Company Profile
Company Overview
“The venerable Northern Plains Resource Council, a Montana group that has fought coal plant pollution for 40 years and defended ranchers against the gouging of their land…”
- Seattle Post-Intelligencer
“They confound the common view that ordinary people are powerless in the face of industry.”
- Billings Gazette
"This thriving citizens organization exemplifies the ideal of public involvement in public processes."
- Billings Gazette
Northern Plains organizes family farmers and ranchers, small businesses, urban dwellers and rural residents to protect Montana’s water, land, air, and working landscapes.
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 as an environmental group, organizing in what some see as the toughest turf to advocate for clean air, clean water, and progressive natural resource policies.
Community organizing is the foundation of Northern Plains’ work. That work combines research, public education, coalition-building, public policy, the regulatory process, leadership development and, when necessary, litigation, to give our members a voice in shaping policies that affect their lives and livelihoods. We provide our members an effective voice in the Montana Legislature.
We bring non-traditional voices into conservation issues. We build bridges between people.
Company History
The Northern Plains Resource Council was formed by ranch families who 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.
The late Boyd Charter, Montana rancher and co-founder of Northern Plains, described his contact with a coal company land man this way:
"I told that son-of-a-bitch with a briefcase that I knew he represented one of the biggest coal companies and he was backed by one of the richest industries in the world, but no matter how much money they came up with, they would always be $4.60 short of the price of my ranch. . . . . Some people cannot understand that money is not everything. . . . He must have decided that I was stupid, because he offered me a contract for one dollar entitling him to explore for coal. I had to tell him the door swings out just the way it swings in."
Landmark Victories:
• Winning an outright dismissal of the construction permit for the Tongue River Railroad, a major coal infrastructure project. A diverse campaign, dogged persistence, and effective strategy won this 38-year campaign in April 2016; 1977-2016.
• Winning the withdrawal of the largest coal mine project ever proposed in Montana (Otter Creek); March 2016.
• Playing a major role in the struggle to stop massive coal ports from being developed, bringing the voice of Montana into an otherwise Washington state-centric fight. Five of six ports proposals have been scrapped; 2010-present.
• Winning a federal court of appeals decision requiring a new EIS for the proposed Tongue River Railroad due to its many deficiencies; 2011.
• Defending Montana water rights law in a successful state court case; 2009.
• Upholding the integrity of the EIS process and the applicability of environmental laws to coal bed methane development; 2007.
• Negotiating the unprecedented Good Neighbor Agreement between the Stillwater Mining Company and two communities affected by the mine’s operations; 2000.
• Holding off proposed mega-landfills in three eastern Montana communities; 1991.
• Enactment of the federal Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977.
• Shaping and passing Montana’s landmark environmental laws; 1972, 1975.
"...it has been incredibly successful at bringing credible, if sometimes dissenting, viewpoints to public debates about ranching, mining and the general lifestyle enjoyed by this region. In the consideration of any number of issues, the group has been the key that opened public debate."
Billings Gazette editorial, Nov. 27, 1991
"What sets NPRC apart from many groups is their complete dedication to working with community people… The process of citizen involvement, at least in the context of small town Montana life, has been raised to an art form by this organization."
Western Network, Citizen Involvement: Learning From Experience, 1994
“To say the agreement between Stillwater Mining Co. and Northern Plains Resource Council and its affiliates in Stillwater and Sweet Grass counties is remarkable understates its significance. The ‘Good Neighbor Agreement’ sets a standard beyond Montana’s borders for how citizens concerned with resource protection and a major mining company concerned with resource development can work together to resolve conflict.”
Billings Gazette editorial, May 1, 2000
"Birthed out of an unusual coalition of ranchers and environmentalists, Northern Plains maintains this tradition of working with diverse groups, an anomaly in today’s era of conflict and divisiveness."
Greg Gordon, Orion Afield Magazine, Summer 2000
"I am stunned by the courage you’ve had collectively, by your endurance over the past 37 years. You have always fought long odds."
Randy Udall, quoted in Billings Gazette, Nov. 16, 2008