It’s been a decade since an underground coal mine with a history of controversies and legal challenges initially applied for an expansion in the Bull Mountains north of Billings.
A court order triggered the opportunity for locals to weigh in on Signal Peak Energy’s Bull Mountains mine.
Ranchers in jeans and wide-brimmed hats mingled with neighbors, regulators and elected officials in the Roundup community center gym Wednesday afternoon.
After years of legal challenges from environmental groups, the U.S. Department of Interior’s Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement is holding this scoping meeting in preparation for a comprehensive look at the potential environmental impacts of expansion.
Signal Peak, the operator of Montana’s only underground coal mine, wants to extract an additional 30.6 million tons of federally owned coal near Roundup. CEO Parker Phipps says this stage of expansion would add 8 or 10 years to the life of the mine.
“There's 30 to 40 years of mining in the Bull Mountains remaining,” said Phipps. “We just continue to permit what's ahead of us, and this is the next area that we'll mine.”
Opinions in the room were split between concern about the mine’s effect on natural resources and appreciation of its economic benefits.
Musselshell County Commissioner Mike Goffena said property taxes contribute a little more than a third of the county’s budget and would be missed if the mine were to stop operating.
“We’d have to cut a lot of services… Road mostly. That’s our biggest thing is repairing the roads. We’d have to cut that budget by a lot.”
Signal Peak’s CEO says the company employs approximately 250 people, roughly a third from Roundup and the remainder from Billings and Shepherd.
That’s big for supporters like rancher Mitch Roen.
“They got a pile of people working underneath them. They pay a lot of taxes. I mean, it's a good deal, I think, for the county myself,” said Roen.
While many in the room echo this sentiment, others worry about negative effects, like Pat Thiele, a member of environmental group Northern Plains Resource Council who ranches near the northeast corner of the mine's permit boundary.
“Hopefully they'll look deeply into this, the hydrology of the area. It seems to me that if the mine can't extract their property without irretrievably damaging the surface, then they shouldn't be permitted to mine.”
The scoping meeting this week is the beginning of the public process of creating an Environmental Impact Statement. Comments are due September 6.
