PSC to Decide on Treatment of Colstrip Plant

[October 2008]  The Montana Public Service Commission is wrestling with one of its thorniest issues in recent years—namely, whether to allow NorthWestern Energy to add the Colstrip generating unit it owns to the “rate base” of its Montana electricity business.   Depending on whose testimony you believe, it’s either a great opportunity for Montana to restore its vertically integrated utilities—meaning that the same company owns generation facilities and transmission systems, as was the case prior to the State’s disastrous 1997 electric utility deregulation law—or it’s a rip-off, saddling consumers with an outdated coal-burning plant.

Add to these diametrically-opposed experts one more fact—that the Colstrip plant will continue to operate and pollute Montana regardless of who buys the electricity it produces—and the complexity of the issue becomes clearer.

In the News

• The Montana Department of Environmental Quality has extended the deadline to comment on the proposed Administrative Order on Consent regarding the clean up of Colstrip's leaking ash ponds. You can read the AOC here. Read MEIC's official comments on the AOC here. Read an expert analysis on the AOC commissioned by MEIC here. 
• MEIC files a notice of intent to sue against the Montana DEQ for failing to protect clean water. 
• DEQ proposes Administrative Order on Consent to require remediation of leaking Ash Ponds at the Colstrip Steam Electric Station operated by PPL Montana, LLC (February 2010).  PUBLIC COMMENT PERIOD EXTENDED UNTIL APRIL 12, 2010.
  
• Coal Ash: The Hidden Story.  How Industry and the EPA Failed To Stop a Growing Environmental Disaster (by Kristen Lombardi, The Center for Public Integrity, February 19, 2009)
• Colstrip companies paying $25M in water lawsuit; Plaintiffs blamed utilities for tainted groundwater (by Linda Halstead-Acharya, Billings Gazette, May 3, 2008)