Colstrip Power Plant

Leaking ash ponds at the plant operated by Talen Energy have contaminated groundwater in the area with boron, sulfate and other potentially harmful materials.

The closure of Units 1 and 2 was long anticipated as demand for U.S. coal collapsed in recent years, and came despite vows by elected officials in Montana to find ways to keep it open.

They also need crews to continue to run two units that will continue operating.

The Billings Gazette reports that the Trump administration plan to kill the Obama-Era Clean Power Plan does little for Montana’s coal industry.  Colstrip, the second-largest coal-fired power plant in the West, is facing opposition on various levels that will likely close the Montana plant long before the Clean Power Plan’s prescribed cuts to carbon dioxide emissions would have been realized anyway

Federal officials say retrofitting the Colstrip power plant to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would cost at least $1.2 billion, but that price tag could be at least partially offset by selling captured carbon dioxide for use in oil fields...

Toxic coal ash sludge ponds are an environmental scourge everywhere coal is burned, and Colstrip power plant owners have agreed to stop pooling the sludge from its largest units before 2019, as part of a lawsuit settlement filed Thursday...

Montana’s Republican candidates seemed to uniformly blame Gov. Steve Bullock for the trouble with the coal industry during a Wednesday meeting at the Billings Public Library.  The meeting of coal stakeholders came one day after an owner of Colstrip Power Plant settled an environmental lawsuit by agreeing to shut down two of the facility’s four units within six years...