Nothing to see here. Move along.

As expected, the State Land Board just voted 4-1 to lease the Otter Creek coal tracts. After a lively public comment period that ran more than ten to one against leasing, the vote fell pretty much the way everyone said it would. The sole No vote came from Denise Juneau, Superintendent of Public Instruction, citing [...]

Otter Creek and Utter Rhetoric

Just a quick reminder. The State Land Board meets tomorrow at 9am in Helena to decide the fate of the state portion of the Otter Creek coal tracts. If you don’t have anything in particular to do, the meeting will be broadcast live on the internet. The fate of Otter Creek is late on the [...]

Otter Creek; Buried Treasure or Sleeping Dog?

It was Sir Robert Walpole, Prime Minister to King George I of Britain who said “Let sleeping dogs lie” in reference to the American colonies. Better to walk softly than risk getting bit. He also said that, “Every man has his price“. It seems that fourteen Montana republicans have found their price in the Otter [...]

Clean Coal, Black Lungs

If we were to manage to remove every milligram of CO2 from coal plant emissions, coal would still be one of the most deadly substances on earth. In 1969, Congress passed the Coal Mine Health and Safety Act, which set coal-dust standards for mines designed to reduce the incidence of black lung disease in U.S. [...]

Children For Coal, let’s trade

There is a very sincere opinion piece in the Billings Gazette yesterday by Dave Puyear, executive director of the Montana Rural Education Association listing the benefits to education from leasing the Otter Creek coal tracts. He argues that leasing the tracts will provide an estimated $57 million in bonus payments to the state, millions in [...]

Running away from Otter Creek

There have been several articles about Otter Creek and coal in recent days that bear mention. Nobel laureate and UM climate specialist Steve Running and retired UM economist Tom Power addressed members of the State Land Board on Tuesday on the foolhardiness of selling Otter Creek coal. Running “didn’t mince words” according to the Missoulian. [...]

Exempt water ain’t free water

Update 12/03/2009: I just found a link to a pdf of the 40-page petition filed by the Montana ranchers. It is extremely fascinating reading. Gives a good quick and dirty outline of the history of exempt wells as well as outlining their case for a declaratory ruling changing the definition of  “combined appropriation“.
……………………………………………………………………………………..
Exempt groundwater wells [...]

Subsidizing carbon pollution

Does this make any sense? A proposed coal-gasification plant in Indiana would capture it’s CO2 output and sell it to a big oil company who would build a pipeline costing more than a billion dollars to pipe the gas to the Gulf of Mexico to be used to force oil out of depleted oil wells. [...]

Another ace for A.C.E.S

Moving Montana away from dirty extractive energy production will not only help the earth, it will help Montanans. A new study by a team of researchers at the University of California, using a state-of-the-art forecasting model predicts that “comprehensive clean energy and climate policies would create jobs, increase consumers’ income, and strengthen the U.S. economy [...]

Coal Kills Kids

On Monday, the Montana State Land Board decided to delay a decision on leasing the state-owned parcels of coal in the Otter Creek tracts. “The board said more time is needed for the public to examine the proposed bid-letting.” The real reason was likely to let them figure out how to maximize the monetary return, [...]