DEQ’s court-order analysis includes one sentence about climate impacts of fossil fuel plant
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Aug. 4, 2025
MEDIA CONTACTS
Jenny Harbine | Earthjustice | 406.586.9699 | jharbine@earthjustice.org
Anne Hedges | MEIC | 406.443.2520 | ahedges@meic.org
MONTANA – The leadership of the Montana Dept. of Environmental Quality (DEQ) wasted taxpayer dollars and ignored its constitutional obligation in its release of a final environmental assessment (EA) for NorthWestern Energy’s Laurel methane gas plant (called the Laurel Generating Station or Yellowstone County Generating Station). The final EA is nearly identical to the draft EA that was released in March of this year and – like the draft EA – it does not evaluate the impacts of NorthWestern Energy’s Laurel methane gas plant’s greenhouse gas emissions under the Montana Environmental Policy Act (MEPA).
“Despite a court order and decades worth of substantial studies and analyses, this final EA is a copy/paste of the astonishingly meager draft EA,” said Anne Hedges, Executive Director of MEIC. “This plant is one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases in the state, yet the agency that spends our tax dollars to account for that pollution has phoned it in. This is a slap in the face to Montana taxpayers and utility customers, as well as all Montanans who have to suffer the real world impacts of increasing drought, wildfires, heat and destructive weather patterns.”
In January, the Montana Supreme Court ruled that the Montana DEQ must evaluate the impacts of NorthWestern Energy’s Laurel methane gas plant’s greenhouse gas emissions under the Montana Environmental Policy Act (MEPA). In March, DEQ issued a draft EA with one cursory sentence about climate impacts. Despite this plant being one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gas emissions in the state, the draft assessment only included referenced the plant’s climate impacts by saying, “The impacts of climate change throughout the specified region of the state of Montana include changes in flooding and drought, rising temperatures, and the spread of invasive species (BLM 2021).” (The final EA changed the year of the BLM document to 2023.) The referenced BLM document was far more specific about harms to Montana as are other Montana specific studies that have detailed harms to public health, the economy and natural resources. All of those were ignored by DEQ.
“Despite the fact that the majority of Montanans believe that climate change is real, DEQ continues to demonstrate that the agency is out-of-step and unable to address the environmental harms caused by NorthWestern Energy projects like the Laurel gas plant,” said Caryn Miske, Chapter Director, Montana Sierra Club.
DEQ also artificially limited the scope of its analysis by looking at emissions for only a single year of operations, but ignored the cumulative emissions over the lifetime of the plant. Had those emissions been considered they would have totaled more than 25 million tons of CO2e – that’s equivalent to 5,831,382 gasoline-powered passenger vehicles driven for one year.
The draft assessment failed to cite or acknowledge many detailed reports of how the climate crisis will impact Montanans. In 2023, Montana Wildlife Federation released a detailed report of the economic impacts of the climate crisis on Montana outdoor recreation. In 2024, Farm Connect Montana released a detailed report of the economic impact of the climate crisis on Montana Agriculture. And of course there is the comprehensive Montana Climate Assessment and the report on Climate Change and Human Health in Montana. All of these reports – in addition to the Held Supreme Court decision and uncontested expert testimony – have extensive detail that DEQ ignored.
The Montana Supreme Court affirmed a 2023 district court ruling on January 3, 2025, finding that the Montana DEQ did not conduct an adequate environmental review of NorthWestern Energy’s Yellowstone County Generating Station before issuing an air quality permit.
MEIC and Sierra Club, represented by Earthjustice, challenged DEQ’s environmental assessment of the gas plant in 2023 because it failed to consider greenhouse gas emissions from NorthWestern’s plant.
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