Montanans urge state to act on climate - Independent Record

Montanans urge state to act on climate

BILLINGS — With two public meetings on climate change on the horizon, Montana regulators are already being urged to live up to a landmark court decision that upended state environmental law.

At a Billings hearing Tuesday organized on short notice to discuss changes to Montana's Environmental Policy Act, witnesses pushed back on the suggestion that Montana doesn't already have what takes to address climate change when issuing air pollution permits.

In August, Helena District Judge Kathy Seeley ordered state agencies to begin weighing climate change impacts in their permitting decisions, throwing out a law fortified months earlier by the Montana Legislature, which intended to ban consideration of climate impacts. The lawsuit, known as "Held v. Montana" was brought by 16 youth plaintiff s against the Montana Department of Environmental Quality. The youths argued their lives were being harmed by carbon dioxide emissions in violation of the right to a "clean and healthful environment" in the state constitution.

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"As the court in Held v. State found, DEQ knows how to do a climate change analysis," said Barbara Chilcott, attorney with the Western Environmental Law Center. "DEQ did it before 2011, when the MEPA limitation that was just recently found unconstitutional passed and DEQ knows how to do that analysis now. The science is clear. We have experts in state, many of which testified during the trial, that DEQ can rely on to inform their process for analyzing climate change and greenhouse gas impacts.

"The harms occurring from climate change are happening now and DEQ has an obligation to move forward as quickly as possible."

The Held decision is driving what DEQ is framing as a refresh of the Montana Environmental Policy Act, which is the road map created in 1974 for assessing the environmental, cultural and societal impacts of industrial projects in need of air or water permits. Everything from coal mines to crematoriums gets assessed under the rules spelled out in MEPA.

DEQ will hold hearings in Helena on Oct. 18 and Missoula on Oct. 19.

MEPA hasn't been gathering dust. Rarely does the Montana Legislature meet without taking up bills to change the Montana Environmental Policy Act, often referred to as Montana's "look before you leap law" for environmental permitting. The changes to the law have favored industry by making it more difficult for the public to challenge permits to pollute, while also giving state agencies less time to work on permitting before delivering an answer.

Each time the Legislature has made changes to the way air and water pollution are evaluated, the process is characterized as updating or modernizing, like the language DEQ is now using, said Derf Johnson of the Montana Environmental Information Center.

"That really turns out to be a euphemism for cutting the public out of the process and limiting environmental review and the scope of the environmental review," Johnson told DEQ in Billings. "That's what we're concerned about. We want to see this process result in better participation and a more robust environmental review process."

In two hours of testimony in Billings, there were two people who said they were concerned that considering climate change would drive up project costs. A spokesman for Knife River, a construction materials and contracting company, said the state should wait until there are known ways to measure the impacts of carbon dioxide.

There are known ways to evaluate carbon emissions. There is already an expectation that carbon dioxide emitted from burned coal will be calculated before mining permits are issued. A federal appellate court earlier this year, for example, concluded that 190 million tons of carbon dioxide would be emitted once coal from an expanded Montana mine was burned. Regulators have been faulted at least twice for either not estimating or downplaying carbon dioxide emissions during coal mine permitting.

A U.S. district judge in 2018 blocked the permitting of the Keystone XL Pipeline by President Donald Trump's administration because regulators didn't analyze cumulative greenhouse gas emissions. The clock ran out on the Trump administration, which didn't correct the Keystone permitting problems before leaving office.

The Helena listening session is scheduled for 6 p.m. Oct. 18 at the Delta Colonial Hotel. The Missoula session takes place at 6 p.m. Oct. 19 at the Broadway Inn and Conference Center. There are registration links on the DEQ website for joining the meeting online and commenting.

DEQ plans an online only listening session Nov. 1 in the afternoon, starting at 3 p.m.