Use of coal for generation of electricity is terminal. The final death is a ways off but there is zero future in coal. However, based on the comments and actions of our state GOP “leadership” along with Daines and Rosendale, it would seem that we are still living in the 1950’s. The present GOP attitude is doing a great disservice to the hard working residents of Colstrip.
Change is coming with regards to renewables in the USA. Why not have Colstrip at the front of this change? There are many opportunities for Colstrip, but the present GOP attitude will doom the
Colstrip workers to zero new opportunities. Their only opportunities will be with cleanup of the decommissioned plants.
The skills required to operate large-scale power generating facilities are very transferrable.
An example of this continued GOP stupidity was front and center in an article in the April 24 BDC about resurrected HB 695 from GOP Sen. Ankney of Colstrip. Ankney wants all NorthWestern rate payers to be responsible for poor NorthWestern management of the Colstrip power plants. Is Ankney as ignorant as his quote about a prolonged 2018 Colstrip shutdown caused by the facility being out of environmental compliance makes him sound “…it’s not their (Northwestern) fault they were out of compliance”? If being out of environmental compliance was not the fault of the plant’s operator, then who was at fault? Me? You, the reader? Someone living in Norway?
If Sen. Ankney truly cared about Colstrip, he (and his fellow GOP colleagues) would be evaluating all possible ways to bring the future to his community and get out of the 1950s.
Alan Crawford
Bozeman
Bozeman Daily Chronicle Letter to the Editor 5/2/21