Montana Republicans Seek to Ease Environmental Laws

By MICHAEL JANOFSKY

January 28, 2001

Citing steadily declining jobs in traditional industries like mining, logging and energy development, Montana is preparing to change its environmental regulations to make them more favorable to business.

The current efforts are the most ambitious by any state to speed the process of obtaining construction and operating permits, and they have set off an old-fashioned fight between environmentalists and business interests. But both sides agree on one thing: the state's actions have taken on added force and importance in light of President Bush's promise to review the Clinton administration's environmental policies and the willingness of the nominee for interior secretary, Gale A. Norton, to let the states assume more power to regulate themselves.

"The concept is not new, but I haven't seen other states do something as comprehensively as Montana," said Paula Carrell, state program director for the Sierra Club.

The changes proposed for Montana, in at least eight bills being drafted, have the support of the new governor, Judy Martz, a Republican, and Republican leaders of the Legislature, who say the Republican majority in both chambers almost assures passage of the bills.

In particular, two state laws are under review, the Montana Environmental Policy Act and the Montana Major Facility Siting Act, which regulates the construction and operation of power plants. Both laws are nearly 30 years old.

"The laws are so vague," said Don Allen, executive director of the Western Environmental Trade Association, a coalition of industry groups. The Montana Environmental Policy Act "and other things are used so widely that they play a role in keeping our economy from what it needs to be."

Governor Martz agrees. "The process needs to be changed," she said, adding that only the regulations for gaining permits would be changed, not laws that protect the air and water.

For example, some permits could be granted after 90 days of review rather than a year. Another change under consideration before the Legislature would allow the state to issue a permit after the 90-day deadline even if all environmental reviews had not been completed.

Environmentalists who have fought long and expensive battles over mine cleanups and timber harvesting are not optimistic that they can stop the initiatives. "State agencies will be forced to act prior to having all the information they need to make an adequate decision," said Anne Hedges, program director for the Montana Environmental Information Center, a watchdog group.

Supporters of the legislation contend that the state's current environmental regulations make it too expensive for companies to operate profitably, driving away high-paying jobs and discouraging out-of-state businesses from expanding into Montana. They also contend that the regulations have helped drive up Montana's electricity costs by discouraging the construction of power plants. Utility rates for consumers have doubled in the last year.

The environmental groups are challenging the new measures as unnecessary, saying they could endanger not only the quality of the state's air and water but also its economy. They say that Montana ranks eighth in the country in per capita job creation, and that the state's 5 percent unemployment rate, though slightly higher than the national average, is relatively low and has been falling.

Yet the Republican lawmakers want Montanans to believe that the state is in dire trouble, said Thomas Power, chairman of the economics department at the University of Montana. "Their whole premise is wrong," Mr. Power said. "All they know is they are losing jobs in mining, milling and smelting; therefore they must be hurting. But the industrial base of the country is evaporating. These people are staring into the rearview mirror, lost in fantasies tied to the past."

Tourism and recreation, the environmentalists note, are fueling job growth; service industry jobs jumped to 119,571 in 1999 from 82,684 in 1990. At the same time, the number of jobs in farming, forestry and mining fell. Mining jobs alone dropped to 7,081 in 1999 from 8,977 in 1990. While state income from natural resource industries has fallen or remained even, income from the recreation and health industries has risen substantially.

The environmentalists say economic declines have less to do with environmental regulations than with the state's tax policy, the quality of schools, Montana's 1997 deregulation of electrical power - and the enormous financial burden of cleaning up defunct mining sites.

"To get out of the bottom of the barrel, they want to strip the protections away," said John Wilson, conservation director of Montana Trout Unlimited. "But that just puts out a welcome mat, particularly to the natural resource industry of coal, oil and gas."

"It sends the same message to George Bush, as well," he added.

That is fine with the Republicans, who note that Montana has consistently ranked low in wages. In 1988, Montana ranked 44th in per capita income; by 1998, the state had fallen to 47th, with an average per capita personal income of $21,229.

"We're always at the bottom of the barrel," said State Senator Lorents Grosfield of Big Timber, Mont.

Democratic lawmakers say they share the concerns of the environmental groups, while bowing to what appears to be the inevitable.

"We may need to look at the process to see if it needs to be modernized," Kim Gillan of Billings, the House minority leader, said, "but only as long as it keeps to the substance of the state environmental laws." Nonetheless, she added, the Republican majorities in both chambers might make it too difficult for Democrats to contain their efforts. Republicans control the House, 58 to 42, and the Senate, 31 to 19.

Environmentalists fear that other states will follow Montana's lead, emboldened by a new administration in Washington that is more sympathetic to natural resource industries than the Clinton administration was.

So far, though, there is no sign of that. Officials in Idaho and Wyoming - states that have traditionally relied on mining and logging - have said that they are not replicating Montana's model.

Ms. Carrell of the Sierra Club also said she knew of no other state as active as Montana in trying to loosen environmental regulations. Still, she added, "it could be that Montana just stuck its head out of the hole first."

"We're expecting a lot more of this stuff to surface," she said, "especially now with new sympathies in Washington."