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MEIC Accomplishments
MEIC VICTORY ON PRIORITY ENERGY ISSUE:
STOPPING THE PROPOSED HIGHWOOD GENERATING STATION: Co-op gives up trying to build coal plant (2/3/09)
OTHER RECENT VICTORIES
- Air Force drops plan to make fuel from coal in Montana at Malmstrom Air Force Base (by Renee Schoof, McClatchy Newspapers, 01.29.09)
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MEIC Wins Landmark Air Pollution Victory against Highwood Plant (May 2008)
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Court sides with MEIC in Public Records Dispute (June 2008)
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MEIC Appeal Forces Revocation of Roundup Power Project Permit; PROJECT DERAILED (September 2007)
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MEIC Wins Zoning Lawsuit over Proposed Highwood Coal-Fired Power Plant (May 2007)
Ban on Cyanide Mining
MEIC is perhaps best known for the twice-won, citizen-initiated law banning cyanide heap-leach mining in Montana, which has now been upheld in the district, federal, and state Supreme courts despite Canyon Resources, Inc.’s efforts to repeal it in order to develop a massive open-pit, cyanide leach gold mine less than 800 feet from the Blackfoot River headwaters.
Initiative 137 was a response to the abysmal track record of open pit cyanide leach mining in Montana, as exemplified by cleanup fiascos at the Golden Sunlight, Zortman/Landusky, and Kendall mines and the Montana Department of Environmental Quality's failure to adequately regulate such mines as required by state law.
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| Golden Sunlight Mine |
Upholding Montanan's Constitutional Right to a Clean and Healthful Environment
In a landmark decision issued in October 1999, the Montana Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Montanans' constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment is a fundamental right and one that it is intended to be preventive in nature. The sweeping decision was in response to an appeal filed by MEIC and Women's Voices for the Earth (WVE) of a 1996 decision by State district judge Jeffrey Sherlock of Helena. The original suit was filed because the Montana Department of Environmental Quality had allowed the Seven-Up Pete Joint Venture to pump, without any treatment, millions of gallons of arsenic-tainted water into the Landers Fork and Blackfoot Rivers in 1995.
Preserving the Rocky Mountain Front
As part of the Coalition to Protect the Rocky Mountain Front, MEIC helped pursuade the Secretary of Interior and Secretary of Agriculture to sign the Rocky Mountain Front mineral withdrawal in 1999, protecting 405,000 acres of national forest land along the Rocky Mountain Front from mineral exploration and development for the next twenty years.