A lawsuit filed this week has temporarily halted consideration of 15 requests for water use permits in the Smith River basin that could result in an additional 6,700 gallons per minute being pumped out of the underground aquifer at times.

In the lawsuit, Montana Trout Unlimited, 11 Smith River area landowners and three outfitters claim that the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation's consideration of the permits violates a 1993 state moratorium that closed the Smith River basin to new surface water uses.

Lewis and Clark District Court Judge Dorothy McCarter ordered that no further processing of the permit applications take place until a court hearing on Aug. 13.

An attorney for the DNRC said on Wednesday that the order has effectively halted the application process at this time.

"At the moment, we are no longer taking any administrative actions until we appear before the court," DNRC Chief Legal Counsel Don MacIntyre said.

The crux of the dispute is whether the groundwater in the river basin's underground aquifer is connected to the surface water, specifically the water that flows in the Smith River, a popular fishing and floating stream that also is an important irrigation source for Meagher County ranchers.

Flows in the Smith River can be so low by early summer that it's unsuitable for recreational uses and the water is so warm — or so low — that it kills fish.

The river also has been sucked dry in the past to the point that downstream irrigators, even those with senior water rights, don't receive their fair share.

Some of the area landowners, along with Trout Unlimted and some outfitters, argue that in a recent Environmental Assessment (EA) done to consider the total impact of the 15 proposed new or changed water uses, the DNRC acknowledged that irrigation wells are impacting the Smith River flows.

That acknowledgement, in light of the basin closure, is enough to halt even consideration of the 15 requests, according to the plaintiffs.

"The lawsuit was filed to prevent what we believe to be illegal and devastating future dewatering of the Smith River," said John Wilson, conservation director for Trout Unlimited. "We didn't want to file a lawsuit … but the law says the DNRC can't process the applications under the basin closure law.

"And I think it's important to note that it isn't just Trout Unlimited or people who like to fish who are opposed to this, but a broad-based group of people over there, because we're all in the same boat."

MacIntyre acknowledges some of the conclusions in the EA, but quickly adds that each individual applicant has the right to argue for their permit on an individual basis, rather than have the permit considered with all the other applications as was done in the EA.

"The position of the department is that the EA doesn't determine" whether to approve or deny an application, MacIntyre said. "The individual parties have a right to present their arguments under the context of their cases in an administrative hearing.

The requests include nine new permits for an estimated 6,700 gallons per minute of groundwater that would be used to irrigate a disputed amount of acreage, from 180 acres to almost 1,700 acres. The wells would be from 100 to 200 feet deep, and the pumps would deliver between 95 and 1,650 gallons per minute, depending on the location.

In addition, six applications request changes to existing water rights, with most of the requests involving converting from flood irrigation to sprinkler irrigation on either new or additional acreage.

Applicants include Meagher County's Arrowhead Meadows Golf Course, the Springdale Hutterite Colony, the Riverside Ranch, the 6666 Ranch, owned by the Tom and Anne Burnett Trust and Louise Galt, Helen Dupea, and Ronald Jackson.

The groups who filed the lawsuit say the Environmental Assessment that looked at the cumulative effects of granting the 15 new or changed permits had limited analysis and understated the adverse impacts of granting the pending applications.

But they add that the EA concluded that the area aquifer functions as one interconnected system when it comes to ground water and surface water, and that pumping the groundwater eventually would reduce the amount of groundwater that flows into the surface flows — the Smith River.

"Despite these findings, the EA claimed to make no determination of whether ground water in the Smith River basin is directly or immediately connected to surface water …" the groups claim in their lawsuit.

Instead, the DNRC concluded that it would continue to process the applications and determine the connection between groundwater and surface water on an individual basis.

DNRC also informed the applicants that they didn't even need to address the issue of surface water impacts unless someone else brought it up.

"They're shirking their own responsibility," Wilson said.

Reporter Eve Byron can be reached at 447-4076 or by e-mail at eve.byron@helenair.com.