Tongue River Railroad EIS Hearing (Day 9)

The Tongue River Valley in Montana is a beautiful area, a quiet place where a person can sit outside at night and study the big starry sky at the end of a long hot day. It’s a place where you can find cattle grazing and people living simply, an area that can bring to mind the song “Home on the Range.” But all is not well in the valley these days. The people living there are trying hard to keep a coal company from tearing up their home and a railroad from bisecting their lands.

Yesterday evening, we attended the first of four Environmental Impact Statement hearings concerning a coal railroad that, if it is approved, will run along the Tongue River Valley. It will affect several people, displacing some and intruding on others. The railroad is for a proposed 1.3 billion ton lease coal mine at Otter Creek. In an effort to appease climate change worries, the claim has been made that this will not be a “new” coal mine but will rather displace coal mines currently in operation in Wyoming while creating jobs in the valley. Several aspects were covered in comments made from issues concerning people’s health, the environment, and other topics of importance to the residents with attendees ranging from the very young to family elders, all with something at stake.

One of the first steps in the Environmental Impact Study (EIS) is a cultural lands survey, where people come in and make note of all the cultural and historical areas of land on the purposed routes. It was stated the results of the cultural study had left out a lot of information such as the location of Northern Cheyenne cultural lands which upset many of the people within the tribe. Cultural impacts affecting other communities, such as the Amish, were also overlooked or left out of the report. 

 

Ranchers brought up concerns affecting their cattle ranges as well as other people living in the valley such as who would be responsible for the homes and wells that would be destroyed as well as whose homes and which wells. Local scientists addressed the environmental concerns of the mine and the railroad on the wildlife habitats and their belief that the environmental impact study on wildlife was not given the proper amount of consideration as it should have been. 

Applause followed each speaker in a display of solidarity between Northern Cheyenne, ranchers, and environmentalists alike. It was funny, though, when the single railroad employee in attendance finished his brief statement, only two or three people applauded. I couldn’t figure out if they were just being polite or if they were glad he only spoke for 30 seconds. 

Some of the comments were spoken from the heart while others were informed statements questioning the reliability of the information provided in the preliminary 4000 page, six volume report. Without the railroad, the coal mine will have trouble getting started. Without the coal mine, there is no need for the railroad. It is, once again, the promise of temporary jobs versus the long term impact of a mine and the scars it will leave behind.