{"id":10347,"date":"2026-08-31T00:02:40","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T00:02:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/radio406.org\/?p=10347"},"modified":"2026-08-29T04:03:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-29T04:03:16","slug":"judge-halts-construction-on-montanas-proposed-laurel-mental-health-facility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radio406.org\/?p=10347","title":{"rendered":"Judge Halts Construction on Montana&#8217;s Proposed Laurel Mental Health Facility"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>Ruling cites inadequate water-supply analysis, as delay costs state more than $8,000 a day<\/em><\/p>\n<p>A Yellowstone County district judge has halted all construction, groundbreaking and permitting on Montana&#8217;s proposed forensic mental health facility in Laurel, a ruling that is now costing state taxpayers more than $8,000 a day as the project sits idle.<\/p>\n<p>The state has already spent $4.25 million to purchase the land for the facility and holds plans, contractor agreements and material deliveries in limbo while the litigation plays out.<\/p>\n<p>District Judge Ed Zink ruled Wednesday that the state had failed to adequately analyze the availability, capacity and supply of water for the facility, as well as the facility&#8217;s actual projected daily water demand.<\/p>\n<p>Zink also sent the project&#8217;s final environmental assessment back to the state, ordering officials to further investigate the water-supply questions. That assessment is required under the Montana Environmental Policy Act before the state can proceed with construction of the forensic facility in Laurel.<\/p>\n<p>By: <a href=\"https:\/\/montananewsroom.com\">Montana Newsroom wire<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ruling cites inadequate water-supply analysis, as delay costs state more than $8,000 a day A Yellowstone County district judge has halted all construction, groundbreaking and permitting on Montana&#8217;s proposed forensic mental health facility in Laurel, a ruling that is now costing state taxpayers more than $8,000 a day as the ...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10081,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[576],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-montana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radio406.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radio406.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radio406.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radio406.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radio406.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10347"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radio406.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10348,"href":"https:\/\/radio406.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10347\/revisions\/10348"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radio406.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radio406.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radio406.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radio406.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}