DEQ fines company for creek discharge from Tamarack Meadows; board of adjustment will take up application April 7

The Montana Department of Environmental Quality fined Schellinger Construction $11,750 for accidentally discharging muddied waters into a tributary of Garnier Creek last summer.

The company has since taken corrective action in the matter, which cut the fine amount in half, the DEQ noted in a letter to the company in February.

Kyle Schellinger of Schellinger Construction noted the fine and subsequent letter brings the company into compliance in the matter. 

The fines are in addition to a $15,000 fine levied against the company by the Flathead Conservation district last year. In that case, the agency found the company had violated the terms of what’s known as a 310 permit, which sets parameters and safeguards for working near streams. 

Garnier Creek is a small trout stream adjacent to Tamarack Meadows, a subdivision at the north end of Meadow Lake resort, which is owned by Schellinger. The muddy water went into the creek as the company was pumping water out of nearby stormwater ponds. 

On August 12, 2025, the DEQ received multiple citizen complaints that Schellinger was actively discharging water from the retention ponds on the Site to Garnier Creek, the DEQ said in its report. 

“A citizen provided photographs to DEQ that showed turbid water in Garnier Creek due to Schellinger’s dewatering activities. Later, on Aug. 12, 2025, Nathan Malmin from Schellinger called DEQ to report a discharge to Garnier Creek. Schellinger submitted a non-compliance report to DEQ for this unpermitted discharge on Aug. 13, 2025.  

“On Aug. 13, 2025, DEQ conducted a second compliance evaluation inspection (known as a CEI) at the site in response to the citizen complaints and Schellinger’s noncompliance report. During the August CEI, DEQ observed two locations where Schellinger’s dewatering activities had caused mud and sediment to discharge into a ditch, which then continued as a single flow of sediment-laden water that discharged into Garnier Creek. Sedimentation of Garnier Creek was observed over 0.35 miles downstream of the discharge point. DEQ also observed that Best Management Practices identified in (a) July CEI had not been implemented as required. DEQ concluded that failure to implement the Best Management Practices was a partial cause of the unpermitted discharge and the subsequent pollution of Garnier Creek resulted, in part, from failure to properly implement Best Management Practices at the site,” DEQ noted. 

On July 18, 2025, there were similar complaints from neighbors about muddied water going into the creek from the pond work, but a DEQ inspector, while he found several violations, did not see muddied water entering the creek. 

The company, however, has since taken corrective action. The ponds are part of the drainage system for the new subdivision, which has the roads and other infrastructure in. They are required by DEQ as part of the subdivision plat. 

The subdivision was first approved by the city of Columbia Falls in 2022, as it was formerly inside the city’s “doughnut” planning jurisdiction. The doughnut was a roughly mile to two-mile zone around the city, but outside the city limits, that the city used to have jurisdiction over. 

But the Montana Land Use Planning Act, passed by the state Legislature a few years ago, did away with the doughnut, so now the county has jurisdiction over the subdivision, while DEQ has jurisdiction over state waters and discharge and the conservation district over work near streams. 

The county board of adjustment was expected to take up the subdivision at its April 7 meeting. The application is for a conditional use permit for clustered housing in an area zoned as one-family residential. 

All told, the company is asking for 103 lots, which is the same as what the city approved in 2022. The lots themselves are already numbered along the streets. 

Schellinger said the company would not add any additional lots as some neighbors had charged; that would take rebuilding all of the sewer and water infrastructure that serves the subdivision, which is completed, save for the actual houses. 

After the lots are sold, the ponds and the drainage would become the responsibility of the respective homeowners association. 

The Board of Adjustment meeting is 6 p.m. at the county’s south campus building on the second floor.