Dawson Dunning: Proposed mine bad for Montana, bad for Washington

A handful of Montana legislators have been traveling to Washington to show support for the proposed coal export terminal in Longview.

Four testified in Spokane Wednesday before the Washington Senate Energy, Environment and Telecommunications Committee.

Let’s make something clear — while these politicians can say whatever they want as individuals, they don’t speak for the State of Montana. In fact, several years of polling conducted by the polling firm Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz & Associates (FM3) shows that the majority of Montanans consistently oppose the idea of mining more Montana coal for export through Northwest ports to Asia. It’s not hard to understand why.

Just over two years ago, I traveled the 790 miles from my home to Longview to testify at the public hearing on the proposed coal port there. I did so because one of the co-owners of the proposed facility, Arch Coal, is also the sole owner of the largest proposed new coal mine in the United States. This proposal is in southeastern Montana’s Otter Creek Valley, where my family has ranched for five generations. Like many of our neighbors, we worry about what a coal mine would mean for our land and water.

In southeastern Montana, coal seams are aquifers. You can’t dig up coal without tearing up people’s water source, and water is precious in the semi-arid West. The Otter Creek Valley is agriculturally productive. If a coal mine damaged our aquifers or disrupted our water quality, it would not only be bad for Otter Creek, it would be bad for our downstream neighbors and the economy throughout southeastern Montana. Agriculture is Montana’s No. 1 industry, and by shipping Otter Creek coal, the Longview coal port is a threat to our long-term, local economy and ranching way of life.

Arch Coal is also the co-owner of the proposed Tongue River Railroad, which would condemn up to 90 miles of working family farm and ranchland in order to get Otter Creek coal started on its way toward Longview. Many of these ranches have been in local families for generations, and it doesn’t seem right that a private company should have the right of eminent domain to profit by taking ranchers’ land against their will.

These coal export proposals are particularly jarring because of who they’re with. Earlier this month, JPMorgan downgraded its financial projections for Arch Coal, following Moody’s Investor Services and other financial analysts. The company reported $736 million in 2013 losses, $558 million in 2014 losses, $281 million in losses in the first half of this year, and has several billion dollars’ worth of debt coming due in the near future. Many investment services and others are predicting Arch’s impending bankruptcy. With domestic coal demand on the decline and Asian coal prices at half of what they once were, a rebound seems unlikely.

In fact, a Powder River Basin coal producer recently said: “If the terminals were already built and in operation, few, if any, would be exporting coal as current pricing wouldn’t support it…. Producers would basically have to pay Asian customers to take their coal….”

We’re talking about strip mining a productive valley, tearing up an aquifer, condemning farms and ranches, industrializing a pristine and important part of the American West, and shipping tens of thousands of coal trains through opposed Western towns, all on an economic gamble with a failing company. Like Montana, Longview knows the story of corporations that arrive in town with big promises only to abandon our communities with nothing fulfilled. Would-be coal terminal operator Millennium is poised to become one more business that closes up shop and leaves our communities behind to clean up its mess. As the old saying goes, “that dog don’t hunt.”

Dawson Dunning’s family has ranched on southeastern Montana’s Otter Creek for five generations. He is a member of Northern Plains Resource Council, a Montana conservation and family farm and ranch organization.