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January 23, 2024 - The record-breaking cold snap Montana saw this month brought days of below-zero temperatures across the state — and with them what major Montana utility NorthWestern Energy said was record-high electric demand from its customers. The arctic blast, and how the state’s energy system responded, triggered a wave of analysis from folks engaged in Montana’s running debate over renewable energy, coal generation and the future of the state’s electric grid. The Montana Environmental Information Center, for example, posted a video to Instagram on Jan. 12 citing data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration to push back on NorthWestern’s longtime assertion that it can’t reliably supply Montanans with winter power without maintaining coal-powered generation. The data, noted MEIC co-director Anne Hedges, showed that coal generation had dropped by about half on Jan. 7, a shift she interpreted as a sign of trouble at the Colstrip power plant. Wind generation, she noted, surged over much of the subsequent three days. “During the coldest part of the year, half of the largest plant in the western United States is not working — but yet the grid hasn’t collapsed, our lights turn on, so perhaps we need to start rethinking our connection to coal,” Hedges said. For its part, NorthWestern pointed in a press release this week to a later, colder stretch of the cold snap, stressing that it had relied heavily on Colstrip, natural gas plants and hydroelectric dam generation to keep electricity flowing to Montana customers. “Wind and solar generation could not produce much, if any, power during the extreme cold,” wrote NorthWestern spokesperson Jo Dee Black.
In a follow-up email, Black said the decline Hedges noted was the result of Colstrip’s operators bumping up planned maintenance in one of the power plant’s two operational units so both units could operate through the most extreme stretch of cold. Black also wrote in her initial release that additional generating capacity, like the natural-gas generation plant the company is building near Laurel or the expanded Colstrip stake the company plans to acquire in 2026, would have allowed the company to avoid spending $18 million on energy from other utilities during the cold snap. Travis Kavulla, a former Republican member of Montana’s utility regulation board who now works as the vice president of regulatory affairs for Houston-based energy company NRG, took to Twitter this week to critique that latter argument, saying that it’s not necessarily a bad thing for Northwestern to be partially reliant on power purchases — provided the company is smart about how it manages that trading. “It cannot be expected that Montana would have every single megawatt of capacity it needs to supply the state during the absolute worst hour of the decade. If Montana did, that would mean customers would be paying an absolute fortune,” Kavulla said in a subsequent interview. Kavulla and other energy analysts routinely note that regulated utilities like NorthWestern have a financial incentive to own and operate as much generating capacity as possible since they typically earn a profit on the infrastructure they own. That dynamic is often criticized as promoting the over-construction of expensive generating plants while discouraging utilities from finding cheaper ways to serve their customers. —Eric Dietrich, Deputy Editor and Amanda Eggert, Reporter
Reporter’s Notebook
School districts across Montana were hit with a wave of emailed bomb threats Tuesday night this week. None of them were ultimately deemed credible, and the word “hoax” appeared in numerous news stories. The threats nonetheless kept law enforcement, school officials and parents preoccupied throughout the day Wednesday. They kept me, MTFP’s education reporter, plenty busy too. Throughout the day Wednesday, the list of affected districts I scrawled on my office notepad kept growing: Great Falls, Browning, Missoula, Big Sandy, Billings. According to in-state media reports, each school district responded a bit differently, reflecting the local nature of Montana’s educational governance. Sweeps of buildings by law enforcement were the norm, but some districts went about the school day as usual, others with heightened police presence. While districts like Missoula County Public Schools did attempt to let families know what little they knew, comments from parents frustrated by the vagaries of the information popped up in local corners of social media. Missoula schools spokesperson Tyler Christensen said the district had collaborated on a response with the Missoula Police Department — a practice that’s become increasingly common in this era of school shootings and anonymous threats. Officials take each threat seriously, Christensen told me. Her words were echoed later in media interviews by Bryan Lockerby, administrator of the Montana Department of Justice’s Division of Criminal Investigation. “Parents have entrusted school administrators to protect their children when they’re at school, and school administrators have to make a decision on what’s best for that organization, for the school and the students,” Lockerby told KTVH Wednesday. Great Falls Public Schools Superintendent Tom Moore said that puts school officials in a hard place. The sources of such messages are a “different breed of threat actor” than a disgruntled local phoning in, Moore told MTFP, and their primary goal appears to be to disrupt the normal day-to-day operations of government agencies — something the internet has made far easier for entities foreign and domestic. Similar threats have been made repeatedly against Montana schools this academic year, as well as at Glacier International Airport and Missoula’s Har Shalom synagogue. Additionally, they’ve recently triggered a lockdown at the Montana Air National Guard wing and a brief evacuation of the Montana Capitol. What’s not lost on Moore is the impact on students. A single day of lost instruction time is no small thing, and with the recent cold snap already having prompted school closures around the state, simply canceling classes isn’t a viable option, he said. Equally important is the mental and emotional strain that attending school under a cloud of fear can place on children. Schools can collaborate with law enforcement and parents, can train staff and be hyper-prepared and empathetic, Moore said, but at some point the issue becomes bigger than a school’s response. “This isn’t just a school issue,” Moore said. “This is a societal issue.” —Alex Sakariassen, Reporter
Following the Law
Montana’s legal system delivered so many notable developments this week we couldn’t decide on just one to feature here. So, in lieu of a big long writeup, here’s a quick rundown (and links to our news stories if you’d like to know more):
Public Comment
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Wednesday announced that it’s initiating a public input process that could help clear the way for reintroducing grizzly bears into the Bitterroot. The agency, which is charged with managing threatened and endangered species, is considering the move after a federal court ruled that it had erred by failing to act on a 2000 record of decision establishing a framework for a reintroduction of a “nonessential experimental population” in the 5,800-acre Bitterroot Recovery Area. The recovery area includes swaths of central Idaho as well as the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness on the west side of Montana’s Bitterroot Valley. Siding with the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Native Ecosystems Council, U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy has directed the agency to prepare a new Environmental Impact Statement. The public scoping process that USFWS is undertaking now is a preliminary step in the production of that document, which is expected in the latter half of 2026. In a release soliciting input from the public, USFWS said it aims to create a plan that will incorporate potential effects on the human environment, approaches to managing bear-human conflicts, considerations related to grizzly bear connectivity between recovery zones and “other relevant information regarding impacts.” It noted that a “no-action” alternative is one of the options available to the agency. USFWS is currently reviewing a petition by Montana and Wyoming to delist the Northern Continental Divide and Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem grizzly populations. Additionally, confirmed sightings of grizzlies have been reported over the last year in parts of Montana where they haven’t been seen in decades, including the Missouri River Breaks, the Shields River Valley and the Pryor Mountains. One of the places that grizzly bears have been increasingly moving into after a nearly 80-year absence is the Bitterroot Valley — an area that’s becoming increasingly popular with people, too. In 2018, a grizzly was captured on a Stevensville golf course, and in 2022 Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks relocated two cubs that had been hanging around the northern end of the valley into the Sapphire Mountains. Members of the public can weigh in on this step of the process through March 18, 2024, and tune into virtual public information sessions the agency is hosting on Feb. 5, 13 and 14. —Amanda Eggert, Reporter
By the Numbers
The daily cost to house a patient at the Montana State Hospital’s Spratt Unit, a specialized part of the hospital for people with dementia, Alzheimer’s and traumatic brain injuries. The dollar amount, a yearly average from 2022 to 2023, was presented by state health department officials during a Jan. 17 meeting of the Transition Review Committee. Made up of a mix of lawmakers, health department employees and other appointees, the group is tasked with overseeing efforts by the state health department to transfer patients out of the Spratt Unit by June 2025 and finding more appropriate placements for them in community group homes or private residences, rather than the adult psychiatric hospital in Warm Springs. —Mara Silvers, Reporter
Glad You Asked Gov. Greg Gianforte’s recent appointment of Republican lawmaker Paul Green as director of the Montana Department of Commerce last week produced a question from a reader who thinks Green may be prohibited from taking the job under the Montana Constitution as a legislator who wasn’t through serving out his term. As we asked around about the issue, one prominent Democrat also cried foul, though the governor’s office maintains the appointment is above board. Article V, Section 9 of the state Constitution says, in part, that “no member of the legislature shall, during the term for which he shall have been elected, be appointed to any civil office under the state.” Green, a freshman lawmaker from Hardin, was first elected to the state House of Representatives in 2022, and “the term for which he shall have been elected” ends at the beginning of 2025. The Constitution isn’t explicit about whether the so-called disqualification provision, designed to discourage a revolving door between political offices that could facilitate improper lobbying or vote trading, applies when a legislator resigns to take a civil office with the state. But House Minority Leader Kim Abbott, D-Helena, told MTFP this week it’s her understanding that the purpose of the provision is precisely to prevent lawmakers from doing what Green did. (Abbott, to be clear, is not a lawyer). “I think the plain language makes [the appointment] unconstitutional,” she said. “Paul’s a nice guy, I don’t know much about his background or qualifications, but I don’t think that’s the point.” The governor’s office maintained that Green’s appointment passes constitutional muster. “Before the governor appointed Paul Green to serve as director of the Department of Commerce, the governor’s office carefully reviewed the Constitution and statute, and is certain his appointment is in accordance with the law,” Gianforte spokesperson Kaitlin Price told Capitolized this week. It’s not currently clear whether Democrats or some other entity will attempt to challenge that assessment in court. Green was appointed to direct the commerce department following the December departure of Scott Osterman, who resigned in the wake of an internal audit that alleged he racked up more than $26,000 in disallowed government expenses in possible violation of state law and policy. Osterman repaid the state the sum and no charges have been filed regarding those potential violations. |
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