Montana's Powder River basin is still wild and the home of 250 bird species including 137 different songbirds. The Northern Cheyennes also call the region home since the late 1880's after the government lied, cheated and starved them out of the way of the white man's "progress". In 2010 Montana Land Board handed the future of the Basin to Arch Coal for $86 million plus future royalties on an estimated 570 million tons of Otter Creek coal. Arch Coal wants to turn the verdant prairie into Montana's largest open pit mine. Will Americans at least benefit in someway from another sacrifice of its remaining wild places?
NOT. The sodium heavy coal is destined to feed the pollution belching power plants of a horribly polluted China. Arch Coal proposes to bring the coal to the northwest coast of Washington and Oregon by coal train. Arch and BSNF need 2700 acres of new right-of-way along the Tongue river which borders the Cheyenne's reservation. The reservation has some of the best air quality in the nation. Dirty mile long coal trains will chug through the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area and central Washington to proposed terminals on the Pacific Coast.
Of course
environmentalists are alarmed by these latest corporate plans to alter the global climate and destroy Americans' quality of life. Each year America's own coal plants produce about 130 million tons of ash waste that are contaminated with mercury, lead and arsenic. About 40% is recycled, but the rest is dumped. If China is able to source coal relatively cheaply from the United States, its power companies have less incentive to switch to cleaner power production. Coal mining in the Basin has left indelible scars on the land. Thousands of acres are strip mined. Six in Montana alone cover 1,000 acres. Wastewater and from mines and coal methane wells has raised the Tongue River's salinity so high some irrigators will not use the water for fear of injuring their hayfields. Uncovered coal trains spread coal dust along their route posing a particulate pollution hazard to communities next to the right-of-way
[photo]. Freighters taking on coal at ports also present a source of carcinogenic pollution. Commercial and tribal fishing is big business in the Northwest and it would undoubtably be affected by an export coal industry. For example the proposed Cherry Point terminal in Washington would be build on an Indian burial ground and a state aquatic reserve. It would wipe out the Lummi fishing business that owns the largest fleet on the 'left' coast. Other industrial devlopment such as oil refineries has killed off 90% of the area's herring and the shellfish are too contaminated to eat. Declining salmon runs already jeopardize Puget Sound's few remaining orcas. For the first time in Wyoming's history the BLM failed to receive a single bid to mine the state's portion of Powder River coal last August. Maybe there is still hope.
Montana's Powder River basin is still wild and the home of 250 bird species including 137 different songbirds. The Northern Cheyennes also call the region home since the late 1880's after the government lied, cheated and starved them out of the way of the white man's "progress". In 2010 Montana Land Board handed the future of the Basin to Arch Coal for $86 million plus future royalties on an estimated 570 million tons of Otter Creek coal. Arch Coal wants to turn the verdant prairie into Montana's largest open pit mine. Will Americans at least benefit in someway from another sacrifice of its remaining wild places? NOT. The sodium heavy coal is destined to feed the pollution belching power plants of a horribly polluted China. Arch Coal proposes to bring the coal to the northwest coast of Washington and Oregon by coal train. Arch and BSNF need 2700 acres of new right-of-way along the Tongue river which borders the Cheyenne's reservation. The reservation has some of the best air quality in the nation. Dirty mile long coal trains will chug through the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area and central Washington to proposed terminals on the Pacific Coast.
Of course environmentalists are alarmed by these latest corporate plans to alter the global climate and destroy Americans' quality of life. Each year America's own coal plants produce about 130 million tons of ash waste that are contaminated with mercury, lead and arsenic. About 40% is recycled, but the rest is dumped. If China is able to source coal relatively cheaply from the United States, its power companies have less incentive to switch to cleaner power production. Coal mining in the Basin has left indelible scars on the land. Thousands of acres are strip mined. Six in Montana alone cover 1,000 acres. Wastewater and from mines and coal methane wells has raised the Tongue River's salinity so high some irrigators will not use the water for fear of injuring their hayfields. Uncovered coal trains spread coal dust along their route posing a particulate pollution hazard to communities next to the right-of-way [photo]. Freighters taking on coal at ports also present a source of carcinogenic pollution. Commercial and tribal fishing is big business in the Northwest and it would undoubtably be affected by an export coal industry. For example the proposed Cherry Point terminal in Washington would be build on an Indian burial ground and a state aquatic reserve. It would wipe out the Lummi fishing business that owns the largest fleet on the 'left' coast. Other industrial devlopment such as oil refineries has killed off 90% of the area's herring and the shellfish are too contaminated to eat. Declining salmon runs already jeopardize Puget Sound's few remaining orcas. For the first time in Wyoming's history the BLM failed to receive a single bid to mine the state's portion of Powder River coal last August. Maybe there is still hope.