Extended Otter Creek coal deadline!

Talking points for Otter Creek comments

The process is flawed: The permitting process for the Otter Creek mine is being fast-tracked by Montana DEQ and the impacts to the Otter Creek and Tongue River Valley must be considered thoroughly with no environmental issues overlooked.

The Otter Creek mine will do nothing for America’s energy independence: As U.S. coal markets are declining, Arch Coal and other coal companies are looking toward overseas coal markets. China and other Asian nations would get the energy, coal and railroad companies would get the profits, while Montanans would bear the social and environmental costs of this development.

The Otter Creek mine will lead to the building of the Tongue River Railroad: The Tongue River railroad would condemn private ranchland and property for 50+ miles, cutting ranches apart, creating hardship for landowners, and devaluing property.

Agriculture – not coal – is Montana’s number #1 industry: The one-time “harvest” of coal in the Otter Creek Valley will permanently ruin good ranch country. The aquifer will be mined away and the piles of crushed rock making up the “reclaimed” land surface will no longer be good bottomland. In addition, land will be taken out of production for the Tongue River Railroad, and remaining farm and ranch operations will be harder to operate and the property will be de-valued. The long-term economic health of family-based farming and ranching will be sacrificed for the boom and bust of a strip mine.

Air pollution: Greenhouse gases aren’t the only issue with coal. Burning coal, for example, is far and away the biggest source of toxic mercury pollution. Other pollutants like nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, and other toxins. Burning coal also releases fine particulate matter into the air, as do the diesel engines that will carry the coal by train for over a thousand miles to the West Coast, and the ships that will carry this coal across the Pacific. These particulates lead to heart disease and can worsen chronic conditions like asthma and COPD.

Climate Change: The coal from this one mine would release 2.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide into our atmosphere, one of the biggest sources of new carbon to be released into the atmosphere. The threat of climate change is real, and it is accelerating. 2012 was the hottest, driest year ever in the contiguous United States and across much of Montana, and was Montana’s worst year for wildfires in more than a century. The coal from Otter Creek will aggravate an already deteriorating situation, and it will exact a particularly high price on farms and ranches.

Conflict of Interest: Because almost half the coal at Otter Creek belongs to the state, the state is – for all practical purposes – the business partner of Arch Coal in this mine. It’s simply not reasonable to believe that the state will honestly study and effectively regulate this mine when it has a direct financial interest in the mine’s development.

Cumulative impacts: Little things can be hard to see, but they often add up to big things. Important things can be hard to see if they happen slowly. The Otter Creek mine will create many costs, and the accumulation of these costs adds up to a high price paid for this project. But it’s a price that won’t be paid by the developers. Instead, Montanans will pay the price for ruined land and water, for an altered climate, for an overburdened rail system, and for communities cut in half by growing coal train traffic. Native residents will pay the price of ruined cultural sites and artifacts. Hunters and anglers will pay the price when our surface and ground waters are damaged, and healthy rural landscapes cut to pieces. Montanans will pay the price of having a state government that once again wears the “collar” of extractive industries owned by out-of-state interests.