Northern Plains likes to celebrate, too. Cowboy poet Wally McRae and singer song-writer Stephanie Davis, both Northern Plains members perform at Poetry for the Plains and other events for Northern Plains.

It was at the end of the 1990s that coal bed methane drilling came to Montana, and the Montana Board of Oil and Gas Conservation began issuing permits without requiring any environmental studies. In 2000, Northern Plains was forced to sue in order to get the state to conduct environmental studies before granting new permits for coal bed methane drilling. Methane drilling poses strong threats to ground water supplies (and to the water rights of people who use that water) and drillers disposed of salt-laden discharges into streams until Northern Plains’ sustained efforts forced the state to begin requiring those discharges to be treated. The long-awaited Environmental Impact Statement projected that as many as 26,000 methane wells could be drilled in Montana, and that the accompanying development could include up to:

  • 9,000 miles of new roads;
  • 28,000 miles of new power lines and pipeline corridors;
  • 4,000 high-sodium wastewater impoundments;
  • 70,000 acres of disturbed land;
  • 4.7 million acres of impacted wildlife habitat;
  • 600-foot aquifer drawdowns across the Powder River Basin, with recharge not expected until several decades after drilling ends.

Northern Plains published a guide aimed at helping landowners protect their land and water from the impacts of coal bed methane drilling, and distributed that guide to over 6,000 rural households. We announced our “Doing It Right” campaign on coal bed methane, which was endorsed by 55 Montana organizations. Northern Plains’ Doing It Right campaign called for:

  1. Enforcement of existing laws and monitoring of coal bed methane development.
  2. A requirement than methane operators get permission from surface owners before beginning drilling operations; surface use agreements so that landowners can have a say in the course of development on their land, and reimbursement of attorney fees to landowners who prove damages to their property so that the cost of litigating doesn’t deter them from seeking just compensation.
  3. The use of best available technologies such as aquifer recharge, clustered development, and mufflers for compressor stations to reduce the footprint of methane development on our productive agricultural land, rural communities, water resources, and wildlife.
  4. The collection of thorough fish, wildlife, and plant inventories before development proceeds, followed by phased-in development over time to diffuse impacts and allow public agencies with the time to address problems as they come up.
  5. Meaningful public involvement in the decision-making process; public agencies need to make every effort to include the public in the decision-making process.
  6. Full reclamation and adequate bonding in order to protect Montana taxpayers from liability for cleanup costs after the methane industry is gone.

We distributed a four-page informational piece in 35,000 eastern Montana newspapers. We generated considerable public participation in state and federal hearings, and we successfully petitioned the Montana Board of Environmental Review to develop numerical water standards for streams affected by coal bed methane drilling.

Unfortunately, we were forced to take courtroom action several times because state and federal enforcement of existing laws was so poor. Getting the state to conduct environmental studies was just the first. In other court cases, we:

  • Prevented the federal Bureau of Land Management from taking shortcuts on their EIS;
  • Ensured that citizens have the right to appeal DEQ decisions on permits;
  • Established that discharge water from methane wells is indeed a pollutant under the federal Clean Water Act, that such discharges must have a discharge permit, and that the state cannot create exemptions to the Clean Water Act;
  • Required a methane driller to remove several illegal impoundments and get permits for the remaining impoundments;
  • Intervened to help the Northern Cheyenne Tribe’s case against the dumping of untreated discharge water, which the Tribe won unanimously in the Montana Supreme Court;
  • Intervened to defend the water quality standards that our rulemaking petition several years earlier had established. Those standards, and the science behind them, have been upheld in every court decision;
  • Outlawed the water-wasting practice of using evaporation pits to get rid of discharge water;
  • Established under the law that water which comes out of the ground is indeed ground water. This ruling protects the right of senior water rights holders to object to a methane company’s application for water rights, and upholds the principles of prior appropriation and beneficial use that are fundamental to Western water law.
  • Litigation has never been a preferred option for Northern Plains, but it became necessary in these cases to protect water and water rights, and to ensure that laws are enforced.

We commissioned studies to help guide Montanans in addressing coal bed methane development. They included:

A year-long study of options for handling coal bed methane wastewater. This study proved reinjection and treatment are feasible ways to manage methane discharges.

A study on coal bed methane’s impacts to aquifers (Journal of Hydrology, March 2009, “Groundwater management and coal bed methane development in the Powder River Basin of Montana,” Tom Myers, Ph.D.). The peer-reviewed study forecasts dramatic aquifer drawdowns and long recovery times as a result of methane drilling.

In addition to finding practical ways to deal with the effects of coal bed methane drilling on the land and water, Northern Plains has challenged methane industry plans to market Montana ground water (the court case on water rights involved a proposal to export thousands of acre-feet annually beyond Montana’s borders). These industry plans include piping this ground water to other states, an option that carries no positive effects for Montana, and which could be a step toward the privatization of water.

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