Stream protection rule good for Montana’s ranchers

As a longtime rancher north of Billings, water supply has been the 70-year struggle for my ranch. The coal industry has posed a threat to my water supply since the 1970s, and more recently increased mining spurred by a fast growing market in exporting coal to Asia has spread water damage across the West. The limited water that we have in the West makes it doubly valuable and in need of protection. As the saying goes, “whiskey is for drinking, and water is for fighting.” It is absolutely essential that we protect the water we have, and sometimes that means strong rules from the federal government. 

Most cattle ranchers in the Bull Mountains where I live rely on a combination of wells and natural springs to water our livestock. And like other nearby operations, my ranch is currently being literally undermined by a coal mine using massive and destructive long-wall machines that allow more efficient mining but cause surface disruptions, impair coal aquifers, subside recharge areas, and pull surface streams underground. I can think of no industry that degrades water in such a reckless and cavalier way as the coal industry—from acid mine drainage and thousands of miles of buried headwater streams across Appalachia to eating streams on the prairie to destroying wells and springs in Montana’s Bull Mountains.  

{mosads}While Montana’s surface mining law requires reclamation of the area over long-wall mines, reclamation is a slow and uncertain process. Water in the existing mines in Montana has not been “reclaimed” according to bond release statistics. There are proposals for mines to be “induced” along the Tongue River and even moving a live tributary of the Tongue to get it out of the way for coal mining. And Wyoming’s Antelope Creek is slowly being eaten by a coal mine. 

With all of this as a backdrop, I am happy to see the proposal from the Department of the Interior’s Office of Surface Mining to update regulations put in place 30 years ago. The proposed Stream Protection Rule would safeguard communities from destructive coal mining practices like long walling and keep pace with current science and modern mining practices. 

These new rules would minimize impacts to surface and groundwater such as the springs on my property by requiring companies to avoid mining practices that permanently pollute and diminish streams, and require coal companies to test and monitor the condition of streams that their mining might impact before, during and after their operations. The proposed rule would also require companies to restore streams and other water to the uses they were capable of supporting (like ranching) prior to mining activities. 

But the Interior Department could also improve parts of the Stream Protection Rule by providing technical assistance both to landowners like myself and those who work in the reclamation field but who need ongoing training. It is all very well to have good standards and tests set out in these rules, but if they are poorly implemented on the ground and over time, the result is the same as no rule. 

The Interior Department’s work to update and modernize these three decades old rules and regulations is absolutely essential if we are to keep a bad situation from getting worse. Clean water in the West is too precious to let coal companies pollute or diminish it. 

Pfister owns a cattle ranch in the Bull Mountains north of Shepherd, Montana, that is adversely impacted by water degradation caused by coal mining activity.