Love of the Land Keeps Montana Rancher Fighting the Coal Industry

Wally McRae grew up beside Rosebud Creek, a few miles east of where Indian fighter George Armstrong Custer died in the battle of Little Bighorn in 1876.

The heritage of his grandfathers, who arrived less than a decade after Custer’s death, instilled in McRae a fierce love for his land.

“My dad’s philosophy was that the ranch was more important than anything, more important than love, more important than life,” the 51-year-old cattleman said.

One day a city slicker came to McRae’s ranch and said his company wanted a little piece of it, just 10%, for a coal mine. It was a big company. McRae was just one man. His odds of winning were probably worse than Custer’s.

But almost two decades later, there is still no coal mine on the Rocker Six Ranch.

“I said to them, ‘What would you have me give up so you can have your coal mine? My hay meadows? I need those to get through the winter. My yearling heifer pasture? My bull pasture? You tell me which 10% of my place I can afford to lose,”’ said McRae, still angry at the memory.

With his bushy mustache, bow-legged gait and battered hat, the third-generation Montanan looks like the cowboy he is. But just as his hand is trained to rope and his eyesight is keen to trouble, his brain is sharply honed.

McRae holds a degree in zoology and is a published poet, a playwright, an actor, a bank board chairman and a fourth of a prize-winning barbershop quartet.

He can quote complex environmental laws, cite U.S. Supreme Court decisions, pick up a rock and describe its composition.

He is also a founder and past chairman of the Northern Plains Resource Council, one of the most influential public interest lobbying organizations in the West.

In the Nov. 4, 1981, Congressional Record, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) marked NPRC’s first 10 years:

“With a dogged can-do attitude, this citizens’ group has helped to shape the future of Montana in the face of mounting pressure for the development of our natural resources. . . . NPRC has attracted strange allies--the rancher who scorned the longhairs and the young idealists who would prefer that mankind drew his energy from alternate sources, not fossil fuels.”

But on May 22, these allies were set back in their crusade to keep strip mines at bay. The Montana Supreme Court unanimously struck down a law that had limited mineral owners’ rights of access to the land.

The court said the 1975 statute unconstitutionally impaired contracts and allowed the taking of property without due process of law or just compensation.

The decision overturned the original district court order that had prohibited Western Energy Co. from mining coal on 840 acres in Rosebud County.

The surface rights are owned by the Genie Land Co., a ranching operation run by widow Patty Kluver. The mineral rights are owned by Burlington Northern Railroad and leased to Western Energy, a subsidiary of Montana Power Co.

“The decision is a major, stunning blow to landowners in Montana,” said William Madden, the attorney representing Genie Land. “The law was enacted to protect agriculture values and ensure adequate compensation to be paid to surface landowners.”

McRae was outraged at the decision; Burlington Northern owns some of his ranch’s mineral rights too.

“Now we condemn a widow’s land in Montana so that we can export California’s air-pollution problems up here,” McRae said. “Montana’s broke. We need jobs and a tax base, so we’re slashing safeguarding laws right and left.”

The events that first galvanized McRae, and men and women like him throughout northern Wyoming, western North Dakota and eastern Montana, were played out far from those high plains that sit atop 40% of America’s coal reserves.

By 1970, an energy crisis loomed over the world. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries was poised to wreak havoc on industrialized nations with the oil embargo. American cities needed low-sulfur coal to satisfy air quality standards. And the North Central Power Study was released.

Compiled by 35 electric power suppliers in 14 states and the Bureau of Reclamation, the study stunned ranchers and caused an environmental uproar.

It predicted the construction of 42 huge coal-fired power plants at the mouths of new strip mines to be dug in the West, all sending electricity to faraway cities. Also foreseen were giant coal gasification and liquefaction plants.

Such projects require enormous quantities of water, precious water that falls on the high plains at a stingy 14 inches a year.

The NPRC was born of anger and fear in 1972. Today, it has 1,500 members and 12 affiliates, including the Rosebud Protective Assn., founded by McRae and some of his neighbors.

The NPRC is a major force in drafting environmental regulations, ever vigilant over resource development and state enforcement.

“It all started with reclamation,” said McRae of his battles with coal companies. “The Montana Power Co. bought the town (Colstrip) and started making noise about resumption of mining. We asked them to do something about land reclamation.

“The power company said: ‘Don’t worry about it, we’ll do a good job.’ It didn’t take long to find out they weren’t serious, that they had no plans to do anything until they were forced to,” he said. “The companies said it was impossible until we passed the laws. Now the companies are doing it and they are also taking credit for it.”

Colstrip is McRae’s hometown. He has seen it in good times and bad. The Northern Pacific Railroad, now part of Burlington Northern, first came to the area to mine coal for its locomotives in 1923. The boom lasted 30 years, until diesels replaced steam engines.

“In 1967, Colstrip was nothing, 25 abandoned houses and 200 caretakers,” McRae said. “Now it’s a town of 4,500.”

It is a trim, tidy place, with subdivisions and modern schools, a park, a gas station, a convenience store and a restaurant.

Everything in Colstrip is, somehow, tied to Western Energy Co. Nearly everyone is linked to the cavernous strip mines, the enormous power plants.

Day and night, Christmas and the Fourth of July, every hour of every day, the citizens of Colstrip are reminded that theirs is a company town by the continuous humming from those power plants.

McRae doesn’t like to go to town much anymore. He goes for rehearsals with the Coal and Cattle Country Players. He goes for practice with the Uncalled Four, his singing buddies. There are bank meetings, groceries to buy, gas to get. But there is no joy in driving up from the ranch and hearing that low-pitched, infernal hum.

“I know the worst possible thing that could happen to this community is for the coal industry to shut down,” McRae said. “The second worst thing would be a diminishment of those laws that require responsible development.

“That would produce something that companies could no longer be proud of, ranchers couldn’t live with, and that would be ugly.”

Whence comes the smoke that palls on the air?

From the mines. From the strip mines.

And all of the spoil piles, mute standing there?

From the mines. From the strip mines.

The black unit train?

The acid-laced rain?

From the mines. From the strip mines.

Where did the spring go that watered the stock?

In the mines. In the strip mines.

And the old Indian signs on the petroglyph rock?

In the mines. In the strip mines.

And all of my dreams?

Sacrificed it seem.

In the mines. In the strip mines.

“The Mines, From the Strip Mines”

Wallace McRae