YELLOWSTONE BEND CITIZENS COUNCIL

Jenny Harbine: Legal and Grassroots Advocacy

12/13/2019

Jenny Harbine: Grassroots and Legal Advocacy

Jenny Harbine, a lawyer with Earthjustice, speaking at our December meeting, held everyone’s attention as she explored the way grassroots and legal advocacy work in tandem. We are the grassroots part of the equation!

How timely this message was!  We had just heard the great news that the PSC turned down NWE’s request for an unfair fee on residential solar that would have stopped our solar industry here in MT dead in its tracks.  This time, grassroots organizing did the job by itself, but had the ruling gone another way, we would have needed a lawsuit!

Our grassroots organizing efforts have at their very core the spirit of democracy. We accomplish our work collectively using all the tools that our democracy provides, helping keep it alive.

Thank you Jenny!  We’re grateful for your commitment to preserving our unparalleled Montana ecosystems, and for Earthjustice for making sure there  is a lawyer when grassroots work falls short.

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Montana a Leader in Clean Energy? It’s Possible!

9/8/2019

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Northeast of Livingston a groundbreaking project is ready to break ground!

The Gordon Butte Pumped Hydro Storage (GB) project is fully permitted and has recently acquired investors. The GB project makes use of a little known and barely used carbon neutral system for energy storage and generation.  Once built, GB will make room for a flood of new renewable energy to be seamlessly integrated onto the MT grid.

Gordon Butte turns out to be a perfect site for pumped storage.  On top of the butte, there will be one lake, and at the bottom (a drop of 1000 ft) there will be another.

Once the lakes are filled and the powerhouse constructed, GB will take energy off the grid (just a few miles away) when there is too much to run the pumps, pushing water to the upper lakes.  When there is too little energy, the generators will come online and generate energy for the grid.

This adroit switching between generating and storing energy will take place within minutes, making the GB an innovator in pumped hydro storage. Keeping the right amount of electricity on the gird is critical; GB will act as a ‘shock absorber’.

Our utility tells us that renewable energy creates problems because it is unreliable; the sun stops shining at night, and wind speeds vary. GB will solve this problem, while stabilizing the grid minute to minute and generating energy.  And all of this adds NO CARBON to our atmosphere.

As of this writing NWE is not negotiating with GB to buy the electricity.  That’s both puzzling and frustrating.

Check out this remarkable project here: https://gordonbuttepumpedstorage.com/project-overview/what-is-pumped-storage-hydro/

-Joanie Kresich, YBCC co-chair
Sept. 2019

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YBCC Farmer's Market booth on Wednesday Aug 16th

9/26/2017

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Our booth yielded many conversations and lots of opportunities to share our work. Sam Francis talked with three Park Electric Co-op members who may be interested in working with our YBCC Park Electric Committee to expand renewables in the Co-op. We added names to our list of those who will join in the YBCC02 Carbon Diet campaign when the website is ready to launch. We shared literature about YBCC. Members Lauren Dalzell and Laurie Talcott made a whole flock of kids happy by painting faces. And two families who won the raffle for fruit trees went home ready to plant. (Thanks Sandi at Blake Nursery for the trees). All in all, a great day!

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The Soil Will Save Us: Kristin Ohlson at the Annual NPRC Meeting

12/4/2015

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When Kristin Ohlson says “The soil will save us”, she means it. That’s the title of her book, and also her message. She was the keynote speaker at the Northern Plains annual meeting in November.

Is this just one more crackpot idea? No. It’s based on solid science. For once, we modern humans don’t have to feel solely responsible for the climate mess we’re in. When we started plowing soil, we also began releasing carbon into the atmosphere. Of course, our industrial ways have greatly magnified the problem. But a few very simple practices can actually REDUCE the legacy load in our atmosphere. We’ve got some good examples of these practices happening in Montana; NP members Wade Sikorski and Steve Charter are just two of many putting the principles of ‘carbon farming’ into practice.

Planting without plowing (“Nothing in nature repeatedly and regularly turns the soil”), planting cover crops, using mulch and compost are the mainstays. These are also practices we can use in the tiny plots in our backyards.

It’s comforting to know there’s a way to actually drop the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. And it’s a joy to be able to turn the land we tend, however small, into a part of the healing we wish for.

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Yellowstone Bend Citizens Council Passes the 1 Year Mark

10/19/2015

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Yellowstone Bend Citizen Council’s annual celebration 'From Fledgling to Flying’ will be held Wed Oct 28th at 7:00 at Elk River Books/Wheatgrass Saloon (120 N. Main St, Livingston). Come enjoy desserts and wine, and visit with friends and neighbors. Everyone is welcome!

Alaina Buffalo Spirit, Northern Cheyenne artist, activist and Northern Plains Resource Council member, will share stories of the fight to save the Tongue River Valley from coal development. Alaina’s beautiful and evocative ledger art will be displayed for sale.

Yellowstone Bend (YBCC) held our kick-off party a year ago in June. With only a year under our belt, we’re heading into our second year with full steam. We expect to be completing a solar project on a public community building in 2016. We facilitated a tour of the Red Lodge wastewater treatment solar array for our city officials to explore how solar might provide savings in Livingston’s treatment plant. We’ll be hosting a “Making Energy Work for Your Business” in the spring for business owners to learn about grants and loans for renewable installations. We joined the legislative effort to promote renewables, and collaborated with PCEC on several projects. And we’ve added our energy to the effort to collect signatures opposing a new rail link that would make possible a huge new strip mine in the Tongue River Valley, resulting in lots more coal trains rolling through our town.

We see our two goals as a right and left hand, working in concert. With one hand we work to support local renewable energy projects, especially those returning savings to our community, and with the other, to mitigate the negative effects of fossil fuel transport coming through the center of our town every day.

We hope to see you on the 28th!

Joan Kresich

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