The way of life of the Northern Cheyenne tribe has recently come under threat as mining companies feast their eyes on a giant coal-bed methane deposit lying beneath the reservation in the Powder River Basin of southern Montana and northern Wyoming. After realizing the scope of the deposit, which contains enough gas to supply the United States for a year, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) hastily issued over 500 leases for coal-bed methane mines on public and private land throughout the area from 1996 to 2001. The action resulted in outrage among locals.
Since they were forced westward onto their current reservation in southeastern Montana, the Northern Cheyenne have maintained close ties to the natural environment through daily interaction with the pristine waters of the Tongue River. For the past century and, the Tribe has used the river for sacred offerings, swimming and washing clothes, drinking, and harvesting wild herbs from the river’s banks. They also rely on it for agriculture and ranching, the two largest sources of economic revenue on the reservation.
In 2001, the Northern Plains Resource Council, a grassroots conservation group, filed a lawsuit against the BLM, alleging that they issued the leases without any local consultation or environmental study. They argued that extensive studies should be undertaken before permitting mining, considering that methane drilling is known to drain aquifers, pollute rivers and streams, create potentially combustible surface conditions, and is always accompanied by road-building and other construction projects. On April 26, 2002, the Department of Interior Board of Land Appeals ruled against the BLM, claiming that a proper environmental analysis was never performed, thus halting methane production for the time being.
At the same time, the Northern Cheyenne, realizing the imminent threat to their river, asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for permission to regulate water on their reservation, including the bordering Tongue River, more strictly than typically done by the federal government. The proposed standards would either cut back upriver production by one third or require more expensive drilling methods. Requests for higher environmental standards are frequently made by tribes around the country and are usually granted as one of the tribes’ sovereign rights. However, most regulation requests do not directly oppose presidential policy.
That is why Northern Cheyenne president Geri Small believes her request was stalled and recently denied after promising beginnings with the EPA’s regional officials in Denver. After regional EPA approval in January 2003, the application was sent to the EPA’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. After two meetings in the capital between tribal and EPA officials earlier this summer, it became clear that the request would not be granted, yet no explicit explanation was given.
“The bottom line is, our president and vice president, their big priority is opening up the Powder River,” Small was quoted in the Denver Post. She feels that the Bush administration’s energy policy is pushing aside tribal concerns in its unending quest for oil and coal. To thicken the plot, Fidelity Exploration & Production, the company standing to profit from the proposed mines has hired Bracewell & Patterson, a law firm known for its close ties to the Bush administration, to fight the Cheyenne’s proposed water standards.
While the tribe now must scramble to put together a new request that will most likely take months or years to achieve a ruling, the federal government and mining companies are pushing ahead as quickly as possible. Production in Wyoming’s share of the basin has been steaming full speed ahead, and developers have their eyes set on southern Montana once again. After performing ad hock environmental studies, which received the EPA’s lowest possible ratings, the BLM is attempting to lease out up to 14,000 new methane wells in Montana over the next twenty years. Left with no other options, the Northern Cheyenne and the Northern Plains Resource Council issued another lawsuit against the Bureau in a U.S. District Court last May to stop the leases.
The lawsuits, though, are unlikely to hold off development indefinitely. The Northern Cheyenne’s water and way of life will continually be threatened by methane development until their stringent environmental standards are enacted. With the Bush administration’s energy policy firmly in place, including close ties to powerful mining companies, it remains questionable whether their standards will be approved before irreparable damage is done.
