The challenge

Since the latter part of the nineteenth century, northeast Wyoming has been subject to large-scale extraction of natural resources. Today, the Powder River Basin has more than a dozen active strip mines, producing more coal than any other state. The basin also has the largest coal-bed methane (CBM) gas-development project in the country, with more than 70 active oil and gas companies, 20,000 recently drilled methane wells, and many more on the way. Discharge water, a byproduct of CBM drilling which causes soil erosion, reduces precious groundwater and, because of the salts it contains, destroys the native vegetation and the clay soils. The CBM drilling process depletes the aquifer; as a consequence, some water wells dry up. This is a particularly serious matter in a state where 80 percent of the residents rely on subsurface supplies for their drinking water.

Because the federal government owns most of the mineral rights in the region, and because the mineral-extraction industry wields great political power, landowners and neighboring citizens have seldom shared in decision-making about gas-drilling operations, and typically have been unable to write environmental protections into lease agreements. Both Wyoming law and the federal law severely limit a landowner’s rights when the minerals under their surface are leased for oil and gas development. Coalbed methane companies that hold valid mineral leases may enter private property without the landowner's permission. Roads, wells, power lines, pipelines, wastewater-discharge pits and loud compressors to push gas through pipelines may be built on private property without a landowner's permission. Farmers and ranchers who speak out for accountability, responsible development and good science are often ignored, belittled or sometimes even threatened with condemnation of their land.

Seeds of commitment

Growing up on a farm in Nebraska, Jill Morrison learned early the practicalities of rural life and the importance of a healthy environment to agriculture. After graduating from college in Arizona, she organized workers at a nuclear-power plant to voice concerns about shoddy plant construction and mismanagement. Later, she became an award-winning investigative reporter. Fourteen years ago, she became community organizer for the Powder River Basin Resource Council (PRBRC). "In many ways I am driven to do (organizing) work because I cannot accept the injustice and damage being suffered by the people and the environment at the hands of uncaring and uninformed government agencies, corporations and companies," she says. "I am motivated by the desire to change the injustice of this situation and by the need to hold regulatory agencies accountable to the people who count on them for honest leadership, implementation and enforcement."

Accomplishments

The PRBRC's mission is to provide clear, concise and accurate information about Wyoming's resources. The organization is dedicated to good land stewardship and responsible development. Far-flung rural people rely on the council for an array of hard-to-find information, including examples of recently negotiated energy-company agreements, as well as facts and figures on the real costs of methane development. This trust was earned. PRBRC has tackled many issues in its 31-year history. For example, the organization was instrumental in the passage of state and then federal regulations requiring extensive permitting, bonding and reclamation for coal strip mines. The organization pressured the state to require large-scale gravel-pit operators to obtain air quality permits, helped start community recycling programs, pushed through passage of a law to control factory swine-feeding operations and strengthened zoning for industrial-sized feed lots.

Morrison has inspired ranchers, blue-collar workers, professionals, liberals, conservatives and conservationists to pull together to address a multitude of problems. Thanks largely to PRBRC, government agencies are confronting energy-company practices that cause erosion, water pollution, and soil and vegetation damage. Recently, PRBRC helped landowners get industry to replace water wells that were destroyed by coal-mine or methane development, and convinced coal mining companies to modify blasting practices to reduce the harm done by toxic nitrogen-dioxide gases to neighbors and the environment.

Leadership style

Morrison defines her role at PRBRC as coach-organizer. She gives rural people the tools to devise effective strategies to tackle their difficulties, often by driving long distances to visit them in their homes. She offers direction, encouragement, reinforcement, compassion – and a push, if need be — to induce private citizens to stand up for their rights in public. She also confronts government officials directly to persuade them to hold industry to a high standard. Her organization is member-driven; ordinary citizens use this venue to speak out publicly on environmental issues, agricultural-trade problems, and private-property concerns. She knows that meaningful, long-term and positive change will come when individual citizens insist on having a seat at the table when decisions are being made, and when organizations – sometimes unlikely partners – collaboratively hold government and energy companies accountable for their actions.

For example, when a potentially damaging pumping project was proposed at Dry Fork, in the Little Horn River area of the Bighorn National Forest, Morrison compiled a list of all the stakeholders. She invited the Crow Nation to join in a PRBRC meeting to talk about sacred sites in the Little Horn area. Sheridan residents spoke up about how they valued the area's critical habitat and pristine nature. Morrison finally persuaded the Federal Regulatory Commission, Environmental Protection Agency, and state agencies to send representatives to join in a hike in the endangered area to see for themselves what was at risk. The strategy, which took time, worked. Project permits were withdrawn and the resource was saved.

The future

Morrison continues to push lawmakers to provide basic negotiation rights for landowners who must allow energy developers on their property. Among other CBM-related problems yet to be resolved are noise pollution from compressor stations, county-road degradation, adequate bonding to ensure reclamation of the land and air pollution from mines and dusty roads. "We need adequate financial assurances at the state and federal level that down the road Wyoming will not be left with a scarred oil and gas battlefield that will saddle the taxpayer and landowner with cleanup costs," Morrison says. She hopes to expand outreach efforts in Canada and other parts of the United States to prevent problems faced in Wyoming from occurring or recurring in those areas. "I've learned that major policy changes or the needed paradigm shift usually happen very slowly, bit by bit, which makes it important to sustain our work and to persevere in our efforts."


More about Jill Morrison and the Powder River Basin Resource Council

"This is not an easy task, to visit people who are separated by long, snowy winter miles and whose sense of individualism does not lend itself to group actions. Jill persevered through literally years of effort, convincing staunch conservatives that they could not alone address the surface problems caused by CBM. It has worked. People who never joined anything except church have become leading activists on this issue."
— Lawrence A. Durante, Sheridan County Commissioner