A negotiation over surface leasing between a Crow family and Cloud Peak Energy has turned bitter, resurfacing some of the West’s most persistent questions.
Energy
Mine Cleanup Concerns Spike as Industry Sputters
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Dylan Brown, E&E News
If you want to mine coal in the United States, you have to promise to clean up the mess. But the industry’s dramatic downturn has raised questions about the ability of companies to follow through with that promise and whether taxpayers will be responsible for returning land and water to pre-mining conditions.
Crime and Justice
Isolation Nation: While some U.S. states are reforming solitary confinement laws, in Montana, secluding inmates is still a reality.
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Editor’s note: This report was produced in collaboration with Outlaw Partners and appears in the Winter 2015/2016 edition of Mountain Outlaw magazine. It is republished here with permission from Outlaw Partners.
Otter Creek
Tribes resist proposed coal mine
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OTTER CREEK — Sitting just a few hundred feet from the banks of Otter Creek, on the fertile plains the Northern Cheyenne Indians have called home for thousands of years, Sundance Priest Kenneth Medicine Bull carefully packs tobacco into the bowl of a ceremonial pipe. About a hundred onlookers, many wearing red T-shirts with the words “Save Otter Creek” stamped on them, watch silently as Medicine Bull rhythmically recites a prayer in his native tongue.
Cody Marble
Double standard for perjury in Missoula County?
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Late last year I wrote here about a story that Lee’s Mike Dennison has been following about a Missoula man has fought for nearly a decade to overturn is rape conviction. Cody Marble, 27, was convicted in 2002 of raping a 13-year-old fellow inmate at the Missoula County Juvenile Detention Facility and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Central Montana Labor Council
Cost Cutters wants employees to forfeit right to unionize
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This is from a story I wrote in Sunday’s Tribune. I posted it here because I thought some readers may want to read the full text of the document employees were asked to sign.