Hello Mayre,

This Thursday, October 26th, at 3pm at the Flathead Lake Biological Station you can attend a presentation, or listen by zoom remotely, by one of the lead scientist in the US, Dr. Emma Rosi. She has been studying for a number of decades why chemical compounds found in pharmaceutical and personal care products are showing up ubiquitously in the nation’s rivers, lakes, groundwater, and drinking water—even remote regions of national parks. Read more about her research by clicking here.

Click here for directions to the Yellow Bay Biological Station for Dr. Rosi's presentation that will be followed by a brief reception for her. If you can't attend you may join her presentation at 3pm by clicking here for the zoom link to watch her presentation remotely.

This is a critical issue that all Flathead residents and businesses who care deeply about protecting and maintaining our world class water quality need to learn about.

This is a problem that already affects Flathead County waterways. Endocrine disruptor compounds, pharmaceuticals and personal care products were detected in 13 of the 14 shallow ground- water wells that were sampled in 2010 by the Flathead

Lake Biological Station in the Flathead River Drainage just above Flathead Lake.

Shortly after this local study was

published we secured funding to establish the first three, of now nine, safe drop off locations for unused medications in the Flathead. Unused medications should never be flushed down a drain or toilet. To learn more about this issue and free disposal options visit our WasteNot web site.

For over a year now, Citizens for a Better Flathead has been tracking and questioning the Flathead County Commissioners' and others support for building a Septic Waste Collection and Composting Facility in an area surrounded by wetlands, sloughs, and shallow groundwater just one mile north of Flathead Lake. This facility is being sized to accept all the septic pumpings from well over 30,000 septic systems in the Flathead and the biosolids from the sewer plants operated by each of the three cities in the county. The Lakeside Sewer and Water District is currently applying to the state DEQ for a permit to take, treat and then ground inject the liquid effluent squeezed out of this human waste so it can be composted likely with wood waste and sold locally.

The scary thing is there are virtually no state or federal requirements to remove or even measure the level of pharmaceutical and personal care products or highly toxic chemicals like PFAS in the compost produced or in the permitting rules that govern injecting this waste water into soil and then to ground water a mere one mile north of Flathead Lake and near the Flathead River.

Our position is that this is, at the very least, the wrong location for this Septic Receiving Station and composting facility.

Recently we have worked with neighbors to this proposed Septic and Composting facility who fear for impacts to their own wells as well as the river and lake, to identify and encourage the county buy a new location for this composting facility that could be hooked up to the Kalispell Sewage Treatment Plant. We are pleased the county did recently purchase this property and we now need to all be urging the county to relocate the Septic and Composting facility along with the new jail to this property--but more on that soon and why it is a better solution, but not a complete solution.