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When it comes to the decades-long story of asbestos contamination in Libby, another chapter about power, accountability and public trust always seems to be in the making.
Residents have spent decades uncovering how asbestos fibers unleashed by vermiculite mining and shipping operations scarred their lungs or acted as grim seeds for later cancers. For many patients, their discovery began after walking through the doors of the Center for Asbestos Related Disease, a nonprofit clinic that screened for disease and researches the health impacts of asbestos in Libby.
Over time, many ill patients have turned into lawsuit plaintiffs. Their legal claims generally demand justice, at least in a financial form, from the corporations that extracted and transported contaminated vermiculite. One of those companies is BNSF Railway Co., the Texas-based shipping behemoth owned by Berkshire Hathaway.
Even to such a large corporate entity, one asbestos lawsuit can cost a pretty penny. In 2024, a federal jury found BNSF strictly liable for the deaths of two plaintiffs with mesothelioma, an asbestos-caused cancer. Total damages for both victims? $8 million.
But, as the pool of potential litigants has grown, BNSF has also begun interrogating how the CARD clinic operates and makes diagnoses. The inquiry gave way to a yearslong lawsuit that the railroad company brought against the health clinic, arguing that CARD filed false claims about asbestos-related disease and improperly led patients to access federal Medicare benefits.
In addition to paying for Medicare coverage, the federal government has given CARD several multi-year grants for its asbestos screening and monitoring work. The government declined to take part in BNSF’s prosecution of alleged fraud, leaving the company to pursue the case alone.
A federal jury eventually sided with BNSF in 2023, finding that CARD was responsible for issuing more than 300 false claims about asbestos-related disease. Federal District Court Judge Dana Christensen later gave that ruling serious teeth by deciding to increase CARD’s damages to roughly $5.8 million. The U.S. government, as the primary victim of the fraud, is entitled to 75% of the total amount. BNSF, as the whistleblower and bringer of the lawsuit, can recoup 25%.
This week, Christensen was presented with a flurry of new legal arguments over how BNSF can claw back the money it’s owed and which of CARD’s assets, if purchased with federal grant money, should be considered property of the U.S. government.
The stakes are high for both CARD and BNSF. The Libby clinic shuttered in May after the railway company appealed to local law enforcement to seize CARD’s property and assets, per the court’s financial judgment. Another ruling by Christensen could allow the clinic to reopen while its assets are more closely examined — potentially restarting the flow of patients who could be diagnosed with asbestos-related disease.
Attorneys for both the clinic and the railway sought to convince Christensen on Thursday in a Missoula courtroom hearing that their approach to resolving the situation was in the public’s best interest. CARD’s representatives stressed the clinic’s role in assessing current and former Libby residents for illnesses. BNSF’s lawyer, on the other hand, accused the clinic of being a “serial fraudster” who has preyed on the local community with false diagnoses.
CARD’s lawyer made another, more existential, claim: If BNSF is allowed to sell off the clinic’s property, the health care provider may not be able to reopen its doors and resume its work of screening and monitoring Libby community members. On that point, the attorney for BNSF did not disagree.
READ MORE: Federal judge considers fate of shuttered asbestos-screening clinic
—Mara Silvers
The Viz 📈
During the 2025 legislative session, lawmakers and staff printed more than 1.9 million pages of paper.
Jerry Howe, director of the Legislative Services Division, reported that stat to the Legislative Council during a meeting June 10. He said the session that ran from Jan. 6 to April 30 generated 1,956,431 pages — enough to form a stack about 640 feet tall if piled up sheet by sheet.
That’s roughly four Montana Capitol domes tall. It’s also slightly taller than the Space Needle in Seattle, and about 100 feet higher than if Montana’s tallest building, the First Interstate Center in Billings, was stacked on top of itself.
Laid end to end, the paper trail would stretch roughly 340 miles — about the distance from Billings to Missoula along Interstate 90.
An average tree yields about 10,000 sheets of printer paper. That’s nearly 200 trees’ worth of paper — even as the Capitol continues its shift toward using more technology in the legislative process.
—Jacob Olness
Energy Alert ⚡
NorthWestern Energy is taking advantage of President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national energy emergency to seek expedited environmental approval of a natural gas pipeline it plans to build between East Helena and Three Forks.
The Bureau of Land Management, which administers most of the nine miles of federal lands the 16-inch proposed pipeline would pass through, is evaluating the project through a new process giving federal agencies 14 calendar days to review projects in order to “fast-track the development of American energy.” In compliance with the federal government’s new directive, the BLM is reviewing the project without taking public comment on its anticipated impacts, BLM Project Manager Claire Romanko told MTFP.
About 64 miles of the proposed pipeline, which follows Highway 287 and the Missouri River for much of its route, would pass through private land. NorthWestern would pursue a 50-foot-wide easement to build the pipeline, which largely parallels an existing buried pipeline that carries refined petroleum products and was built in 1955.
Romanko said the agency is conducting the expedited review at the request of NorthWestern Energy. The company’s goal, she said, is to build out its gas pipeline infrastructure to connect Helena with existing pipelines located along Interstates 90 and 15. In an email to MTFP, NorthWestern spokesperson Jo Dee Black said the pipeline will add “reliability and add redundancy” to its natural gas system and address its growing natural gas customer base.
Asked why NorthWestern is pursuing the expedited project review, Black cited the national energy emergency declaration and the pipeline’s 74-mile length. NorthWestern has created a “tentative proposed route” that will be finalized after all easements are acquired, she said. Black said NorthWestern does not anticipate using eminent domain to build the project.
The agency is still conducting all of the analyses required under the National Environmental Policy Act, Romanko said — “we’re just doing it at a really fast pace.”
Potential issues created by the pipeline construction include vegetative and soil disruption and impacts to wildlife habitat, including along the Elkhorn Area of Critical Environmental Concern near Townsend. In addition to leaning on Trump’s energy emergency executive order and the subsequent guidance developed by the Interior Department, NorthWestern is seeking an expedited Endangered Species Act consultation for the project.
The project is anticipated to begin in the spring of 2026 and take three years to complete, according to the 14-page environmental assessment the BLM prepared.
Earlier this year, NorthWestern lobbied lawmakers to pass House Bill 122, which authorizes public utilities like itself to use public rights of way to install natural gas pipelines.
—Amanda Eggert
Viewshed 🌄
I had the opportunity to ride the west side of Going-to-the-Sun Road in Glacier National Park earlier this month. Each spring, the road is open to hikers and cyclists for that small window when the snow is mostly clear but vehicles aren’t allowed yet. Going-to-the-Sun was open up to Logan Pass, but a park ranger turned us away within a mile of that destination due to bear activity.
Once the road is open to vehicles, the park will continue a vehicle reservation system that has been in place for the last few years. It requires visitors to reserve a ticket to drive the road during the peak window of 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. The road is expected to open to vehicle traffic Monday.
The park implemented the reservation system in response to massive growth in visitors and the resulting vehicle traffic. The number of total daily vehicles on Going-to-the-Sun Road peaked at more than 8,000 in 2019, according to park data. The park has reported about 3 million annual visitors in recent years.
New this year is the addition of time slots for vehicle reservations. Visitors will enter the park based on the two-hour window they chose when reserving their spot. The entry window doesn’t affect how long visitors can stay in the park or on the road.
On the west side of the road, the reservation system applies to anyone driving Going-to-the-Sun Road beyond Apgar Village. The system also applies to the North Fork area for entrance at the Polebridge station.
Reservations aren’t required at the St. Mary entrance on the east side of Going-to-the-Sun, though the park warned that temporary closures might be announced during times of traffic congestion.
Ticketed entry reservations can be made through the recreation.gov website.
—Matt Hudson
Happenings 🗓️
Blackfeet Reservation residents started to take notice in early June. “Are those real elephants?” one person mused on Facebook. “Elephants in Blackfeet Country!” another post read. Some people compared the animals to buffalo; others shared selfies with the anomaly.
There is a herd of elephants on the Blackfeet Reservation, but not the living, breathing kind. From June 4 to June 16, 30 life-size elephant sculptures are on display at the Buffalo Spirit Hills Ranch, a tribally owned property about five miles outside of Browning. The sculptures, made of lantana camara, an invasive plant, are on a 5,000-mile journey across the country, making stops in Texas, New York, Florida and Wyoming, among other places. The exhibit, called The Great Elephant Migration, is free and open to the public.
Cristina Mormorunni — co-founder and executive director of INDIGENOUS LED, an organization that aims to bolster Native conservation efforts — said the project aims to remind humanity “what it means to live in relationship with the natural world.”
Elephants, which are matriarchal and form complex social structures, Mormorunni said, “are perfect messengers for humanity that has forgotten that animals are relatives and that animals have so much wisdom.”
Elephant sculptures are available for purchase, and proceeds support organizations including INDIGENOUS LED; Lion Guardians, a science-based conservation program; and Coexistence Consortium, which promotes human-wildlife harmony.
—Nora Mabie
Highlights ☀️
In other news this week —
- The Montana Supreme Court struck down abortion restrictions passed by the 2021 Legislature.
- With protestors outside the building, the Public Service Commission kicked off a hearing into NorthWestern Energy’s recent rate hike.
- AmeriCorps is a “quiet force,” but it will be loud if it’s gone, say nonprofits worried about how cuts from the Trump administration will impact their work.
On Our Radar 
Amanda — Missoula-based journalist Kylie Mohr has a story in SFGATE this week about a young girl whose parents attribute their child’s alarmingly high lead levels and multiple broken bones to her early years living in lead-contaminated employee housing in Yellowstone National Park. It’s a brutal but well-told story about the lawsuit the girl’s parents have filed against the Interior Department.
Holly — ’Tis the season for this story on why offices are so cold in the summer.
Nora — I refuse to turn the oven on when the weather is this hot. This recipe, one that my mom made all the time while I was growing up, is a winner.
Zeke — I receive push notifications from roughly a dozen media outlets. My phone is paired with my smart watch, so I’ve become accustomed to reading headlines whenever I feel a buzz on my wrist. This Sunday, I’m planning to leave my phone and watch at home while I hike in Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest. I plan to find a large tree, sit underneath it and read Wendell Berry’s poem The Peace of Wild Things.
Brad — I spent the better part of last week on a vacation visit with an old friend on my first-ever trip to Baltimore. Checked out some excellent record stores, gawked at the American Visionary Art Museum and consumed enough local oysters to keep a family full of watermen afloat. I’ll be back for sure, and this guy has already penciled out my return-trip itinerary.
Mara — I recently started applying my nerdy passion for health care to a new task: aggressively binge-watching all episodes of The Pitt, an hour-by-hour breakdown of life and death in the fictional emergency department at Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Hospital. If you’re up for white-knuckling it through stories about drama, grief, coworker conflict and a lot of blood, I can’t recommend it highly enough.
Eric — Some presumably bored college kids in Columbus, Ohio, salvaged a 12-foot-long sign from a Wendy’s restaurant and, with help from the r/DIY subreddit, appear to have successfully rewired it to light up their rental house’s backyard.
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