Tribes, conservation groups to challenge Montana s failure to enforce Bad Actor law laureloutlook.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from laureloutlook.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
State environmental regulators last month
dropped their case to disqualify Hecla Mining from getting future mining permits in the state. The company’s CEO was previously an executive with Pegasus Gold, which abandoned mines near the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in the ‘90s. It cost taxpayers $35 million to clean up.
Now, seven groups, including the Fort Belknap Indian Community, the Montana Environmental Information Center and Earthjustice plan to sue the state.
In a
motion filed Monday in State District Court in Helena, the groups acknowledged they cannot block regulators’ decision to drop the case against Hecla. However, they intend to sue the Montana Department of Environmental Quality for what they say is a failure to protect the state from ”predatory corporate executives.”
Tribes, Conservation Groups to Challenge Montana’s Failure to Enforce “Bad Actor” Law Denounce Gianforte Administration Decision to Let Mining Executive Off “Scot-Free”
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 3, 2021
Contact: Andrew Werk Jr., President, Fort Belknap Indian Community, (406) 390-2650, [email protected] | Bonnie Gestring, Earthworks, (406) 546-8386, [email protected] | Mary Costello, Rock Creek Alliance, (406) 827-4896, [email protected] | Andrew Gorder, Clark Fork Coalition, (605) 695-3357, [email protected] | Anne Hedges, Montana Environmental Information Center, (406) 461-9546, [email protected] | Whitney Tawney, Montana Conservation Voters Education Fund, (406) 254-1593, [email protected] | Shiloh Hernandez, Earthjustice, (406) 586-9699, [email protected]
(HELENA, Mont.) – Today, tribes and conservation groups announced plans to file a legal action to require the Montana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to fulfill its legal duty to enforce the �
High-voltage electrical lines run from coal-fired generating plants in Colstrip, Montana. (Photo: David Reese)
(CN) A Montana judge on Wednesday ruled that the federal government ignored the health, air pollution and greenhouse-gas consequences of hauling and burning more coal from Montana’s largest coal mine.
In a rebuke of the U.S. Office of Surface Mining, Judge Susan Watters ruled the agency failed to disclose the full impacts of expanding southeastern Montana’s Spring Creek mine, the largest in the state.
Watters said the agency ignored federal law by failing to address the impacts of trains hauling coal from the mine, the air pollution consequences of burning more coal from the mine, and the climate costs of greenhouse gas emissions that would result from more coal mining and burning. Her ruling was the latest in a series of court rulings that have rejected federal fossil fuel programs.
Drill, baby, drill? Not so fast. President Biden is expected to announce an executive order on Wednesday that will bring new oil and gas permits on federal lands to a halt, putting climate change front and center.
This 2016 file photo, shows the “House on Fire” ruins in Mule Canyon, near Blanding, Utah, a state where President Donald Trump downsized two national monuments to ensure that lands previously off-limits to energy development would be open to mining and drilling despite pending lawsuits by conservation, tribal and paleontology group. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File )
WASHINGTON (CN) President Joe Biden is readying a moratorium on new leases for oil and gas drilling on federal lands.