Agony of the Northern Plains Revisited

by Amy W. Beatie

It's October 2001. The Bush Administration has released its national energy policy, a product of closed meetings with the oil and gas industry. The policy is all about "more" -- more coal, more nukes, more gas, in an attempt to decrease the country's dependence on foreign energy sources.

Wyoming is one of the energy policy's key targets. And our state has eagerly embraced its latest opportunity to participate in yet another energy boom-bust cycle, this time greasing the skids for runaway coalbed methane extraction in the Powder River Basin. But this time, the potentially devastating environmental impacts of CBM development has united and mobilized ranchers and environmentalists against it.

The similarities between the 1971 coal boom and the current coalbed methane boom are striking. Are we destined to continually repeat our mistakes?

The pro-industry and pro-environment camps and the rhetoric surrounding each side of their debate are pretty typical for Wyoming. But I never realized how typical until I read Agony of the Northern Plains, an article from the July 1973 issue of Audubon.

It's October 1971, and the Bureau of Land Management and 35 major electric power suppliers from 14 states have issued the North Central Power Study, a document announcing the companies' intent to strip-mine coal from 250,000 square miles of Wyoming, eastern Montana and western North and South Dakota. The Powder River Basin, containing the richest known deposits of coal in the world, is the bull's-eye for this proposed development. Environmentalists, ranchers and farmers begin to wage war against the proposed development.

Agony of the Northern Plains describes the scope of the North Central Power Study's proposal. "It appeared evident that national policy, guided by the industry, would inevitably encourage the exploitation of the Western states' coal fields as an answer to the apparently diminishing supplies of fuels from elsewhere." Getting to the heart of the problem, the article continues:

For almost a hundred years the natural grasses and irrigated hayfields [of the Powder River Basin] have sustained big flocks of sheep and herds of cattle, and the region has been one essentially of large, isolated ranches and farms, whose owners have fought endlessly against blizzards, drought, high winds, and grasshoppers - and have treasured their independence and the spaciousness and natural beauty of their environment.

Ominously for them, the surface of their part of the country sits atop the Fort Union Formation (in the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana and in the western part of the Williston Basin of Montana and the Dakotas), containing the richest known coal deposits in the world.

The powerful energy companies and utilities of the country, with the encouragement of the federal government, were going to turn them into an exploited and despoiled colony, supplying power to other parts of the nation. Far from planning the orderly development of their region, the study had considered only the needs of industry and, without publicity, without public hearings, without representation from, or accountability to, those who would be affected, has shown a green light to the devastation of life on the Great Plains.

The similarities between the 1971 coal boom and the current coalbed methane boom are striking. Are we destined to continually repeat our mistakes? I certainly hope not. I came to the Wyoming Outdoor Council as an optimistic and naïve environmentalist. I have left, not jaded, and perhaps not as profoundly pessimistic as some who have been fighting on the front lines for a long time, but with a much stronger understanding of government's abuses of power that favor powerful industries at the expense of Wyoming's residents and their quality of life.

And I have left with a deep appreciation for those who continue to hold the government accountable. Thank you to those I met over the past year who devote their time and boundless energy on efforts to prevent another agony of the Northern Plains.

Amy Beatie spent a year as a special project attorney for WOC, working to reform runaway coalbed methane development in the Powder River Basin. She recently joined the legal staff of the Colorado Supreme Court.