the Water Use Act. DNRC went back to its 1987 definition of combined appropriation, and that should have put an end to the use of multiple exempt wells in subdivisions. But it didn’t.
In 2022, Upper Missouri Waterkeeper and others filed a court challenge to stop a 442-acre subdivision with exempt wells in Broadwater County that had gotten DNRC approval because it would be developed in four phases that were considered individually. The district court sided with Upper Missouri Waterkeeper, saying the DNRC’s “interpretation here would allow developers to circumvent exempt well limitations easily and unilaterally by simply slicing any project into phases each small enough to fall under the exempt-well ceiling for the aggregate acre-feet.”
District judge Michael F. McMahon said the DNRC ignored the 2016 Montana Supreme Court ruling and he expected that the department might do the same in future situations.
“The economic impetus to develop land is overwhelming and relentless. If there is going to be any check on uncontrolled development of Montana’s limited water resources, it will have to come from DNRC, which is statutorily charged with fulfilling Montanans’ constitutional right to ‘control, and regulation of water rights,’ a duty DNRC has manifestly avoided or undermined for over a decade to the detriment of our waters, environment, and senior water rights holders whose protection is the ‘core purpose’ of the Water Rights Act,” McMahon wrote.
The 2025 Legislature killed Senate Bill 358, which came out of recommendations from a DNRC working group, which included some of the plaintiffs. SB 358 would have significantly restricted the use of exempt wells in four aquifers where DNRC data and analysis shows that wells are affecting senior water rights owners: the Helena Valley, the Bitterroot Valley, the Missoula Valley, and the Gallatin Valley.
DNRC data show that between 74% and 94% of all groundwater use within these aquifers are from exempt wells, compared to 1% to 5% that are permitted wells, according to the complaint. In the Missoula and Bitterroot Valleys, more than 15,000 exempt wells serve rapidly growing residential areas, making up 74% of all groundwater rights in the Missoula Valley and 89% in the Bitterroot Valley. DNRC has recommended that the Legislature close both the Missoula and Bitterroot aquifers to additional exempt well development.
Because efforts to work with the DNRC and the Legislature have been stymied, the plaintiffs are turning to the courts and asking a judge to find the Exempt Well Law is unconstitutional by violating the property rights of water-right owners and by limiting their right to participate. They also want the DNRC to stop implementing the Exempt Well Law and rewrite it to conform with the water law of prior appropriation.
“Farmers and ranchers have followed the rules and invested generations of work based on secure access to water,” said Scott Kulbeck of the Montana Farm Bureau Federation. “Everyone has to play by the same rules. When some folks skip the permit process and pull from a water source that’s already spoken for, it hurts their neighbors. This case is about protecting the way Montanans have managed water responsibly for generations.”
Contact reporter Laura Lundquist at lundquist@missoulacurrent.com.
The Montana Lottery offers multiple draw games for those aiming to win big.
Here’s a look at May 8, 2026, results for each game:
Winning Mega Millions numbers from May 8 drawing
37-47-49-51-58, Mega Ball: 16
Check Mega Millions payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Big Sky Bonus numbers from May 8 drawing
09-14-18-20, Bonus: 16
Check Big Sky Bonus payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Millionaire for Life numbers from May 8 drawing
14-16-21-43-51, Bonus: 03
Check Millionaire for Life payouts and previous drawings here.
Feeling lucky? Explore the latest lottery news & results
When are the Montana Lottery drawings held?
- Powerball: 8:59 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
- Mega Millions: 9 p.m. MT on Tuesday and Friday.
- Lucky For Life: 8:38 p.m. MT daily.
- Lotto America: 9 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.
- Big Sky Bonus: 7:30 p.m. MT daily.
- Powerball Double Play: 8:59 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
- Montana Cash: 8 p.m. MT on Wednesday and Saturday.
- Millionaire for Life: 9:15 p.m. MT daily.
Missed a draw? Peek at the past week’s winning numbers.
This results page was generated automatically using information from TinBu and a template written and reviewed by a Great Falls Tribune editor. You can send feedback using this form.
Mobile home residents in Bozeman, Montana, say they’re being forced to choose between paying rent and paying medical costs.Courtesy of Jered McCafferty
35-year-old Benjamin Moore has lived in Mountain Meadows Mobile Home Park, outside Bozeman, Montana, since he was 17. This month, for the first time, he’s withholding his rent.
On May 1, Moore received a rent bill for $947, up 11 percent from the month before, and the second hike in nine months—the product of the park’s sale to an undisclosed buyer.
Moore hung a sign on his trailer that says “RENT STRIKE.” He and his neighbors in Mountain Meadows and nearby King Arthur Park, organized with the citywide group Bozeman Tenants United, are collectively withholding over $50,000 a month from their landlord.
Historically, trailer parks have been a relatively affordable housing option—a third of trailer park residents in America live below the poverty line. But on average, their cost of living has risen 45 percent over the past decade. By unionizing, the Bozeman trailer park tenants believe they might be able to fight the most recent rent hike—especially given the state of their housing.
For years, tenants say, the maintenance hasn’t been attended to: tree limbs hang perilously over trailers, and water shutoffs are a regular occurrence. “I cannot recall a time in the past 20 years where we had three straight months of water and power working all day, every day,” Moore said.
Shauna Thompson, another resident, calls the water “atrocious…like a Milky Way, like you’re drinking skim milk. It’s very nasty and turned off all the time, without any notice.” And tenants allege that they’ve experienced retribution for maintenance requests, punitive eviction attempts, and unsafe conditions.
“It’s really hard on people here,” Moore said. Some residents are “already paying their entire Social Security check for rent. It’s a very poor neighborhood. We’ve got old folks. We’ve got young families. We’ve got working-class people who can’t afford anything else.”
For the past four decades, a group called Oakland Properties has owned both trailer parks. When they learned about the sale, tenants were scared that their parks would be bulldozed, or that their rent would be increased even further, forcing them to move.
The tenants attempted to buy the parks themselves, but were decisively outbid. The winning bidder demanded an NDA. The transaction should be finalized next month, park owner Gary Oakland said, but residents still don’t know who’s going to own the land they live on.
This month’s rent hike, Oakland acknowledged, was “part and parcel” of the sale. But for tenants, it’s a catastrophe. On top of the $947 lot rent—more than double the national average—many residents also pay off home loans on their trailers, as well as insurance and utilities costs.
Oakland calls claims of broken utilities “nonsense”: “If it was such a bad place to live, why would the homes be selling for such high dollars?” he said. The rent strike, Oakland points out, is “just a group of people not paying their rent.”
Some people are rationing their medication to make ends meet, Moore said. “There’s one person who canceled Life Alert. It’s either Life Alert or rent, and if you don’t pay rent, they evict you and throw you in the streets.”
Tenant organizers across the nation have found a foothold in recent years organizing against individual landlords, and Bozeman’s tenant union, situated in one of the fastest-growing communities in the state, is no exception. Tenant unions from Los Angeles to Kansas City to New York have organized to win rent freezes, maintenance, and security in their homes.
Mobile home parks—increasingly private-equity-owned and uniquely at-risk in the face of climate disasters—are organizing, too: a group of trailer park residents in Columbia, Missouri, unionized in February. In Montana, as Rebecca Burns recently wrote for In These Times, mobile homes were already once a site of tenant organizing: buoyed by the state’s miners unions, the first Bozeman-area mobile home tenants’ union won an agreement with their landlord in 1978.
Oakland says park residents “have been terrorized by the union,” and plans to evict the strikers. The strikers say they’ve retained a lawyer and will fight to stay in their homes.
“I wish none of this was happening,” Moore said. “Your utilities should work. Your place should be safe. You should be able to get in and out of it. These are the absolute basics, and they just haven’t kept them up. And if you call them on it, they threaten you.”
MISSOULA, Mt. — Karsen Beitz arrived at Montana with no scholarship offers, one remaining walk-on spot and no guarantee that his track career would last.
Now, the former Sentinel High School standout is one of the fastest athletes in Montana history.
Beitz, a Missoula native and junior sprinter for the Grizzlies, has turned an unlikely college opportunity into a record-setting career. He owns Montana’s 100-meter and 200-meter program records and enters next week’s Big Sky Conference Outdoor Championships as one of the top sprinters in the league.
Coming out of high school, Beitz was a football and track athlete without a Division I offer.
“I was upset about it,” Beitz said. “But at the same time, I was fine with just going to college and living a normal college life.”
That changed after conversations between Sentinel coach Dylan Reynolds and Montana coach Doug Fraley.
“You may not think he’s a D-I prospect based on his times,” Reynolds told Fraley, “but I’m just telling you, if he gets in the right program, he’s going to be a D-I runner.”
Fraley had one walk-on spot left on his roster. He brought Beitz into his office, talked with him and decided to take a chance.
“I liked him. We had a good conversation, so I decided to give him the last walk-on spot,” Fraley said. “I’m sure glad I did.”
Beitz became a Division I athlete in his hometown, but his first goal was modest. He wanted to prove he belonged and earn a scholarship.
He did that quickly.
As a freshman, Beitz placed at the Big Sky Outdoor Championships and helped Montana’s 4×100-meter relay reach the podium with a school-record performance.
“There was no doubt he earned that scholarship,” Fraley said.
Beitz continued to climb in 2025. He placed second in the 200 meters at the Big Sky indoor meet, but a hamstring injury kept him out of the outdoor championships.
“It sucked to deal with,” Beitz said. “But I’m young and still had two years left, so I shifted my mindset to how I could come out these next two years.”
He has not looked back.
Beitz won the 200 meters at the 2026 Big Sky indoor championships, the first individual conference title of his track career. His time of 21.09 seconds edged Idaho State’s Alex Conner by one-hundredth of a second.
“I think the best part about it was seeing how happy Doug was,” Beitz said. “He was jumping up and down, gave me a big hug. After last year, I knew what I was capable of, so to go out there and do it was amazing.”
Then came the outdoor season.
In April, Beitz broke Montana’s 58-year-old 200-meter record, running 20.55 seconds at the Pacific Coast Intercollegiate in Long Beach, California. The previous record had stood since 1968.
Two weeks later, he added the school’s wind-legal 100-meter record, running 10.25 seconds at the Bengal Invitational in Pocatello, Idaho. Which broke a 44-year-old program record and gave Beitz both sprint marks.
“He’s a really competitive guy, and he wants to be the best in the Big Sky,” Fraley said.
The records have not left Beitz satisfied. They have made him hungrier.
“You have all these goals and numbers in your mind,” Beitz said. “Then once you hit those numbers, you’re not satisfied. There’s just more numbers to chase.”
The next chase begins at the Big Sky Conference Outdoor Championships, scheduled for May 13-16 in Portland, Oregon.
After college, Beitz hopes to follow his mother’s footsteps and become a pharmacist. Maybe even the world’s fastest pharmacist.
“If I’m running around the hospital talking to doctors,” Beitz said, “I’ll do it pretty fast.”
From a walk-on few people noticed to a conference champion and school-record holder, Beitz has become Montana’s fastest man — and he is not done running.
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