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Readers who have kept tabs on energy issues over the past couple of decades may recall then-Gov. Brian Schweitzer’s pitch in the mid-aughts to make coal “clean.” As Schweitzer saw it, “clean coal” would allow Montana to continue to develop its abundant coal reserves, even as a growing body of research linked burning fossil fuels to the climate warming that is shrinking snowpacks, dwindling summer streamflows and intensifying wildfires across the state. A key piece of Schweitzer’s proposal involved carbon sequestration, or the corralling and underground storage of a portion of the greenhouse gasses that are released when coal is turned into electricity.
Although Schweitzer’s proposal garnered a significant amount of attention, it never went anywhere. It ran into a host of hurdles ranging from permitting snafus to lukewarm investor interest and uncertainty over the legal ownership of the underground “pore space” CO2 would be injected into. The clean coal push, and resulting interest in sequestration, fizzled.
I was therefore surprised to learn last month that Denbury, an ExxonMobil-owned oil and gas company, has for more than two years been in talks with the Bureau of Land Management about a massive CO2 sequestration project near Montana’s sparsely populated southeast corner. Not only has Denbury been speaking with the BLM, it submitted in February an environmental assessment — an application, essentially — for a project in Carter County it’s calling Snowy River.
While Denbury appears to be interested in pulling CO2 from natural gas processing facilities rather than coal plants, the proposal in some ways feels like déjà-vu since several of the issues that stalled the Schweitzer-era carbon sequestration discussions remain unresolved.
But in other ways, Montana and the broader U.S. may be entering a new era for these types of “carbon management” technologies as lawmakers and government agencies revise laws, regulations and tax codes to encourage projects designed to capture and store carbon. Such changes include financial incentives to entice project developers to invest in new technology and allocations to federal agencies designed to expedite the permitting process. Carbon sequestration boosters say it’s one of many technologies the U.S. will have to invest in to dodge the worst effects of climate change — and note that it aligns with the Biden administration’s climate agenda.
But Carter County residents I spoke with this week are skeptical of Denbury’s claim that Snowy River will store 150 million tons of CO2 over a 20-year period, an amount that approximates the annual emissions of 1.6 million cars. Those living near the project area also expressed concerns related to roads, grazing leases, wildlife, paleontological resources, seismic activity and drinking water.
I imagine stakeholders on all sides of the debate will, like me, keep a close eye on developments in Wyoming, which has made carbon management a centerpiece of its energy policy in a bid to sustain fossil fuels’ relevance there. It’s looking like Montanans will have a window, if short, to draw insight from carbon sequestration projects closer to implementation in the Cowboy State before any groundbreaking happens on Snowy River.
For those inclined to weigh in, the BLM is taking comments on Snowy River until April 17.
READ MORE: Climate fix or pollution pipeline?
—Amanda Eggert, Reporter
For the Record 📰
Officials in Flathead County this week announced that May 7 will serve as Election Day for the court-directed redo of the November 2023 municipal contests for two Kalispell city council seats.
A clerical error during last fall’s election resulted in at least 176 voters receiving and casting the wrong ballots, prompting the county to petition a Flathead County District Court judge for permission to readminister two of the four city council races. The green light came last month, at which point Kalispell City Manager Doug Russell told Montana Free Press that both victors had opted to recuse themselves from any action items before the council until after new results are in.
According to Flathead County’s announcement, mail-in ballots for the new city council election will go out to active absentee voters on April 22 and polls will open May 7 from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. at the Flathead County Fairgrounds Expo building. May 7 will also continue to serve as Election Day in all-mail ballot elections for local school boards and special districts in Flathead County.
—Alex Sakariassen, Reporter
The Gist 📌
After a week of legal scuffling, the campaign behind a constitutional amendment to explicitly protect abortion rights says it is “close” to launching a signature-gathering effort to put the proposal on the ballot this November.
The signature gathering was green-lit Friday after Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen formally delivered a sample petition with the final ballot language to the initiative sponsors at 12:52 p.m. — eight minutes before a deadline that had been ordered by the Montana Supreme Court.
But the sponsor group, Montanans Securing Reproductive Rights, said Friday afternoon it had found “at least one error” on the state’s form and was preparing to request an updated version from the secretary of state “as soon as possible.”
“With a petition review taking place, the next phase of signature collection is close. This process has been unnecessarily complicated, and rife with bad actors constructing ridiculous obstacles,” the MSRR said in an emailed statement. “Despite all of that, we are elated to be one step closer to signature collection. Montana voters deserve to make their voices heard on this critical issue, and today marks an important step in moving forward.”
The preceding days and hours were marked by a flurry of legal filings between MSRR, Jacobsen and Attorney General Austin Knudsen, as attorneys debated the specifics of the language used to describe the initiative to voters and whether the signature gathering should be delayed further while state legislators are given a chance to weigh in on the initiative.
In a series of rulings, the Montana Supreme Court determined that signature gathering didn’t need to wait on a legislative review that could take up to 14 days, cutting into the tight timeline initiative backers have to qualify it for the fall ballot. Justices also ordered Jacobsen to provide MSRR with a finalized sample petition, an administrative step that normally clears initiative backers for signature gathering, by the Friday afternoon deadline.
Republican lawmakers raised passionate objections to the court’s ruling that eliminated the legislative review, opting to issue Jacobsen a subpoena for a copy of the proposed initiative and consider the initiative anyway in the coming weeks even as signature-gathering proceeds.
Spokesperson for the secretary of state Richie Melby said in a statement Friday that the office was complying both with the court’s order, state law and the Legislature’s subpoena.
“Despite having to navigate the many complexities — including the rewritten rules, circumvention of branches, and lack of due process — surrounding what’s typically an ordinary procedure, as we’ve stated from the beginning, the Secretary of State’s Office is committed to complying with Montana law. With that and upon somewhat receiving the clarification we’ve sought all along, the Secretary of State has successfully complied with and fulfilled the Court’s Order and Legislative subpoena,” Melby said.
MSRR has until June 21 to collect upwards of 60,000 verified signatures from registered voters across 40 state House districts.
—Mara Silvers, Reporter
Public Service Announcement ⚠️
The posted speed limit on a stretch of Interstate 90 through Bozeman has been reduced to 65 miles per hour, the Montana Department of Transportation announced in a Thursday Facebook post.
The shift, the department said, stems from Bozeman’s designation as an official “metropolitan area” — a status assigned after the 2020 census determined the population of the Gallatin Valley’s urban core had passed the 50,000-resident milestone.
The change affects I-90 from mile marker 303.6 between Bozeman and Belgrade to mile marker 313.7 west of Bozeman at the Bear Canyon exit. It brings the stretch of I-90 through Bozeman in line with stretches of urban Interstate highway through Billings, Great Falls and Missoula.
Montana’s rural interstates generally have an 80 mph speed limit. The I-90 corridor through Bozeman previously had a posted limit of 75 mph.
—Eric Dietrich, Deputy Editor
Glad You Asked 🙋🏻
After the final installment of our three-part series on corner-crossing wrapped last month, we fielded reader requests for a picture of the ladder four hunters used to avoid stepping on private land when they hunted BLM checkerboard in Wyoming during a now-famous (or infamous, depending on how you see it) hunting trip in 2021.
Luckily for those readers, an image of the ladder was included in U.S. District Judge Scott Skavdahl’s 2023 ruling that cleared the four Missouri hunters of a civil trespassing charge.
Also visible in the (regrettably blurry) photo is a short fence the landowner erected directly above a metal corner marker.
—Amanda Eggert, Reporter
Verbatim 💬
“This is a teenager for whom we had already overcome issues of homelessness, of addiction, of mental health struggles. And — I’m so sorry — at the last step, it was the state that failed her. That did not provide the insurance that she was entitled to.”
—Kristin Melli, a pediatric nurse practitioner who works in Kalispell and the Fort Peck Reservation, who was overcome by tears while speaking about a patient who lost Medicaid coverage during the state’s mass redetermination process at a press event hosted by Democratic lawmakers and candidates Tuesday in Helena.
Melli said the patient had lost coverage under the state-administered health care plan while awaiting treatment for an unspecified life-threatening condition. She said one of the teenager’s parents told her that the family had submitted an application to the state the month before in an effort to maintain coverage, but “had yet to hear back anything.”
—Mara Silvers, Reporter
Highlights ☀️
In other news worth noting this week —
- Gov. Greg Gianforte announced the state is deploying 10 Montana National Guardsmen to the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas. The deployment comes as Gianforte, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and other Republican governors argue that President Joe Biden, a Democrat, isn’t doing enough to police cross-border migration and drug trafficking. (Lee newspapers’ Seaborn Larson reported previously that 20 Montana Guardsman participated in a federal border task force last year without fanfare from the governor’s office.)
- Following a string of court rulings against laws passed by the Republican-majority Montana Legislature, Republicans in the state Senate have announced a new committee to investigate what they call “judicial overreach.” Senate Democrats say they won’t participate.
- In an effort to help Montanans who’ve been removed from the state’s Medicaid rolls to re-establish health care coverage, an arm of the Montana Primary Care Association is launching a “Get Covered Again” campaign.
On Our Radar 
Amanda — If you’re inclined to take a deeper dive into the “clean coal” conversations of years past, I highly recommend this Montana PBS documentary. It includes a great primer on the technology, politics and environmental impacts surrounding the issue.
Alex — The New York Times’ Daily podcast doesn’t dive into K-12 education all that often, so it was a pleasant surprise this week to tune in and hear an episode dissecting the nation’s dramatic rise in student absenteeism following the COVID-19 pandemic.
Brad — Since I euthanized my career as a professional music critic in the early 2000s, I’ve been reliably out of touch with contemporary music, which explains how I’m just now getting turned on to the modern prog of Tool. I’m still unsure how that new enthusiasm led to the unmitigated pleasure of watching Funkadelic/fusion drummer extraordinaire Dennis Chambers winging his way through Tool’s classic “Schism.”
JoVonne — The Blackfeet Tribe is set to break ground for a new multi-million-dollar wellness center next month. The Missoulian’s Nora Mabie reported on the $20 million project, noting that tribal leaders went to Congress for funding amid a dispute with Indian Health Service leadership.
Mara — Elsewhere in news about pending ballot initiatives, Lee newspapers’ Victoria Eavis had an insightful piece this week about groups that are giving financial backing to a proposed ballot initiative campaign to shift Montana’s elections to a top-four primary system. Give it a read.
Eric — This video profile of a diving bell boat that picks up lost anchors and such from the bed of the Rhine River in Germany includes some footage that makes me really, really appreciate physics.
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