In the West, a Water Fight Over Quality, Not Quantity

[YankeyMCC]

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MILES CITY, Mont. — It is a strange fight, Montana ranchers say. Raising cattle here in the parched American outback of eastern Montana and Wyoming has always been a battle to find enough water.
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But the search for a type of natural gas called coal bed methane has come to this part of the world in a big way. The gas is found in subterranean coal, and companies are pumping water out of the coal and stripping the gas mixed with it. Once the gas is out, the huge volumes of water become waste in a region that gets less than 12 inches of rain a year.
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The companies have been pumping the wastewater into drainages that flow into the Tongue River, as well as two other small rivers that flow north into Montana, the Powder and Little Powder Rivers. Ranchers say the water contains high levels of sodium and if it is spread on a field, it can destroy the ability to grow anything.
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The companies say that sodium is not the problem ranchers have made it out to be and that the Montana environmental standards cannot be met without great difficulty. They have filed suit in federal and Montana court to overturn the regulations.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/10/us/10river.html

So if the community standards are difficult isn't that just hte cost of doing business? In a free market should this mean they either have to find a way to make it profitable - under the rules - or not do business.

Of course NOT it means they need to change the rules. Free market is almost never Free for the people only to the corporataions who are Free to do whatever the hell they want.