Dear Editor,
Signal Peak Energy Shafted?
I am writing in response to the article claiming Bull Mountain landowners were somehow “shafting” the corrupt coal mining operation south of Roundup. To claim that Signal Peak is “getting shafted” is wildly inaccurate. Not only is the company being coddled by the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), but Signal Peak Energy (SPE) has received from inception a 50% proceeds tax subsidy amounting to millions of dollars annually. This sweetheart tax deal, imposed by the State Legislature over the objections of Musselshell County taxpayers, was supposed to expire after ten years but SPE lobbied the Montana Legislature to extend it until 2030 depriving one of the poorest counties in the state of the revenue needed to fund our schools, emergency responders, law enforcement and infrastructure.
Signal Peak Energy employs a coal mining technology called Longwall Mining. Everywhere this method has been used – West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Australia and now Montana – water sources have been damaged or permanently destroyed. The subsidence cracks generated by this process extend from the coal bed hundreds of feet to the ground surface interrupting the natural groundwater movement and redirecting it, depleting water sources that previously supported hundreds of cattle, elk, deer and other wildlife. DEQ is supposed to ensure that SPE replaces damaged water sources; however, time after time we’ve seen this responsibility shirked. That is why ranchers and landowners in the Bull Mountains have joined Northern Plains Resource Council, the Bull Mountain Land Alliance and others to protect themselves from a predatory mining company and a state agency that refuses to enforce the law.
Patrick Thiele
Roundup
