HELENA -- Two American Indian tribes and a Helena environmental group asked Montana's environmental rulemakers Wednesday to forbid new mines in the state from forever fouling water that runs off reclaimed mine sites.

Jeff Barber of the Montana Environmental Information Center gave the proposed new rules to the Board of Environmental Review, a governor-appointed panel that sets environmental rules and settles some environmental disputes. MEIC and the Fort Belknap Indian Community Council submitted the requested. The council represents both the Gros Ventre and Assiniboine tribes on Montana's Fort Belknap Indian Reservation.

"We've been permitting mines basically the same way for years and the assumption is that if there's water quality problems, we'll just deal with them after mining," Barber said. "We ought to be looking at water quality problems from the start."

The proposed rules would require any new mine or existing mine planning a major expansion to show how it would manage water without using perpetual water treatment. Mines would be required to phase out water treatment within two years of reclaiming shuttered mines. After that, all water running over the site would have to meet state water quality standards.

The proposals are a nod toward the defunct Zortman and Landusky open pit cyanide leach gold mines surrounded on three sides by the Fort Belknap reservation. Although much of the abandoned mines have been reclaimed, water running off the site is so polluted it will have to be treated forever.

The 2005 Legislature set aside money to pay for the water treatment.

Barber said the state shouldn't allow mines to so foul water, it must be treated forever, years after the mine close. The proposed rules would force companies and the state to find better technologies.

The rules would only apply to hard rock mines that create cancer-causing pollution or pollution designated as "toxic."

Mark Isto, general manager of the Golden Sunlight open pit gold mine near Whitehall, said he hadn't thoroughly reviewed the proposed rules yet and couldn't say if he supports them. But Isto did say that water quality is important.

"At this point, all we could say is that Golden Sunlight and (its parent company) Placer Dome certainly support maintaining clean water resources in Montana," he said.

Isto said he wasn't sure if the rules, should they be adopted, would apply to his mine, which is already operating and is in the middle of working out a plan to reclaim the mine once it closes.

About half of the space the mine originally occupied has been reclaimed, he said.

At this point, said John North, chief lawyer for the Department of Environmental Quality, the rules are far from a sure thing. Any citizen can ask the Board of Environmental Review to consider new rules.

The Board will take up the proposal at its July 29 meeting. From there, North said, the panel could either dismiss the proposal or launch into the formal process for adopting new rules.

The board has 60 days to make a decision.