Coal Fuels Feud in Rural Montana Over the West’s Oldest Issue: Water : Environment: Ranchers say mining would disrupt springs. Backers disagree and say the area needs jobs.

Cowboys and coal miners built this town, but now they are fighting a modern range war over the West’s oldest issue: water.

Meridian Minerals Co. wants to dig a new kind of underground coal mine about 17 miles south of town in the Bull Mountains.

A handful of ranchers and a few townspeople say the mine could disrupt the underground water that sustains them, their cattle and the deer, elk, turkey and other wildlife that abound in the gentle, timbered mountains.

Their opposition has infuriated many of the town’s 1,800 residents. Don Picchioni, president of the Musselshell Valley Development Corp. and owner of the town’s only supermarket, says only about three ranch families oppose the mine.

“I’d say the vast majority of the people in that area are in favor of the mine and welcome it. It seems as though they’re using the environmental concerns as their rationale for not wanting to see the mine in place.”

Cattle gave Roundup its start, and the huge cattle drive that celebrated Montana’s centennial in 1989 started here. But coal was the major industry from 1909 to 1957. One small mine still operates, and the winter air still stings with the smell of coal burned in the schools, hospital and most houses.

Tony Boyle started here in his climb to become the iron-fisted president of the United Mine Workers of America. In the UMWA cemetery south of town, headstones are chiseled with Central European names that rattle off the tongue like coal down a chute: Bujok, Mestdagh, Yakovich, Klobuchar, Grabowski, Polsak, Belnak and--yes--Picchioni.

Meridian’s mine would be the first in Montana to use the longwall process. A cutting machine rides back and forth on a conveyor chain, slicing strips of coal from the underground seam. The resulting chasm is filled by the earth settling, a gradual process that can take a year.

The mine would be 1,208 underground acres--almost 2 square miles--and would disturb 649 acres on the surface. It would produce 3 million tons of coal a year and eventually employ as many as 300 people, paying out $26 million a year for wages, supplies and parts.

Bob Morehead of Billings, Mont., project manager, and Robert Ochsner of Denver, Meridian’s environmental affairs chief, agree that there is a risk to underground water. But they say the settling sometimes improves underground flow. Besides, they say, Meridian will mitigate any damage.

The company has drilled 115 test wells to get better data. Ochsner calls the coal seam “choice.” It is 50 feet to 800 feet below the surface, 8 feet to 16 feet thick.

The surface area that settles will be almost invisible, they say.

The promises are meaningless, said rancher Pete Tully, president f the Bull Mountains Landowners Assn.

“They say if they hit a spring they’ll shut down the mine,” he said. “The reality is that they won’t shut down the mine and put everybody out of work. They’ll holler ‘Jobs!’ and the politicians will fall all over themselves.”

Tully wrote letters to some of Meridian’s prospective customers this spring, saying the mine would jeopardize ranches. Meridian retaliated by canceling his grazing leases on 4 square miles in the Bull Mountains.

The Roundup Record-Tribune cheered, calling the ranchers, “a small bunch of people who have no loyalty whatever to the general good of the area. People who espouse a shallow concern for the environment, a phony appeal to the ‘cowboy mystique,’ and some vague notion of righteousness as a mask to their unadulterated greed.”

Losing the leases would make Tully’s ranch all but unworkable, and he is fighting to keep them--and he is still fighting the mine.

“Where’s the big surprise?” he asked. “My family’s been fighting coal development in the Bull Mountains for 30 years.”

Most of the battle over the mine is being fought on paper--tons of paper. There are environmental impact studies, engineering analyses, economic data and swarms of letters.

Behind the ranchers is the Billings-based Northern Plains Resource Council, founded 20 years ago by powerful ranching families for a fight over coal strip mines in southeastern Montana. Behind Meridian stands its parent company, Burlington Resources, an offshoot of the BN railroad.

The ranchers lost the first round in February when the federal Bureau of Land Management approved a land swap with Meridian that consolidated the company’s holdings in the Bull Mountains. Meridian traded 9,873 acres of recreational land in southwestern Montana for 3,673 acres in the Bull Mountains that hold 54.5 million tons of coal.

Federal officials estimated the coal’s value at 1.67 cents per ton, and opponents, including the National Wildlife Federation, howled that the trade was a giveaway.

“Montana does not need to take it in the shorts so that some large company can get richer,” small property owners Jerry and Della Carlson told the BLM.

Now Meridian is asking for federal and state mine permits, and more documents and studies are piling up--along with frustrations on both sides over the slowness of the process. The permits could come next spring, next summer, next fall--nobody can say.

The ranchers don’t expect to block the permit--the state has never rejected an application--but they hope to win requirements that will protect the water. Some of the coal seams act as aquifers to store water.

Steve and Jeanne Charter, who lease square miles from Meridian, say the company tried to cancel their leases as it did Tully’s. But they fought back and won a 40-year lease agreement that they consider a victory.

“Over the years we’ve built our reputation,” Steve said. “They know we won’t quit.”