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 [...]

Wolf Trout

The headline today is “Tribes propose netting lake trout“. The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes have released a draft of a pilot proposal to reduce lake trout in Flathead Lake numbers which would include the use of netting. They are interested in forming a work group composed of tribal, state and federal government agencies along [...]

Developers Rights Preservation Act

Proposed ballot initiative I-162 would redefine a “taking” in Montana law so that any government action that causes “a reduction of at least 25 percent in the fair market value” would have to be addressed by compensation or cessation of the government action.
The Governor’s budget office has determined that I-162 will cost the state of [...]

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. [...]

Pebble could become a landslide

The proposed, infamous Pebble Mine in the headwaters of Bristol Bay Alaska has been back in the news again. The Alaska Fisheries Board was asked this week to consider creation of a large state refuge to for the protection of Bristol Bay salmon.
For a bit of background, Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd., a Canadian mining conglomerate [...]

Rosebud Creek Hydro

I’m not entirely up to speed on this, but the timeline is kind of short, so here’s what I know. The Billings Gazette reports that Hydrodynamics Inc. of Bozeman is proposing building two small hydropower projects on East and West Rosebud Creeks near Roscoe. They have filed for preliminary permits to do some drilling and [...]