On February 13-14, representatives from the Surface Transportation Board (STB), the Tongue River Railroad Company (BNSF & Arch Coal) and their contractors from ICF International came to Billings to host the second in-person Section 106 tribal consultation meeting for the proposed Tongue River Railroad. Much was said those two days and I don’t think anyone would disagree with my assessment that the tribal historic preservation officers and most other tribal representatives who were present do not want a coal railroad to disturb the Tongue River Valley. The folks that…
I woke up this morning to a phone call from a friend in southeastern Montana. “Did you read the Billings Gazette this morning?” “Not yet, why?” “Arch Coal just lost their ass.” What he was referring to was today’s headline in the Billings Gazette, Arch Coal writes DKRW Advanced Fuels’ coal gasification project as a $57.7 million loss. The coal to liquids project they proposed in Medicine Bow, Wyoming was a speculative venture (at best) that would have bilked taxpayers out of billions of dollars in public loan guarantees….
This is the Little Dude. He was a quadruplet. His mom died and we raised him as a bottle baby. Needless to say, he is a permanent addition to the farm. The Little Dude and my nephew Liam have grown up together. Here they are when they were both just little. Every time I see them together I think of a poem by Robert William Service called The Goat and I. And since spring is upon us and my goats help me forget about the world’s worries, I thought…
ICF International, the third party contractor who is completing the environmental impact statement (EIS) for the Tongue River Railroad is also the third party contractor hired to complete the EIS for the Longview coal port terminal in Longview, Washington. Arch Coal, who is proposing to develop a large coal mine in the Otter Creek Valley of southeastern Montana, is invested in both projects. (ICF is also involved in the Keystone XL project and had financial ties to TransCanada) On February 27, 2014, ICF International released a white paper optimistically…