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 April 19, 2026, results for each game:
Winning Big Sky Bonus numbers from April 19 drawing
05-13-15-17, Bonus: 01
Check Big Sky Bonus 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.
The Ole’ Mercantile is a busy place by Grass Range, Montana, standards.
The community of roughly 125 people sits along a long, lonely network of two-lane highways connecting Billings with points north along Montana’s Hi-Line.
For drivers pushing toward Lewistown, Malta or Glasgow, the store’s lights are often the first sign of anything for miles.
Of late, they may also offer a chance of identifying the person driving a truck local women say is stalking these roads.
Owner Krista Manley told Cowboy State Daily her store is outfitted with a top-of-the-line camera system that offers a 360-degree view with no blind spots. Four overlapping cameras capture her property, the Wrangler Bar and the full stretch of Highway 87 frontage running through town.
Fergus County investigators now hope that footage — and Manley’s willingness to comb through hours of it — can help identify the driver of a newer white Ford four-door pickup with dark tinted windows, no front license plate and a chrome grill guard.
The truck is at the center of the most recent reported highway stalking incident.
Lizette Lamb, a 48-year-old traveling health care worker, says she was nearly run off the road the evening of April 10.
Now a growing chorus of similar accounts from women across north-central Montana are popping up on social media.
At The Ole Merc
Travis Lamb, Lizette’s husband, took to Facebook to post about what happened to his wife on one of the loneliest stretches of highway in Montana.
Travis told Cowboy State Daily Lizette pulled into the Ole’ Merc Conoco in Grass Range between 7 and 8 p.m. to grab a drink. She later remembered a pickup was backed in alongside the cafe: a newer white Ford four-door.
“Kind of gave her the heebie-jeebies,” he said. “My wife has worked in a prison and stuff like that, so she’s used to kind of going with her gut.”
She bought a drink, got back in her Ford Bronco Sport and headed north on Highway 19 toward Glasgow.
About a mile and a half down the road, she realized the white pickup was behind her. Through the dark tint, she could make out the silhouettes of two men.
She slowed down and edged toward the shoulder to let them pass. They slowed with her. She sped up. They sped up.
By the time she reached Bohemian Corner 23 miles up the road, Travis Lamb said, his wife knew something was wrong.
There were no other vehicles in the lot, so she didn’t bother pulling in. She tried to call Travis. No service.
She tried 911. The phone beeped, displayed a red message and disconnected.
Truck Gets Aggressive
The white truck continued to shadow Lizette along Highway 191. About two miles from where the road crosses the Missouri River, coming into a construction zone, the pickup got aggressive.
Travis said the truck rode so close to the Bronco’s bumper that his wife could no longer see its windshield, only the grille.
Then it pulled out as if to pass and swerved into her, he said, in what he described as an attempted PIT maneuver — the law-enforcement technique of clipping a fleeing vehicle’s rear quarter to spin it out.
PIT stands for Precision Immobilization Technique, and this tactic is used to stop a fleeing vehicle by forcing it to turn sideways, causing the driver to lose control and stop.
“She was fortunate, kind of timed it to when they went to turn into her and hit her, she sped up,” Travis Lamb said. “And they missed.”
That’s when Lizette Lamb pulled her Springfield XDM 9mm pistol out of the center console. She didn’t point it, but she made sure they could see it.
The white pickup hit its brakes, threw a U-turn in a spray of dust and gravel, and headed back toward Grass Range.
The Video
“I thank God that it did happen to her and not somebody else, because I know my wife is more than capable of defending herself,” said Travis Lamb, an Iraq War combat veteran, who eventually reached out to Manley at the Ole Merc.
Then, when Manley reviewed the surveillance video from the Merc’s camera system, she found no sign of a white Ford truck.
“We have not found evidence of them at our store or at the three businesses that come along the highway right there,” Manley said. “That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
“My default is to absolutely believe women, and she (Lizette) was, she was rattled.”
Manley holds a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology and ran the research team at Procore Technologies before going into business for herself.
When reviewing the video, Manley logged the times Lizette arrived and left, and then watched the highway for an hour after.
“We’re absolutely not arguing the authenticity of the report in any way, shape or form,” said Manley. “In my previous life before I had the store, I actually was a memory and cognition researcher. I understand how stress impacts memory.”
The Echoes
Travis Lamb’s Facebook post went off like a flare.
He tallied 36 accounts of similar experiences in roughly the same swath of country stretching across prairie and badlands in one of the least populated parts of Montana.
The pattern in many of the comments was consistent enough to be unsettling: a white pickup, often a Ford, sometimes with out-of-state plates, tailgating women on isolated stretches of two-lane after dark.
One commenter described being followed by a white truck north of Grass Range three years ago around 10 p.m., tailgated with brights on at more than 80 mph until the truck peeled off in a different direction.
Another described a white Ford pickup near Harlowton trying to force her to stop, then waiting for her at a gas station. Another recalled a white pickup with North Dakota plates in the same area.
In Wyoming, one poster described two men in a white truck with Washington plates on Highway 120 between Cody and Meeteetse who tailgated her, tried to push her off the road, then cut in front and slammed on the brakes.
Other women described different vehicles — a dark Escalade, a small white car, a black double-cab — but the same script: tailgating, refusing to pass, brake-checking, dead zones with no cell service.
Easter Night
One name in that Facebook thread was Joni Hartford of Lewistown, who told Cowboy State Daily she had her own near-identical encounter on Easter evening just days before Lizette Lamb’s.
Hartford, who works in insurance, had dropped off some belongings to her son, a football player at Rocky Mountain College in Billings.
She stopped at a gas station on her way out of town “for a pop,” climbed back into her red 2014 Ford F-150 and headed north on Highway 87 around 7:30 or 8 p.m.
“I noticed it right after I left Billings,” Hartford said of the pickup behind her. “It was right behind me and I kept thinking, ‘God, this vehicle is super close.’”
About 15 miles out of town, past the racetracks, she pulled toward the white line and slowed to 60 mph on a long straightaway, hoping the truck would go around. It wouldn’t.
“He was so close behind me, I couldn’t see his taillights, but I could see his marker lamps on his mirrors, his tow mirrors,” Hartford said. “So I knew it was a Ford pickup, and I knew it was like a three-quarter or a 1-ton. It was a big pickup.”
She couldn’t make out the color in the dark. She called her husband.
“I said, ‘This pickup is tailgating me,’ and said, ‘It’s really kind of making me nervous, because if I had to stop for a deer, it would run me over. It would run me off the road,’” Hartford said.
“And he goes, ‘Well, just stop.’ And I said, ‘I am not stopping. I’m in the middle of freaking nowhere,’” she added.
She made it through Roundup with the truck still on her bumper.
North of town, climbing toward Grass Range, Hartford caught a lucky break with an Amish buggy sluggishly clapping up a blind hill and slowing traffic.
“I darted around the Amish buggy, right before the blind hill, and he couldn’t get around them, and I just gunned it, and I was going probably 90 mph just to put space between us,” Hartford said. “I never seen him again.”
Hartford carries a .380 pistol. She had it out and on the seat. She didn’t show it — between the dark and her tinted windows, she wasn’t sure the driver behind her would have seen it anyway.
When Lamb’s post crossed her Facebook feed, Hartford said the parallels stopped her cold.
“It’s the same exact situation,” she said. “I can’t say for certain it was the same person, but it sure seems like it was the same person.”
Hartford said she believes the driver is hunting for circumstance: single women, after dark, on a corridor he knows is desolate and short on cell coverage.
“They’re targeting them at gas stations,” she said. “That’s the only place they could have found me, because it’s the only place I’ve stopped.”
The Candidate
Penny Ronning, cofounder and president of the Yellowstone Human Trafficking Task Force, had a similar drive in 2022.
She remembers it as the only time in nearly a year of solo campaign travel across 41 Montana counties that she felt afraid.
Ronning, then a Democratic candidate for U.S. Congress, was driving from Billings to Havre for a campaign event.
Instead of taking the interstate, she chose the back roads — north out of Winifred on Highway 236, a route that runs about 30 miles of gravel through some of the most remote country in the state before dropping into the Missouri River Breaks, which Ronning compared to a Montana version of the Grand Canyon.
As she entered the gravel, a four-door white pickup with blacked-out windows pulled in behind her.
“That was what made it frightening,” Ronning said. “It was that I was followed.”
Ronning, who has spent years working on human trafficking policy and prevention, was careful to push back on the framing that has circulated on Facebook around the Lamb case — that the white-pickup encounters are likely abduction attempts tied to trafficking networks.
“Human trafficking is the use of force, fraud or coercion to compel a person into commercial sex acts or labor against their will,” Ronning said. “Just because someone is being followed, that doesn’t rise to the level of human trafficking.”
The most prevalent form of human trafficking in the United States, she said, is familial trafficking, one family member trafficking another.
In Montana, she said, labor trafficking is also common in construction, nail salons, illicit massage businesses, hospitality and domestic servitude in pockets of high-end real estate.
Sex trafficking almost always begins with someone the victim knows.
The Watch
Back in Grass Range, every white pickup that rolls past the four-corner blinking light is now turning heads.
Manley said her store has worked closely with the Fergus County Sheriff’s Office on past incidents, and her cameras are essentially a standing resource for investigators.
She also said the response on social media has dismayed her, commenters questioning whether these highway stalking incidents happened at all, or suggesting Grass Range itself isn’t safe.
She believes her store, and others like it in remote pockets of Montana, are informal refuges.
“We’ve all been there, whether it’s in a snowstorm or where we’re just uncomfortable driving like this where we’re just like, ‘Oh my gosh,’ you see the big lights and you’re like, there’s a beacon of safety, essentially,” Manley said.
She said that her eyes are open to potential threats along the isolated highways connecting Grass Range to the rest of the world.
“We know that it is a highway that has a reputation for, you know, trafficking, drug moving, all of those different things, and that’s why we are as diligent as we are,” said Manley. “We really care about the safety of our community, our employees, and our customers.”
Manley remains in contact with the Lambs.
“She told me, ‘I’m not going to quit looking,’” said Travis, explaining how Manley is arranging for the Lambs to review the footage themselves.
Travis figures that perhaps, “Instead of a white Ford, maybe it’s a tan Dodge.”
He added, “I’m hoping somebody’s like, ‘I know that pickup.’ That’s what I’m praying for.”
So is Lizette, who told Cowboy State Daily, she’s thankful for the response to her story. She’s also thankful she was traveling with her sidearm.
“Unfortunately, that’s the world we live in now. You know, Montana, in the middle of nowhere,” said Lizette, who encouraged anyone else with similar encounters to come forward.
“This is just a reminder that it is happening,” she said. “It is real.”
David Madison can be reached at david@cowboystatedaily.com.
The Montana Lottery offers multiple draw games for those aiming to win big.
Here’s a look at April 18, 2026, results for each game:
Winning Powerball numbers from April 18 drawing
24-25-39-46-61, Powerball: 01, Power Play: 5
Check Powerball payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Lotto America numbers from April 18 drawing
18-21-22-32-42, Star Ball: 10, ASB: 03
Check Lotto America payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Big Sky Bonus numbers from April 18 drawing
10-16-29-31, Bonus: 13
Check Big Sky Bonus payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Montana Cash numbers from April 18 drawing
06-08-09-20-22
Check Montana Cash 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.
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