Company Profile
Northern Plains Resource Council
Company Overview
Formed by Montana ranchers in 1972, Northern Plains is a conservation group with deep roots in family farming and ranching. We fill a unique niche in that, as an environmental group, we bring non-traditional voices into conservation issues. Our work is built on a foundation of community organizing to raise public understanding of the issues and of the need to be part of the solution.
Company History
The ranch families who formed Northern Plains in 1972 were concerned about the threat that industrial-scale coal mining would have on their property and their ability to make a living from ranching.
People in the region who lived above or near coal seams were aware of the North Central Power Study, produced by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, 21 private and public utility companies, plus electric cooperatives, public power districts, and cities. That study proposed siting 42 coal-burning power plants in the Northern Great Plains, 21 of them in Montana. The plan would have included using 2.6 million acre-feet of water annually from the Yellowstone, Big Horn and Wind, Tongue, Powder, and North Platte Rivers in order to cool all those plants.
The impacts of such a plan – land destruction, depletion of water resources, massive air pollution, a maze of high-tension lines taking electricity from the region – would have been devastating on people trying to earn a living by farming or ranching. The plan portrayed eastern Montana as part of a “national sacrifice area” for energy production. It should have been no surprise that these were the people who rose up against this plan.
Large-scale coal strip mining indeed came to eastern Montana but on nothing close to the scale projected by the North Central Power Study. Northern Plains sought to find ways to keep family ranching viable even when a coal mine moved into the neighborhood. The mines are still there today, and so are the ranches. This is not something that would have happened by itself.
Since those early days, Northern Plains has worked on a wide variety of issues that impact family agriculture, land, water, air, and communities.