The Clean and Healthful Environment in the Courts—Part V: The Gravel Wars
(first published on June 22, 2026 at https://andersnewbury.substack.com)
Gravel
In recent years, Montana has received a flood of remote-work enabled new arrivals fleeing expensive coastal cities and drawn to romanticized portrayals of an independent way of life. Real estate developers have sprung into action to meet the ensuing demand for development. But these efforts are constrained by a limiting resource: local gravel—which is necessary to enable nearly all forms of development. As a result, numerous new or expanded gravel mining operations are cropping up around western Montana.
Gravel mining in Montana is regulated by the Opencut Mining Act (OMA), which was enacted in 1973, the same year the new Constitution was created, and was explicitly intended to be “mindful of its constitutional obligations” to ensure a clean and healthful environment. Historically, the OMA contained significant environmental protections for gravel mining, requiring a permit applicant demonstrate how water quality and quantity would be protected, and the OMA provided for public notice, comment, and meeting. However, in 2021, Montana’s Legislature enacted H.B. 599, removing or significantly weakening the OMA’s environmental protections.
Local communities have raised concerns that gravel mines—in addition to being loud and unsightly—result in airborne particulate matter reaching surface waters and individual’s lungs, and that a pit that intersects groundwater could easily contaminate water supplies. But, under H.B. 599, litigants have struggled to force DEQ to consider these harms or restrict permits.
In 2024, one local non-profit, the Gallatin County based Gateway Conservation Alliance filed a lawsuit alleging that H.B. 599’s amendments to the OMA violated the constitutional right to a Clean and Healthful Environment. GCA argued in district court that the Legislature violated its constitutional duties by reducing the OMA’s permit application process to little more than a form-filling exercise.
Despite Held’s clear directive that constitutional litigants need not first challenge a particular permit and go through a lengthy administrative hearing process, the District Court ruled that GCA was required to do just that. The ruling is currently on appeal before the Supreme Court. This ruling will likely determine how Held and the constitutional right to a Clean and Healthful Environment will be implemented under the growing pressure for development of Montana’s resources.
Data Centers
The rapid creation of data centers to fuel the new AI revolution is likely to be the frontline of environmental battles in the coming months and years. As these centers are proposed around the country and Montana, local resistance is growing. Montana’s constitutional Right to a Clean and Healthful Environment grew out of its experience with powerful corporate actors extracting the state’s resources to the benefit of the few, while leaving local communities to deal with the environmental fallout. The strength of this small but mighty state constitutional provision will soon face its greatest challenge yet, as citizens reckon with global technological transformation.
Montana’s Clean & Healthful Environment: an Ongoing Story
As discussed throughout the preceding segments, Montana’s constitutional Right to a Clean and Healthful Environment is a unique and powerful part of the state’s heritage. Since 1999, the constitutional provision has enjoyed a remarkable success streak in Montana courts. These rulings have continued developing the right to a Clean and Healthful Environment into a potent force in Montana law. But courts have limited ability to preserve constitutional rights on their own, and Montana’s judiciary has been subject to repeated efforts to politicize the non-partisan branch of government. Ultimately, it is up to every citizen of Montana to hold their government accountable and protect the promise of a Clean and Healthful Environment, for present and future generations.