Western Environmental Law Center

Today, 17 organizations—including healthcare providers, youth organizations, and clean energy and climate advocates—filed a lawsuit against the Montana Public Service Commission (PSC) for rejecting a 2024 petition demanding that it recognize its constitutional duty to consider climate change in the regulation of Montana gas and electric utilities. Montana courts have found that the state has an obligation to consider climate change in decision making, but the PSC has failed to protect Montanans from the climate-related costs and risks of its utility decisions.

The groups petitioned the PSC to confirm its constitutional obligation to account for climate costs and risks in its decisions in February 2024, and the PSC held a public hearing in April 2024. After nearly two and a half years, the PSC resolved the petition on September 15, 2026, refusing to recognize its constitutional obligations. Meanwhile, the Commission has continued to make consequential decisions that have increased ratepayer exposure to climate-related costs and risks, including approving NorthWestern Energy’s request to charge customers for the high construction and operation costs for the Yellowstone County Generating Station, a 175-megawatt methane gas plant in Laurel, Montana.

“Montana children are growing up with climate-related disasters that are no longer distant or abstract,” said Patricia M. Notario, MD, FAAP, president of the Montana Chapter for the American Academy of Pediatrics. “Wildfire smoke can make it difficult for a child with asthma to breathe, floods and severe weather can disrupt homes, schools and medical care, and the stress of these events can affect children’s mental health long after the immediate danger has passed. As pediatricians, we have a responsibility to prepare our patients and communities for these threats and to advocate for a healthier environment for every Montana child.”

“When the PSC fails to consider climate change in its decisions, Montanans bear the high costs and risks that come with fossil-fuel electricity, as well as the unaffordable and unconstitutional effects of a changing climate,” said Amy Cilimburg, executive director of Climate Smart Missoula. “Our longer fire and smoke seasons, hotter temperatures, and drought – all of these impacts can credibly and proportionally be attributed to the burning of fossil fuels. The health of members of our community and our ability to afford electricity is directly connected to the electricity generation and rates as determined by the Commission.”

“Young Montanans deserve a future where we can build our lives, raise families and continue to enjoy the places that make Montana home,” said Alice Boyer, executive director with Forward Montana. “Climate change threatens that future and young people will live with the consequences of the decisions being made about our energy systems today, which have real impacts on the health and affordability of our communities. When the Public Service Commission ignores the Montana Constitution and fails to account for impacts to our environment, it jeopardizes the future young Montanans deserve and the communities we call home.”

“Our kids fought for their constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment in Held v. Montana, and have been advocating for climate justice long before and ever since,” said Sarah Lundquist, executive director of Families for a Livable Climate. “Now it’s our turn. The Public Service Commission has enormous influence over Montana’s energy future, and we must ensure climate change is at the center of its decisions. It is our responsibility as adults to protect the future our kids deserve.”

“Montana’s landscapes, wildlife, rivers, and fisheries are all being affected by climate change. Hunters and anglers will suffer when the building blocks of our environment are altered,” said Gayle Joslin, board member of Helena Hunters and Anglers Association. “Functional ecosystems are not only important for fish and wildlife, but they also provide ecosystem services to Montana’s people in the form of clean water, clear air, and vibrant outdoor spaces. The Montana Public Service Commission has a constitutional duty to seek remedies that protect and improve our environment.”

“The Public Service Commission has more influence over Montana’s greenhouse gas emissions and the climate crisis than any other state agency,” said Nick Fitzmaurice, energy transition engineer for Montana Environmental Information Center. “Our Constitution is clear, and the Held v. State of Montana Supreme Court ruling reaffirmed that the state and each person must maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment, which includes a right to a stable climate. It is long overdue for the Commission to protect utility customers and their wallets by taking climate impacts into consideration in its regulation of gas and electric utilities.”

“With each passing year, the effects of greenhouse gas pollution on Montana and the region become more severe,” said Derek Goldman, Montana policy and regulatory associate with the NW Energy Coalition. “It’s time for the Commission to honor its legal obligation and nudge Montana’s utilities towards cleaner, cheaper renewable energy resources.”

Earthjustice and Western Environmental Law Center represent Climate Smart Missoula, Citizens for Clean Energy, Earthworks, Families for a Livable Climate, Forward Montana, Helena Hunters and Anglers, Helena Interfaith Climate Advocates, Montana Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Montana Environmental Information Center, Montana Health and Climate, Montana Public Interest Research Group, Montana Renewable Energy Association, NW Energy Coalition, Park County Environmental Council, Renewable Northwest, Sierra Club Montana Chapter, and 350 Montana in the lawsuit.

Background:

The PSC is an elected body charged with ensuring that utility customers have continued access to utility services that are affordable, reliable, and in the public interest. Five commissioners represent PSC districts across the state. With broad oversight authority over Montana’s monopoly utilities, the PSC makes decisions that can either promote or discourage continued utility investment in expensive fossil-fuel infrastructure. For example, in December 2025, the PSC approved NorthWestern’s request to increase customers’ electricity bills, in part to pay for the Yellowstone County Generating Station.

In the historic youth constitutional climate trial, Held v. State of Montana, the court declared that, under Article II, Section 3 of the Montana Constitution, Montanans “have a fundamental constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment, which includes climate as part of the environmental life-support system.” (Held Order, p. 102, ¶ 7). The court also confirmed that Article IX, Section 1 of the Montana Constitution places “an affirmative duty upon the government to take active steps to realize this right.” (Held Order, p. 96, ¶ 45) Critically, the court determined that “Montana’s climate, environment, and natural resources are unconstitutionally degraded and depleted due to the current atmospheric concentration of GHGs and climate change.” (Held Order, p. 98, ¶ 50). The district court’s decision was upheld by the Montana Supreme Court in December 2024.

While the Montana PSC has not recognized its obligation to consider climate-related costs and risks in its decisionmaking, utility commissions in other states regularly do so.

Contacts:

Melissa Hornbein, Western Environmental Law Center | 406-708-3058, hornbein@westernlaw.org

Amy Cilimburg, Climate Smart Missoula | amy@climatesmartmissoula.org

Dara Deins, Forward Montana | dara@forwardmontana.org

Nick Fitzmaurice, MEIC |  (406) 443-2520 x 007, nfitzmaurice@meic.org

Perry Wheeler, Earthjustice | pwheeler@earthjustice.org

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The Republican-controlled Senate will soon formally announce a legislative “permitting reform” deal to speed the development of AI data centers and energy infrastructure. We expect the Senate will then rush through a vote in the lame duck session immediately after the midterm elections, sending the bill to the Republican-controlled House of Representatives before a new Congress is seated in January 2027. While the text of the bill has not yet been released, credible intelligence suggests that the bill, if passed, would prove to be the largest rollback of environmental and public health protections in U.S. history, weakening the Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act, and more.

The bill would erode state and Tribal authority provided by the Clean Water Act to review and certify federal permits to protect that state or Tribe’s water resources. The bill would also hand developers new exemptions from Clean Water Act permitting for natural gas pipelines and other infrastructure. These provisions would compound the Trump administration’s own deregulatory attacks on the fundamental law  and the Supreme Court’s disastrous 2023 Sackett v. EPA decision, which radically scaled back the Clean Water Act’s jurisdictional scope. In New Mexico, this resulted in the loss of federal protections to upward of 96% of the state’s rivers, streams, lakes, and wetlands.

The deal would also weaken Americans’ right to participate in federal planning and decision-making processes, setting the pace of permitting based on developer interests, rather than those of the community. Worse, the deal would weaken the public’s ability to seek justice in federal court when their interests are threatened or harmed, tilting the scales in favor of development interests. Adding salt to the wound, the bill would even create a new cause of action for AI hyperscalers, fossil fuels, and other development interests to challenge legal, regulatory, and other requirements that they deem treat them “unfairly.”

While proponents justify the deal on the basis it will prevent the Trump administration’s obstruction of renewable energy projects, the legislation would do no such thing. Instead, it is predicated on a promise by President Trump that he will merely “ease” his obstruction, based on reporting, of only 30 out of 300 renewables projects. Given the administration’s chronic pattern of lies, deceptions, and broken promises, that so-called “win” is illusory.

Interests promoting the bill also claim it will set the stage for future presidents, once Trump is removed from office or his term ends, to accelerate the buildout of renewable energy infrastructure by providing developers with permitting “certainty” and “parity.” A close read of relevant “certainty” and “parity”  legislation introduced into Congress over the past year demonstrates that this is not the case and that the deal would instead hobble future presidents, handing the keys for the country’s energy future over to developers and erecting barriers in the way of climate, conservation, and environmental justice action that seeks to address the harms caused by AI data centers and fossil fuel infrastructure.

The permitting deal’s provisions risk grave, irreparable harm to the western U.S., and not just relative to clean water. More than 45 million acres of pristine roadless lands in national forests across 36 states and Puerto Rico, the entire 245 million acre public lands system managed by the Bureau of Land Management, and beloved landscapes such as Greater Chaco in New Mexico are all at risk. In all three cases, the Trump administration is actively rescinding critical conservation and community protections, again with the intent to commodify and exploit these public lands for fossil fuel and other resource extraction and again, for AI data centers. Once these protections are rescinded by the Trump administration, the permitting deal would drastically accelerate the exploitation of these public lands.

The plague of data centers across the U.S. is of particular concern, with more than 2,000 planned that would consume more than 387,000 megawatts of electricity. Critically, the Trump administration is now actively siting AI data centers on public lands in multiple states, including Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, and Wyoming, and these efforts will only intensify in the coming months.

“The permitting deal is a betrayal of public lands, water and wildlife, and environmental justice values that Westerners depend on for clean air and water, places to hike, hunt, and fish, and the inestimable sense of freedom the West provides us all,” said Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, executive director of the Western Environmental Law Center based in New Mexico. “Sen. Heinrich has built a name for himself as a champion of these values, but credible intelligence indicates he is poised to hand the Trump administration a major political win that erases that legacy in service of AI hyperscaler, energy, and finance lobbyists. We hope this is not the case. But there is an acute risk he is making a strategic mistake that will hobble the ability of future administrations to enact an ambitious climate and conservation agenda. We desperately need action that opens new doors to a thriving, prosperous world that respects Westerners’ values, not bills like this that bulldoze us and our way of life.”

In this full context, the Western Environmental Law Center urges Congress to do the following:

• Do not betray progressive climate, conservation, and environmental justice values essential to Westerners.
• Build policy ideas that respect people and place and transparently assess, rather than bulldoze over, the tradeoffs between climate and conservation action and infrastructure development.
• Move a standalone grid modernization, transmission bill in the 120th Congress.
• Support state-level climate action action and embrace federal-level strategic patience.
• Develop policy reforms that will create strong, mission-driven federal agencies that serve the public interest—not corporate technology, energy, and finance interests.

“Congress cannot legislate its way out of the multiple crises we face and serve the public by surrendering to AI hyperscaler, fossil fuel, and finance interests,” said Schlenker-Goodrich. “But it can exhibit strategic patience and methodically build power for change with people and communities that can be leveraged once a new Congress is seated in January 2027. That empowers us to fight our way out of the ruins of the Trump administration, together. Making a deal with the devil fails the American people here.”

Contact:

Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, Western Environmental Law Center, 575-751-0351, eriksg@westernlaw.org

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A panel of judges today sided with the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation (Yakama Nation) and Columbia Riverkeeper, and the Western Environmental Law Center, ordering the Washington State Department of Ecology (Ecology) to rewrite a portion of a controversial water quality certification, effectively delaying construction of the proposed Goldendale Energy Pumped Storage Hydroelectric Project at Pushpum, a sacred site known to the Yakama Nation as “mother of all roots.”

Rye Development, backed by Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, proposes to permanently destroy Pushpum, part of the Columbia Hills located along the Columbia River near the John Day Dam, by building the Goldendale Pumped Storage development, the largest such development proposal in the Pacific Northwest.

“As the court found, the Washington Department of Ecology failed to protect the Columbia River,“ said Andrew Hawley, senior attorney at the Western Environmental Law Center. “Now the agency has a second chance to right not only that wrong, but to also use its authority under the law to address the significant impacts this ill-conceived project will impose on the Columbia River, its tributaries, groundwater, the Yakama Nation, and other Tribes impacted by the development.”

The Goldendale Pumped Storage development threatens the sacred land, medicines, and traditions of Pushpum, a Yakama Nation sacred site for ceremonies, legends, and gathering of traditional roots and medicines. As a natural seed bank, this site contains rich biodiversity in plant and animal life that can never be fully restored once removed.

The project area is within ceded lands of Yakama Nation, and the area has historically been used by the Yakama Nation, Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs Reservation, and the Nez Perce Tribe for hunting, traditional gathering, fishing, camping, and traditional ceremonies.

“Clean, renewable energy is essential to protecting our planet,” said Columbia Riverkeeper Senior Attorney Simone Anter. “Yet, state and federal governments are violating Treaty-reserved rights and ignoring Tribal sovereignty in order to license projects aimed at supporting energy-hungry data centers—not a just transition from fossil fuels.”

Opposition to the Goldendale Pumped Storage development has steadily increased since the project was proposed in 2017, with a growing coalition of climate and environmental groups and community activists voicing serious concerns. In Washington, 18 federally recognized Tribes have come out against this development. Both the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians (ATNI) and the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) have issued resolutions opposing the destruction of Pushpum.

Today’s ruling is a step toward correcting course and protecting Pushpum, and challenges to the project continue to mount. Despite the lack of comprehensive consultation and the trivialization of cultural resource destruction through inadequate proposed mitigation, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved the final hydroelectric license for the development in January 2026. Columbia Riverkeeper and Yakama Nation both filed petitions for judicial review at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Resources:

• Photos from May 8, 2026 Protect Pushpum Encampment event
• Columbia Riverkeeper’s backgrounder
• Yakama Nation’s public-facing site with written and video materials on the Yakama Nation Perspective on the pump storage development
• FERC Issues Decision to Permanently Destroy Sacred Tribal Cultural Properties, January 23, 2026
• Questions & Answers : Goldendale Pumped Storage, May 5, 2025
• Opposition to the Goldendale Pumped Storage Development Continues to Grow, August 15, 2024
• FERC Ignores Tribal, Environmental Concerns, February 8, 2024
• Ecology’s Previous 401 Denial, June 2021

Background:
In January, the State of Washington’s Pollution Control Hearings Board (PCHB) issued an order upholding Ecology’s water quality certification for the project. Columbia Riverkeeper, represented by Western Environmental Law Center, quickly challenged the order at the Washington State Court of Appeals. Oral arguments took place in February.

Despite receiving a license from FERC, the project still needs a final signed Historic Properties Management Plan and several permits, including from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, before it can break ground.

Contacts: 

Andrew Hawley, Western Environmental Law Center, 406-324-7569, hawley@westernlaw.org

Simone Anter, Columbia Riverkeeper, 541-399-5312, simone@columbiariverkeeper.org

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