Guest Opinion: Daines Votes to Protect Montana Coal Jobs
What a great day it will be when Montana is represented in the Interior Department by Rep. Ryan Zinke. Secretary-nominee Zinke knows well the issues important to the West and Indian Country, and I hope for better days ahead for all rural and Native peoples under his leadership at the Interior Department.
Unfortunately, at times in the recent past, the concerns of rural communities, tribes, and those of us in fly-over country seem to have been less than important to our government in D.C., and particularly those at the Interior Department. They handed down rules not written for the West and remained unconcerned by the needs and lifestyles of Montanans.
Recently “Dear Tribal Leaders” letters have become the norm for how the federal government communicates with Tribes on critical issues including the trust relationship the government shares with tribes on natural resource management. Rural communities shared the neglect.
Late last year I and others from southeastern Montana spent considerable effort defending our coal production jobs and economy from misguided regulations enacted in the waning hours of the Obama administration. The worst of which was the so called “Stream Protection Rule” or SPR written within the Department of Interior.
The SPR said, among many, many other things: that Montana mines had to provide 12 months of water quality samples, even on seasonal streams that don’t exist most of the year or might be frozen solid all winter. These rules didn’t fit Montana, where we already have an A-rated stream protection system in place that was written specifically for our local concerns, not somewhere back East.
Officials we spoke with admitted they were not aware of all the negative potential impacts on Montana and particularly the Crow Tribe that the SPR would bring. Still, our pleas fell on deaf ears as a national one-size-fits-all “Stream Protection Rule” was drafted without appropriate consultation and then written and published without changes requested by Montanans.
Last week, Congress voted to rescind the SPR through a seldom used Congressional Review Authority of Obama’s slew of last-minute environmental regulations. Montana’s tribes, communities, and jobs were at risk, and Daines again showed his commitment to Montana jobs by supporting repeal of the Stream Protection Rule.
Senator Daines, thank you for standing with Montana’s jobs and voting to repeal the Stream Protection Rule.
See the article here.
- On February 7, 2017