News you can use
News you can use
Sorted by date Results 201 - 225 of 261
BILLINGS — Federal emergency officials started arriving Tuesday in Montana to gauge the damage from flooding expected to continue for possibly several more weeks. Rain that had plastered the state for more than a week finally eased, allowing authorities in the swamped town of Roundup to start pumping water from some areas. Water levels dropped more than 2 feet in Roundup, said First Sgt. Levi Doll of the Montana National Guard. As the Musselshell River receded, Doll said, authorities were finding damage to roads and other i...
AP Photo/The Billings Gazette, Larry Mayer 1st Lt. Parker Taylor, of Harrison, retrieves a safety vest from a Humvee at the Montana National Guard command center at the fairgrounds in Hardint. Flooding is disrupting emergency phone service across a broad swath of eastern Montana as some areas remain inundated with several feet of water. BILLINGS — Flooding disrupted emergency phone service across a broad swath of eastern Montana on Monday as areas of the state remained inundated and downstream communities prepared for the w...
Montana withdraws air rules for oil, gas drilling MATTHEW BROWN, Associated Press BILLINGS — State officials have withdrawn their request for federal regulators to approve air-quality rules that let the oil and gas industry drill first and attain emission approvals later. Adopted in 2005 and 2006, the rules have drawn criticism for giving companies 60 days after drilling to register with the state, with no emissions permit required. Montana Department of Environmental Quality Director Richard Opper said Tuesday the state w...
Bison in pilot program shipped back to Yellowstone MATTHEW BROWN, Associated Press BILLINGS — A group of wild bison was returned to Yellowstone National Park on Friday in a setback to a fledgling program that allowed the animals into parts of Montana where bison had long been prohibited. The roundup of the 13 animals came after they repeatedly left a 2,500-acre grazing area in the Gallatin National Forest, crossing the Yellowstone River and entering private property. After their capture, the animals were trucked just o...
LODGE GRASS — Rain-swollen rivers that have swamped Montana towns could keep flooding the region for another month or more as melting mountain snow delivers a second slug of water to the soggy Northern Plains. AP Photo/Matthew Brown Kathryn Old Crow, 73, describes flooding that forced her from her home near Lodge Grass,to U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, left, and Gov. Brian Schweitzer, as her grandson, Wade Old Crow, watches Friday . Recent flooding displaced hundreds of residents of southeastern Montana's Crow Indian Reservation a...
BILLINGS — Public opinion on gray wolves remains sharply split as Montana and Idaho wildlife officials prepare to resume hunts for the predators after Congress removed their endangered species protections. Montana State Fish, Wildlife and Parks commissioners are due to meet July 14 to adopt a quota of 220 wolves to be killed during fall rifle and archery hunts. Idaho's hunt is scheduled for adoption in late July. Final details still are being worked out. AP photo A Mexican gray wolf moves through his new home after being rele...
ROUNDUP — Another Montana town Thursday was swamped with floodwaters that have washed out roads and rushed though houses across the state — and hundreds more homes downstream in the Dakotas could be hit as heavy rains and melting mountain snow force record releases from bloated dams on the Missouri River. Ongoing flooding in beleaguered Montana could end up being the worst in decades, officials warned. The conditions are ripe: unusually heavy snowpack in the mountains, persistent spring rains and waterlogged ground inc...
BILLINGS — Forecasters said high temperatures in Montana on Thursday will trigger minor to moderate flooding over the weekend on rivers and streams scattered across the state. The prediction of more high water comes as many communities struggle to recover from weeks of flooding that inundated hundreds of houses and left many roads and bridges in need of repair. AP Photo/Rick Bowmer A high water closure sign is shown at a park Thursday, in The Dalles, Ore. States across the West are bracing for major flooding in the coming w...
BILLINGS — More rain is on tap this week for Montana communities besieged with flood waters that have swamped neighborhoods and rural farmland and isolated a town near the Wyoming border, officials said. Authorities in Yellowstone County were searching for a man reported missing after a backhoe he was operating along Pryor Creek tipped into the water. AP Photo/Billings Gazette, Paul Ruhter A man walks across South Canal Road in Huntley, Mont. on Sunday as flood water from Pryor Creek inundates a neighborhood and spills o...
BILLINGS — Aging coal-fired power plants across the West could be forced to install costly pollution control equipment under an agreement between federal regulators and environmentalists aimed at jump-starting a delayed clean air initiative. Many utilities already cut air pollution emissions sharply over the last decade to meet federal health standards. Next up are even deeper cuts, to improve visibility in 156 national parks and wilderness areas by clearing the air of pollutants that cause haze. The reductions are r...
BILLINGS — A Montana tribe's plan to build a $7 billion coal-to-liquids project has stalled after it failed to attract sufficient financing, leading to a courtroom dispute between the tribe and its partner in the proposal. A federal judge in Delaware has scheduled a hearing next week on a request by a Texas-based investment group that accuses the Crow tribe of backing out of their 2009 development agreement. According to a lawsuit filed this week by Australian-American Energy Co., the Crow Tribe claims AAEC has failed to m...
LOLO — Former militia leader David Burgert has found a perfect location to carry on his private battle with law enforcement officers: a remote corner of the Rocky Mountains on the Montana-Idaho border that is heavily forested and lightly populated. The hunt for Burgert, 47, moved into its fourth day Wednesday with no sign of the practiced survivalist whose mother said he slipped into paranoia after repeated run-ins with Montana law enforcement. Court documents and interviews with law enforcement officials painted a picture o...
BILLINGS — An attorney for the state says Montana fulfilled its obligation to state employee unions when it submitted a pay raise later cut by the Legislature. Labor Relations chief Paula Stoll said Monday that the canceled raises for 11,000 state workers had been negotiated in good faith. Unions filed an unfair labor practice claim against the state last month. That came after the Republican-dominated Legislature rejected raises negotiated with Gov. Brian Schweitzer of 1 percent in 2012 and 3 percent in 2013. MEA-MFT u...
BILLINGS — The Obama administration on Tuesday struck a new deal with wildlife advocates that would require the Interior Department to consider greater protections for hundreds of imperiled animals and plants. The agreement was filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., by attorneys from the government and the Center for Biological Diversity. If a judge approves it, the deal would set a 2018 deadline for the administration to decide whether Endangered Species Act protections are needed for species as diverse as the w...
BILLINGS — Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer has decided Exxon Mobil and the state don't make good roommates after nearly a week of working together in close quarters to clean up an estimated 42,000 gallons of crude oil released into the Yellowstone River. State officials have moved out of a joint command post overseeing the response to the spill — a mess that has painted a fresh target for scorn on one of the world's largest energy companies. AP Photo/Jim Urquhart Cleanup workers use oil absorbent materials along side the Yel...
BILLINGS — Gray wolves in Montana and Idaho would be taken off the endangered list under the budget bill pending before Congress, two Western lawmakers said. Inclusion of the language to lift protections for wolves was confirmed by the offices of Montana Democratic Sen. Jon Tester and Idaho Republican Rep. Mike Simpson on Saturday. "It's high time for a predictable, practical law that finally delists Montana's wolves and returns their management to our state — for the sake of our wildlife, our livestock, and for the jobs tha...
ROUNDUP — One of the hardest-hit towns in flood-soaked Montana took another blow Wednesday as record flooding struck the small agricultural community for the second time in two weeks, forcing dozens of residents from homes that they had just started to clean up. The Musselshell River gushed into Roundup's neighborhoods, nearly submerging cars and swallowing the ground floors of homes. Officials evacuated between 30 and 35 residences and businesses on the southern end of the central Montana town near the river, said Randy Holm...
Libby asbestos victims consider $43M deal MATTHEW BROWN, Associated Press BILLINGS — More than 1,100 victims of asbestos contamination are nearing a $43 million settlement over claims that Montana health officials failed to warn miners about the hazards of a deadly vermiculite mine, documents from the case show. Hundreds of people have been killed and thousands sickened following decades of exposure to asbestos from the now-shuttered W.R. Grace & Co. mine in the small northwestern Montana town of Libby. Claimant notices o...
BILLINGS — Exxon Mobil Co. reassured concerned regulators that an oil pipeline beneath the Yellowstone River was buried deep enough and not in danger just a month before it broke in a flood and spewed an estimated 1,000 barrels of crude into the waterway. Details about Exxon Mobil's actions leading up to the Friday night spill into one of the West's premiere rivers emerged in federal safety documents as cleanup work continued downstream of the rupture site in the Montana town of Laurel. AP Photo/Jim Urquhart Oil covers a p...
LAUREL — Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer says he believes that oil from a broken pipeline under the Yellowstone River has traveled hundreds of miles into North Dakota. AP Photo/Jim Urquhart Jim Swanson surveys the oil impact on his property in Laurel., Tuesday. An ExxonMobil pipeline near Laurel., ruptured and spilled an estimated 1,000 barrels of crude oil into the Yellowstone. last weekend. The Democratic governor said Tuesday that the river was flowing about 7 mph, so it was a given that some oil has reached the state's e...
LAUREL — Crews responsible for cleaning up an oil spill on the Yellowstone River faced difficult conditions Tuesday as the scenic waterway rose above flood stage and raised fears that surging currents will push crude into undamaged areas and back channels vital to the river's prized fishery. Conditions on the swollen river have prevented a thorough assessment and hampered efforts to find the cause of Friday's break in the 12-inch pipeline, which spilled an estimated 1,000 barrels of crude oil. The river was flowing too high a...
LIBBY — For a decade, the people of Libby have longed for the day when they will be rid of the asbestos that turned their town into the deadliest Superfund site in America. Now they are being forced to live through the agony all over again, thanks to two giant piles of bark and wood chips on the edge of town. AP Photo/Matthew Brown D.C. Orr, a city councilman in Libby, walks through a storage area, where bark and wood chips contaminated with undetermined levels of lethal asbestos were stored. More than 15,000 tons of the mate...
LAUREL — The initial cleanup along the oil-fouled Yellowstone River could be tested today as rising waters make it harder for Exxon Mobil Corp. to get to areas damaged by the crude spilled from a company pipeline. The National Weather Service predicts the Yellowstone River, swelling with mountain snowmelt amid hot summer temperatures, will peak at Billings this afternoon — a day after Exxon Mobil Pipeline Co. President Gary Pruessing promised to do "whatever is necessary" to mop up oil spilled from the duct at the river bot...
Senate bill would lift wolf protections in MT, ID MATTHEW BROWN, Associated Press BILLINGS — Gray wolves in Montana and Idaho would lose their Endangered Species Act protections and become fair game for hunters under a provision buried deep in a U.S. Senate budget bill introduced Friday. The provision was included in a broad measure introduced by Democrats to fund the federal government through the end of the fiscal year. The one-paragraph passage on wolves — which appears on page 253 of the bill and doesn't mention the ani...
BILLINGS — A preliminary study of an asbestos-plagued Montana town indicates health dangers remain in some areas already addressed in a federal cleanup that, so far, has cost more than $370 million. Tuesday's release of a long-awaited draft toxicity study for the town of Libby comes more than a decade after the Environmental Protection Agency started its cleanup operation. Health workers say more than 400 people have been killed over the last several decades in Libby, which is considered the nation's deadliest Superfund s...
