Montana Republicans Are Proud Their State Has The Most Toxic Superfund Sites

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Last Updated on: 30th April 2025, 10:45 pm

You can’t fix stupid. The great state of Montana, thanks in large measure to decades of pollution left behind by Anaconda Copper and the fossil fuel industry, has the most toxic Superfund sites of any state in America. Republicans in Montana are proud of their role in turning their home into a shithole and want to make certain the state’s proud tradition of environmental degradation continues into the future.

There’s a problem, though. A bunch of tree-hugging young hippies infected with a woke mind virus sued the state a few years ago in the case of Held vs. Montana, claiming it had failed to abide by the clear and unequivocal language in the state Constitution that says the citizens of Montana are entitled to a “clean and healthful environment.” What commie pinko twaddle!

When a Montana state court ruled in favor of the young plaintiffs, Republicans had a fit. When the state Supreme Court upheld the decision last December, they lost their minds. They immediately set about passing a raft of new legislation designed to make absolutely certain that businesses in Montana could go right on pouring pollutants into the state’s air, water, and land regardless of what some silly old constitution might say.

Montana Republicans Play The MAGA Card

According to Inside Climate News, the package of bills introduced in the Montana legislature this year targets the state’s environmental analysis, air quality regulation, and judicial system. The Held Vs Montana case “didn’t just make headlines,” Montana Republican Representative Greg Oblander said in a press conference. He is a sponsor of one of the bills that could hobble climate action in the state. “It sent shock waves through the Montana economy.” He claimed that case “was an open invitation for activists to weaponize our environmental laws against the very industries that keep Montana running and Montanans employed.”

When the annual legislative session for 2025 is over at the end of May, the state’s Republican governor is certain to sign a large number of new bills that are intended to mount a direct frontal assault on the Held vs. Montana decision. But they will not change the state constitution, and so they undoubtedly will be challenged in Montana courts.

A Montana History Lesson

At a state constitutional convention in 1972, Montanans were disgusted by how companies like Anaconda Copper used the state as a toilet for their waste products, and so they proposed changes to the state constitution that would end that madness. That’s when the language about a “clean and healthful environment” was proposed and adopted. Extractive industries like mining and logging had left a lasting environmental toll on the air, water and land in the state. For decades, Anaconda Copper wielded enormous power at the state legislature, which resulted in the state turning a blind eye to the ongoing environmental abuse.

Republicans played a central role in the Held vs. Montana litigation. During the trial in the summer of 2023, the state argued that Montana’s contribution to greenhouse gases is but a fraction of a fraction of the world’s pool of emissions. “Montana’s emissions are simply too minuscule to make any difference,” the state’s attorney argued. “Climate change is a global issue that effectively relegates Montana’s role to that of the spectator.” The attorney for the young plaintiffs argued that the state’s contributions were equivalent to that of entire countries like the Netherlands, Pakistan, or Argentina, and were actively degrading Montana’s environment.

When the plaintiffs won the case, the state appealed to the Montana Supreme Court. In December 2024, that court also ruled against the state. “Montana’s right to a clean and healthful environment and environmental life support system includes a stable climate system,” Judge Kathy Seeley wrote in the court’s decision. In the absence of an amendment to the state constitution, it is hard to see how the new legislative package will overcome the clear and unambiguous finding of the state Supreme Court.

An End Run Around The Courts

In 2011, the Montana legislature barred analyses required by the Montana Environmental Policy Act, or MEPA, from considering impacts outside the state. In 2023 the legislature honed MEPA’s focus even more by passing a provision that said greenhouse gas emissions could not be considered in the state’s environmental analyses. That limitation, the Supreme Court ruled, was unconstitutional. MEPA analyses, according to the decision, would have to account for the emissions those projects create. Less than a month after the Supreme Court’s decision, Republican legislators set out to minimize its impact.

“The backlash [to Held] is profound,” said Anne Hedges, executive director of the Montana Environmental Information Center (MEIC), an organization dedicated to protecting the state’s land, air, and water, in an interview. The push back, in particular, comes from Republicans in the state who have strong majorities in both chambers of the state legislature. “Their goal is to prevent the state from being able to do anything to address climate change.”

Part of that backlash came in bills that aimed directly at MEPA. One bill, for example, limits the state to looking only at direct, proximate impacts of projects. This legislation would make upstream or downstream impacts outside the scope of environmental analyses. If, for instance, a company filed a request to expand an existing coal mine, the direct emissions associated with extracting the coal would be analyzed, but anything that happens next would not.

Article IX of the Montana Constitution is entitled Environment And Natural Resources. In Section 1 of that Article, it says:

• The state and each person shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations.
• The legislature shall provide for the administration and enforcement of this duty.
• The legislature shall provide adequate remedies for the protection of the environmental life support system from degradation and provide adequate remedies to prevent unreasonable depletion and degradation of natural resources.

The current legislature has failed and refused to do any such thing, setting up a collision between the courts and the legislature that will have far reaching consequences. It seems intuitively obvious to those of us who write for and read CleanTechnica that the provisions of the constitution are wise and necessary.

But the forces that embrace weaponized capitalism — those who think the one and only duty of a business corporation is to maximize shareholder value — care not what damage is done to the air, the water, and the land in pursuit of that increase in value. That is clearly a short term strategy that discounts the needs of future generations to justify present day profits. It’s the paradox of the modern day Republican Party. If that is the hill they have chosen to die on, so be it.