Article published May 23, 2007

County rezoning of site could take until the fall

By KARL PUCKETT

Tribune Staff Writer

Cascade County Commissioners voted 3-0 Tuesday to rescind a rezoning decision that would have allowed the construction of a coal-fired power plant on 700 acres east of Great Falls.

As a result of Tuesday’s reversal, the land was returned to its previous agricultural designation — a zone that won’t allow developer Southern Montana Electric Generation & Transmission to build Highwood Generating Station.

To get the plant constructed, commissioners will have to again rezone the land to heavy industrial, a process that could drag on until this fall.

How the second rezoning vote will turn out is anybody’s guess, Commission Chairman Lance Olson said following Tuesday’s meeting.

During the last rezoning debate, commissioners made it a point to say their votes weren’t for a coal-fired power plant but rather a zone change that could allow any number of uses.

This time around, “it’s all about the coal plant,” Olson said. “Bottom line.”

Commissioners voted 2-1 in November in favor of the heavy industrial rezoning requested by the Urquhart family, which plans to sell the property to SME.

Olson said he considered himself to be “the man in the middle” in the first vote. He and Briggs voted for the rezoning; Peggy Beltrone voted no.

Olson would not predict how the second vote might turn out.

“We’re committed to keeping as much of an open mind as possible,” he said.
SME is proposing a $720 million, 250-megawatt coal-fired power plant on the land eight miles east of Great Falls.

The project recently received a favorable “record of decision” from the state Department of Environmental Quality and the federal Rural Utilities Service.

Tuesday’s decision on the land-use will start the rezoning process all over. 

Landowners and the Montana Environmental Information Center filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of the commission’s rezoning.

Rather than fight the challenge in court, the county decided to acknowledge the errors and go to work fixing its rezoning regulations, said Theresa Diekhans, a deputy civil attorney for the county who advises the commission. Procedural defects in the process were found, including public notice requirements, she said.

That prompted Tuesday’s action to rescind the rezoning.

Red and Mary Urquhart, who own the land, were at the meeting but declined to say afterward whether they planned to reapply for the zone change.

Mary Jaraczeski, an SME attorney, wouldn’t say either.

“This is really the county’s process that they’re doing to clean up the regulations,” she said.

Diekhans said the Urquharts have indicted to the county that they plan to reapply for the heavy industrial rezoning once the process is fixed.

Olson said new information is available that commissioners did not have prior to the first vote in November, such as the completed final environmental impact statement.

“There will be additional information on both sides,” Olson said.

The Cascade County Planning Commission will conduct a meeting on the zoning regulations on Tuesday, Diekhans said.

Assuming the work proceeds as scheduled, the rezoning would first come before the county commissioners by the end of August, she said. A final vote is possible by October, Diekhans said.