Montana on the verge of massive blunders with data centers, NorthWestern merger

Montana, the fourth largest and one of the least populated states in the Union, has been savagely ill-treated in the past and left with injuries that continue to plague us long after those who made the decisions aren’t in office or alive to be held accountable. 

Elected officials, at the local, state, and national level have and continue to make enormous mistakes, largely in service to corporations not “We, the people.” 

Need examples? 

How about the Berkeley Pit, one of the largest bodies of toxic water in the world the Copper Kings left behind when they took the riches Butte’s workmen had pried from rocks and fled for the East Coast.

Or how about the stump fields that now characterize much of Montana’s once-forested lands?  Plum Creek, a scion of Burlington-Northern Railroad, decided to “liquidate” its “timber assets” — also known as forests — and did just that, leaving massive knapweed-filled clearcuts behind.  Those vast swathes of lands were granted to BN’s predecessors by the federal government to facilitate “settling the West.”  Having plundered the timber resources, Plum Creek then became a Real Estate Investment Trust to sell off the lands.

Then there’s perhaps the greatest debacle in the state’s recent history — the late ’90s decision by the legislature and then Gov. Marc Racicot to deregulate Montana’s utility industry at the behest of the former Montana Power Company.  Theoretically, citizens would benefit as competition lowered prices. But that didn’t happen.

Instead, the dams, transmission lines and generation facilities that were paid for by Montana consumers were sold to an out-of-state corporation and the proceeds dumped into a telecommunications business that failed.  Montanans then went from the cheapest power in the region to the most expensive. In desperation, the legislature re-regulated the new owner, NorthWestern Energy, and now we’re paying for the dams and infrastructure once again while our energy prices go up, and up, and up. 

Meanwhile, Montana is facing an onslaught of enormous data centers whose consumption would suck down more energy than all of NorthWestern’s current customer base — and NorthWestern Energy is seeking approval from the Montana Public Service Commission for a $15.4 billion merger with Black Hills Corp., to form a multi-state mega-utility. 

Make no mistake, corporations are in business for one thing — to make money.  The Public Service Commission, however, is supposed to protect Montana’s consumers while the energy corporations seek their profits. 

But the Public Service Commission is in crisis as this critical decision looms. Brad Molnar is the longest-serving member of the Commission and, recalling the deregulation debacle, has been asking hard questions about what happens if the data centers fail and Montana consumers are left to pick up the costs of the infrastructure installed to serve them. 

In an unprecedented action, Gov. Greg Gianforte, who strongly supports data centers, suspended Molnar for a year for workplace infractions. He intends to appoint a replacement who, one might guess, will support the merger and the data centers.  

If that sounds a lot like what’s going on with President Donald Trump’s “fire and replace with friendlies” actions, it’s not a coincidence. Moreover, in early July Gianforte signed Trump’s “ratepayer protection pledge” that’s supposed to “protect American consumers from price hikes due to data center energy and infrastructure requirements, and lower electricity costs for consumers in the long term.”

We’ve heard that consumer protection and “lower electricity costs” line before — and Trump’s endless years of broken promises continues unabated. Montanans got fooled and burned by politicians and utility corporations before — this time around, we must ensure we don’t get fooled again.