It's a charge that has made Muggli few friends in a region where economic development is desperately sought after and future coalbed methane development could mean hundreds of new jobs. His claims are denied by industry representatives and some federal scientists, who say there is no way to prove Muggli's assertion of a tie between coalbed methane and his bad soil.
But state officials and an independent researcher who investigated the case warned that Muggli's problems could be a harbinger of more to come, as the industry prepares to dramatically ramp up operations across 20 million acres in southeastern Montana in coming years. They said his fields bear the hallmarks of coalbed methane effects, though they were careful to add that a direct link was impossible to prove.
At issue are millions of gallons of water pumped daily from coal seams to access trapped methane, or natural gas. The water, which can be loaded with salts harmful to plants or soil, is sometimes treated or used to water livestock. Other times it is pumped directly into local stream and river drainages.
Last year, Montana adopted new water quality rules meant to protect agriculture while allowing for further coalbed methane development.
Muggli and some other farmers say the rules don't go far enough, while energy companies have sued to overturn them.
Meanwhile, the federal Bureau of Land Management is working on a plan to allow more than 18,000 coalbed methane wells to be drilled in the state over the next 20 years. That compares with about 1,000 wells already producing methane.
Upstream in Wyoming, there are more than 17,000 producing wells along the Tongue and a second river, the Powder, which both flow into Montana. That number is expected to more than double in coming years.
With vast sums of money at stake - starting at a projected $100 million a year in Montana and peaking at almost $3 billion annually at full production - coalbed methane companies such as Fidelity Exploration and Production are doing their own agricultural monitoring to prove their operations are benign.
They also point to federal studies showing only minor changes to water quality along the Tongue River in recent years, despite increased drilling.
“We have tried to use the best science to ensure there is protection for the irrigators on the Tongue River,” said Bruce Williams, vice president of Fidelity, a subsidiary of Montana-Dakota Utilities. Regarding Muggli's claims, he added, “There's just an awful lot of data to suggest that's not the case.”
Muggli's fields lie downstream from the industry's initial push into Montana following two decades of intense activity in Wyoming.
“The only change we've had after irrigating with this water for 120 years is CBM (coalbed methane),” Muggli said. “Who else am I going to blame?”
Currently, up to 2 million gallons of water produced by the industry is discharged daily into the Tongue in Montana. Almost 10 times that amount is put into the Powder River upstream in Wyoming, according to the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality.
Within the arid landscape of eastern Montana, that has set the industry at odds with farmers and ranchers who depend on the rivers to keep their agricultural operations alive. The rivers have naturally high levels of sodium even without coalbed methane water, making it difficult to pull apart the industry's impact.
After Muggli used irrigation water from the Tongue last growing season, he said the clay-based soils in three fields were rendered useless. When clay soil has too much sodium - a trait common in water pumped from coal seams - it can collapse to form an impenetrable seal. With water and air unable to get through the soil, Muggli's alfalfa turned yellow within a month. He skipped over those fields at harvest time, hoping the plants will bounce back next spring, but expects most to die.
Yet, given the distance between Fidelity's wells and Muggli's fields - more than 100 miles - Matt Janowiak of the Bureau of Land Management's Miles City field office said he would rule out CBM discharge water as the cause of Muggli's problem.
Too much poor-quality discharge water could overwhelm the river “eventually” if no controls were in place, he said. But Janowiak said he doubts that could occur given that Montana tightened its CBM water quality rules in 2003 and again last year.
A study by the U.S. Geological Survey showed a slight increase in sodium levels in the Tongue River. But with the region in the midst of a prolonged drought, USGS study team member Stacey Kinsey said her agency could not say whether CBM played a role.
James Bauder, an environmental scientist at Montana State University in Bozeman, said only time will tell if Montana's regulations are sufficient. In the meantime, he said Muggli's predicament should be taken as a warning.
“It's sort of like realizing the back end of the freight train has a problem and you've got to get all the way to the front to fix it and you can't. It's not something you can instantaneously stop,” he said. “You can't recall water in a stream and you can't recall the impact it will have on the landscape.”
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