Natural resource jobs pushed in Montana

As lawmakers agonize over Montana’s $230 million budget hole, Republican leaders are eyeing what they call a long-term solution: jump-starting the state’s natural resource industries.

By MIKE DENNISON
Tribune Capitol Bureau

If Montana can boost development of coal, oil and gas, hard-rock mining and timber, the tax revenue and jobs from these high-paying industries can lift Montana from its economic slumber, they say.

"Where we’re sitting here today budget-wise, we’ve got a pie that we can slice up only so many ways," said Rep. Alan Olson, R-Roundup. "We need to build a bigger pie."

Toward that end, Republicans — and a few Democrats — are sponsoring numerous bills at the 2003 Legislature to aid these industries.

"It’s our core industries that we have not taken care of and apparently tried to drive from the state," said Sen. Duane Grimes, R-Clancy, who’s working on bills to aid expansion of the Golden Sunlight gold mine near Whitehall. "It’s unconscionable how we’ve treated them."

Yet as this pro-industry push begins anew, environmental groups and some Democrats wonder what more these industries need from a state where Republicans have controlled politics for a decade.

Senate Minority Leader Jon Tester, D-Big Sandy, says he’s all for natural-resource development. But it should be done with caution, to avoid leaving taxpayers to clean up messes like the defunct Zortman-Landusky gold mines south of Malta, he said.

"If we don’t do it in a way so the companies pay (for the impacts) and not the taxpayer, then we’re making a mistake," Testers said.

Jeff Barber of the Montana Environmental Information Center is more blunt in his assessment.

"What major environmental law haven’t they gutted in the last decade?" he asked. "How much more ‘industry-friendly’ do they want us to be?"

The apparent answer from most Republicans is, quite a bit more.

A sampling of the pro-industry proposals coming before the 2003 Legislature includes:

# A bill making it harder to legally challenge or block industrial projects.

# Several measures to encourage construction of coal-fired power plants in southeastern Montana, and thus boost coal production.

# Bills amending hard-rock mine cleanup laws, to encourage expansion of the Golden Sunlight gold mine.

# A proposal that could boost logging on state-owned forests.

So far, the key pro-industry proposal is a measure sponsored by Olson, who’s an enforcement officer for the state Board of Oil and Gas Conservation.

House Bill 437, which will be heard in committee Feb. 12, makes it harder to use legal means to block or delay industrial projects.

The bill says anyone challenging an industrial permit must request an injunction in the judicial district where the project exists.

Environmental groups say this change would make it much harder to mount and win these challenges.

"It’s trying to make people pay more money and spend more resources to challenge a permit," said Anne Hedges, MEIC program director.

Hedges said it’s not true that conservation groups are constantly challenging project permits. HB437 is an attempt to blame these groups for the decline of extractive industries, when economic and geographic factors are to blame, she said.

However, Hedges and Barber said the need to challenge project permits is increasing, because changes by previous legislatures have put state environmental reviews of major projects on a fast track.

"If (the state) isn’t going to enforce the law, then our members would like to make sure the law does get enforced," Hedges said.

The changes in HB437 address a long-standing complaint from pro-industry groups that environmental activists file legal challenges before sympathetic judges who have no stake in the project being challenged.

"If it (HB437) passes, permits would be challenged in the county where the project is, instead of coming back to the liberal courts in Helena, where we haven’t had a favorable decision for I don’t know how long," said Angela Janacaro, executive director of the Montana Mining Association.

Coal-bed methane next

The next priority on most Republicans’ list is coal-bed natural gas development in southeastern Montana.

They’d like Montana to emulate the recent coal-bed production boom in Wyoming, which is one of the few states in the nation with a budget surplus. Tax revenue from natural gas production in Wyoming has almost quadrupled in the past three years.

If Montana develops the same resource in the same nearby river basins, it could mean millions in tax revenue, Republican leaders say.

"They could be drilling (in Montana) by October," said Senate Majority Leader Fred Thomas, R-Stevensville. "It’s going to generate lots of jobs and lots of revenue to help our local schools. … But that depends on lawsuits by the environmentalists."

A moratorium on drilling in Montana is about to be lifted, as a state environmental review is just wrapping up.

The only coal-bed methane bills currently before the 2003 Legislature would increase protections for area landowners worried about impacts of drilling and gas production.

Several landowners traveled to Helena on Friday to testify on these bills.

Among them was Mark Fix, who ranches south of Miles City on the Tongue River.

Fix said he’s worried that unbridled coal-bed methane development could mean dumping tons of salty water into the Tongue or Powder river basins, threatening agriculture.

"It’s OK to develop the oil and gas, but you’ve got to take care of what’s already there," he said.

Coal-bed methane production "will definitely create some income, and I’m sure it will create more income if they do it wrong," Fix said. "But it will still create income if they do it right and they salvage some of the ranchers and farmers."

Mining high-paying

Republican lawmakers also are looking for ways to boost coal mining, which offers some of the highest-paying jobs in the state. Miners in southeastern Montana average about $60,000 a year.

The best way to have more coal production is to build something in Montana that consumes a lot of coal — and that means a coal-fired power plant.

"You’re back to a value-added (product)," said Jim Mockler, the Montana coal industry’s chief lobbyist. "You’d have the tax base, the extra jobs. You would roughly double your job base. So it would be a wonderful asset."

Olson is sponsoring bills that could aid a proposed coal mine and 700-megawatt power plant near Roundup, make it easier for coal mines to get final cleanup plans approved and make it easier to acquire leases on coal tracts in Montana.

Thomas and Sen. Keith Bales, R-Otter, also are working on bills that would make it easier to develop the state-controlled Otter Creek coal tracts near Ashland. They declined to detail those proposals, which are still being drafted.

Mockler and legislative leaders realize that any construction of a large coal-fired plant could be years away. It requires huge investment, many permits and transmission lines to move the power.

Still, they’re optimistic about the prospects for jobs and tax revenue from such projects.

"We now have people coming and saying, ‘Hey, we’re interested in developing here,’" said Mockler. "That’s the first time I’ve seen that, and I’ve been here 27 years."

This interest is not necessarily cause for celebration, environmental activists say.

"Why would you want to build all the mines and plants in this state and have all the impacts, just to provide power to California?" said Barber.

Some lawmakers — and they’re not all Republicans — answer by saying, why wouldn’t you?

"I don’t think we can abandon the coal resources we have in our state," said Rep. George Golie, D-Great Falls. "This is part of the solution for overall economic development in this state. A balanced economy is the key to a great economy in Montana."

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