Final Report
A Study of
Federal Land-Use Planning
in Energy-Impacted Areas
The Decker-Birney
Planning Unit in Montana
Prepared for
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Washington, D.C.
(WA75-R451)
December 1, 1977
Contrict No. 88-01 -3688
60109A
Woodward-Clyde Consultants
Three Embarcadero Center, Suite 700, San Francisco, CA 94111

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f(?7 5" f OS~
Final Report
A Study of
Federal Land-Use Planning
in Energy-impacted Areas
The Decker-Birney
Planning Unit in Montana
Prepared for
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Washington, D.C.
(WA75-R451)
December 1, 1977
Contract No 68-01-3588
60109A
Woodward-Clyde Consultants
Three Embarcadero Center, Suite 700, San Francisco, CA 94111

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CONTENTS
Page
ABBREVIATIONS	iii
FIGURES AND TABLES	iv
PREFACE	v
I	INTRODUCTION	1
Background	1
Purposes	3
Scope of Work	3
Organization of the Report	3
II	SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS AND	RECOMMENDATIONS 5
Background	5
The Study	6
Conclusions	7
Recommendations	10
III	SETTING	15
General Description of Study Area	15
Natural Resources	19
Institutional Setting	24
Institutional Overview	38
IV	BLM MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK PLAN	43
Summary and Conclusions	43
Background	45
The Decker-Bimey Management Framework Plan	54
Compatibility with Federal	and State
Environmental Policies	72
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Page
V	REGULATORY/INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK	75
Overview of Land-Use Management in the
Decker-Bimey Unit	75
Implementation of the BLM's MFP Guidelines
in the Decker-Birney Area	87
Key Issues Affecting Implementation of the
MFP Recommendations	91
VI	MONITORING SYSTEM FOR THE DECKER-BIRNEY
PLANNING UNIT	107
Justification for Monitoring System	107
Objective	108
Approach	108
Recommended Monitoring System	110
Relationship Between Monitoring	Program and
Environmental Baseline Studies	129
Conclusions	131
BIBLIOGRAPHY	132
APPENDIX A: PLANT CHECKLIST, DECKER-BIRNEY AREA	A-l
APPENDIX B: MAMMALS FOUND WITHIN THE BLM MILES
CITY DISTRICT	B-l
APPENDIX C: MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK PLAN RECOMMENDA-
TIONS FOR THE DECKER-BIRNEY PLANNING
UNIT	C-l
APPENDIX D: DECISION ANALYSIS FOR THE SITING OF
NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS - THE RELEVANCE
OF MULTIATTRIBUTE UTILITY THEORY	D-l
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ABBREVIATIONS
AMP	Allotment Management Plan
ASCS	Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service
AUM	Animal Unit Months
BIA	Bureau of Indian Affairs
BLM	Bureau of Land Management
BuRec	U.S. Bureau of Reclamation
COE	U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
EMARS	Energy Minerals Activity Recommendation System
EPA	Environmental.Protection Agency
FPC	Federal Power Commission
FWPCA	Federal Water Pollution Control Act
LUDP	Land Use and Development Planning
MELDA	Montana Economic Land Development Act
MEPA	Montana Environmental Protection Act of 1971
MFP	Management Framework Plan
NEPA	National Environmental Policy Act of 1969
NRL	National Resource Lands
OMB	U.S. Office of Management and Budget
SCS	Soil Conservation Service
URA	Unit Resource Analysis
USGS	U.S. Geological Survey
YTAPO	Yellowstone-Tongue Areawide Planning Organization
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FIGURES AND TABLES
Page
Figure
1	Political Jurisdictions Map of
Decker-Birney Planning Unit	22
2	Major Steps of Recommended Monitoring
System	111
3	Organization of Monitoring Committee	117
Table
1	Summary of Temperatures, 1964-1971	18
2	Surface and Subsurface Ownership	21
3-A Local Agencies with Responsibilities in
Decker-Birney Area	39
3-B State Agencies with Responsibilities in
Decker-Birney Area	40
3-C Federal Agencies with Responsibilities in
Decker-Birney Area	41
4	Public Lands in Montana Under Exclusive
Jurisdiction of the BLM	48
5	Selected Examples that Illustrate the
Relationship Between Proposed Land Uses,
Potential Impacts, Key Parameters, and
Methods	113
6	Examples of Resources that may be Affected
by Proposed Land Uses	115
7	Examples of Federal and State Agencies
that have Responsibilities for Affected
Resources	118
IV

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PREFACE
This report is based on the BLM planning regulations that were cur-
rent during the development of the Decker-Bimey Management Framework
Plan (1972-74). Subsequent revisions to these regulations, and the en-
actment of recent Federal legislation related to land management and to
the strip raining of coal, deal with some of the concerns and recommenda-
tions contained in this report.
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I
INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND
The Energy Activities Office of the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency (Region VIII) contracted with Woodward-Clyde Consultants in
January 1976 to conduct a study of the process and constraints of
federal land-use planning in energy-impacted areas. The area selected
for study was the Decker-Birney Planning Unit of the Bureau of Land
Management's (BLM's) Miles City District in southeastern Montana. The
Decker-Birney area is underlain by extensive deposits of low-sulfur,
subbituminous coal; the area also has other valuable resources, of
which livestock grazing areas and commercial timber stands are notable.
Since 1971, the BLM has not issued any new leases for coal pro-
duction. In the interim, the bureau has developed a new coal-leasing
policy, an environmental impact statement process for coal leasing,
leasing regulations, and a planning system to select areas to be
offered for lease. With these developments, the bureau has intended
to incorporate a competitive coal-leasing program into its multiple-use
planning system.
In May 1972, the BLM's Miles City District initiated a resource
inventory and preliminary land-use planning program for the Decker-
Birney planning unit. One focus of this program was to delineate
"mineral recommendation areas" that might be developed in a manner
compatible with other resources uses and consistent with state and
federal environmental protection objectives. The product of this BLM
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effort was a Management Framework Plan (MFP) issued in April 1974. This
document contains guidelines and multiple-use recommendations for the
management of surface and subsurface resources in the Decker-Birney area.
It establishes the context within which future land-use alternatives
will be evaluated. In particular, the MFP provides a framework within
which a logical and environmentally sound coal-leasing program may be
pursued.
Several physical and institutional characteristics of the Decker-
Birney area present unusual opportunities to study (1) the BLM planning
process and (2) potential constraints to land-use effectiveness, both of
which address economic, social, and environmental issues of large-scale
energy developments. The area is isolated and largely undeveloped; only
a small fraction of the federal coal reserves has been leased. The
potential for industrial development in this rural area measures in the
billions of dollars, and the potential for environmental and socioeco-
nomic impacts is commensurately large. While it appears that the Decker-
Birney unit stands at the threshold of profound change, the nature of
this change, to the extent that it will be shaped by the plans and
actions of the area's competing institutions, is not easily predicted.
The Bureau of Land Management, through its control of coal leasing,
assumes a central and instigative role in the area's change. Hence, an
understanding of the BLM planning process and its relationship to the
area's physical and institutional makeup should provide insights into
the nature, direction, and consequences of change.
The successful implementation of the BLM's multiple-use management
concept depends on the integration of its efforts with those of other
resource and planning jurisdictions within and adjacent to the Decker-
Birney area. Numerous other governmental entities are actively engaged
in land-use planning for the portions of their jurisdictions that are
within or adjacent to the Decker-Birney planning unit. The responsi-
bility for land-use management is not clearly defined among these
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entities, and their planning efforts are highly fragmented and largely-
uncoordinated. These other jurisdictions include several federal
agencies, Indian reservations, state governments and their resource
agencies, a regional planning organization, and local governmental
entities.
PURPOSES
The purposes of the present study are (1) to identify and describe
the components and characteristics of the multijurisdictional land-
management system in the Decker-Birney area, (2) to review the role of
the BLM planning process in this system, and (3) to identify opportun-
ities for and obstacles to achieving environmental protection and en-
hancement. An additional objective is (4) to recommend a system of
environmental impact monitoring that can be implemented within the
land-management system, thus increasing the efficiency and effective-
ness of resource allocation and environmental protection decisions.
SCOPE OF WORK
The study focuses on the governmental entities that operate within
the Decker-Birney Planning Unit, although adjacent jurisdictions (e.g.,
two Indian reservations and the State of Wyoming) were also considered.
Work consisted of collecting data, reviewing the BLM plan, analyzing the
regulatory/institutional framework, and developing an impact monitoring
system. Data collection was limited to maps and published reports, and
analysis was based primarily on materials made available by the state
BLM office and the Miles City District of the BLM.
ORGANIZATION OF THE REPORT
This report consists of an introduction, a summary of conclusions
and recommendations, a description of the physical and institutional
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setting of the Decker-Birney area, a review of the BLM plan, an analysis
of multijurisdictional land management in the area, and a description of
a recommended impact monitoring system.
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II
SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
BACKGROUND
National goals of energy independence and environmental protection
conflict in certain resource-producing regions of the nation, raising
serious policy issues. These issues include the tradeoffs between in-
creased energy production and the adverse environmental and social
effects this increased activity has on resource-producing regions and
their residents.
In response to these issues, governmental agencies at all levels
have enacted major environmental legislation in recent years, and their
regulatory requirements are becoming increasingly complex and constrain-
ing. In addition, numerous court decisions have interpreted environ-
mental evaluation and implementation procedures, and many more cases
are pending. These evolving laws and regulations are adding new dimen-
sions to the framework of policies and practices governing today's
handling of energy resource development and environmental protection.
Concurrently, a growing national demand for energy has hastened an
evaluation of the dual role of government, both in expanding the energy
resource base and in regulating its development in the interest of en-
vironmental protection-.
The incremental regulatory expansion in response to conflicts
arising from developmental interests and evolving social values, coupled
with technological advancement, has precipitated an increased fragmenta-
tion of responsibilities and an overlap of authority among governmental
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agencies. The result has been that needed development is often delayed,
while at times undesirable developments proceed unchecked. The Decker-
Birney Planning Unit, located in a region of abundant coal reserves and
other natural resources, appears to face this dilemma.
The area's comprehensive plan, developed by the Bureau of Land
Management and the U.S. Forest Service in cooperation with the State of
Montana, is in principle designed to integrate multijurisdictional land-
use planning. The potential exists, however, for each agency participating
in the management of the area to seek its own solution in evaluating
proposed developments. In that event, the result of separate agency
decisions could lead to failure in meeting the overall objectives of the
land-use planning program.
THE STUDY
This study of land-use planning and management systems in the
Decker-Birney area includes the following:
1.	Review of the land-use plan developed by the Bureau of Land
Management and the U.S. Forest Service, in cooperation with
the State of Montana, for the Decker-Birney Planning Unit.
2.	Evaluation and documentation of the degree of compatibility
and consistency of land-use guidelines with federal/state
environmental legislation and regulations.
3.	Analysis of the multijurisdictional situation and constraints.
4.	Documentation of the process of guideline implementation.
5.	Identification of the mechanisms available to enforce the
guidelines and implementation policies to ensure the main-
tenance or enhancement of environmental quality.
6.	Development of recommendations to improve the guidelines and
implementation policies that ensure the maintenance or en-
hancement of environmental quality.
7.	Recommendations of a system to monitor the environmental im-
pacts, including socioeconomic aspects of plan implementation.
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CONCLUSIONS
The land-use plan developed for the Decker-Birney Planning Unit by
the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service, in coopera-
tion with the State of Montana, is, in general, a well-organized, step-
by-step methodology for developing multiple-use recommendations. This
Management Framework Plan (MFP) includes mapping, data gathering,
environmental analyses, resource inventories, resource development
opportunities, program activity recommendations for individual re-
sources, and multiple-use recommendations based on tradeoffs among in-
dividual resource program activity recommendations.
Despite the MFP's sound organization and relative ease of applica-
tion, this study leads to the conclusion that the MFP is not as effec-
tive a tool as it might be for environmental protection and enhancement in
the Decker-Bimey area. The reasons for its lack of effectiveness are:
1. Of the several major issues described in this study, the issue
of governmental preemption — the interlocking roles, juris-
dictions, and powers of the various regulatory agencies con-
cerned with the Decker-Birney area's resource development and
environmental protection — is the most confusing and frustra-
ting. Often several agencies have the same scope (e.g., the
federal NEPA and the Montana MEPA), and in other instances
conflicting federal, state, and local duplications create
problems of interpreting and administering similar rules in
conflicting manners.
A closely related issue is that often surface rights are under
one type of ownership or authority while subsurface rights to
the same property are under another ownership or jurisdiction,
with both owners employing different procedures, objectives,
and planning approaches.
These issues raise the questions, "Who should be in charge of
overall resource management?" and "Who should have the overall
authority to coordinate and regulate the management of land and
resources?"
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2.	The BLM may not be the best land-use management agency to
implement the full range of MFP recommendations, since the BLM
can only implement those portions of the MFP recommendations that
affect public lands or federal minerals. In fact, at the time of
implementation, other public agencies in the area (i.e., state,
county, Indian nations, U.S. Forest Service) may be very active in
land-use planning, and may significantly complicate coordination
of the MFP recommendations.
3.	The BLM planning system does not fully recognize the socio-
economic and secondary impacts that accompany major mineral
developments, such as the large numbers of people who immi-
grate to major coal-producing sites and their related impacts.*
4.	The MFP does not adequately deal with local planning objec-
tives, which are essential to effective planning methods.
The BLM planning guidelines:*
•>do not include mechanisms for identifying these objectives
•	do not identify a minimum level of achievement for each
program objective
•• do not include evaluation criteria, indicators, and stan-
dards for evaluating a plan's achievement of BLM objectives
•	do not include mechanisms for identifying those objectives
that will be determinants for a specific planning activity.**
5.	Public participation is limited to a responsive mode — with the
public only given opportunities to comment on selected BLM
planning recommendations. Few mechanisms exist for public
participation in the identification of local issues, the devel-
opment of local planning objectives, achievement levels, eval-
uation criteria, and the identification of values that could
be used in the selection of recommendations.*
6.	The tradeoff analysis of MFP, Step 2 does not include methods
to analyze the benefits and consequences of differing combina-
tions of resource activities. It contains no procedures for
evaluating differing combinations of resource activity trade-
offs in terms of planning objectives, local issues, and values.
It does not include criteria and standards for systematic
*Many of these issues are dealt with in the revised planning standards
and procedures initiated by BLM in 1975. In addition, the BLM has
subsequently pursued socioeconomic and secondary impacts in the forth-
coming Northern Powder River Energy EIR, due in early 1978.
**Determinants, as used in this report, mean the main factors that influ-
ence a plan's direction, form, timing, activities, and extent.
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decision making in the selection of alternative, multiple-use
recommendations. It does not document how alternatives are
developed, considered, and selected.*
7.	While the resource inventory and analysis tasks of the Unit
Resource Analysis (URA) seem to function well for their in-
tended use, they are not well-suited for the tradeoff analysis
of MFP, Step 2. Additional information is required on social,
economic, political and other factors, and on potential impacts
of alternative management plans.*
8.	Few opportunities exist for the public to comment on and par-
ticipate in the analysis of competing MFPs. No provisions
are made for the description or display of alternative man-
agement plans and their impacts for the public's information
and review.*
9.	Little guidance is provided by BLM on how to convert the MFP
recommendations into implementable programs, and on how to
implement them.**
10.	The MFP is not specific enough in terms of the form and loca-
tion of specific activities, and their scale, severity, and
timing, to effectively protect and enhance the local environ-
ment.
11.	Some MFP recommendations are difficult to implement. Some
policies recommended in the MFP are for actions outside of
BLM's jurisdiction with no indication of who should imple-
ment them.
12.	A major difficulty in implementing the MFP recommendations is
the fragmentation of land-use management authority between
federal and state regulatory agencies. These powers lack
common objectives and common strategies foT integrating
resource recommendations and environmental protection plans.***
13.	Although good examples of ongoing monitoring efforts concern-
ing streamflow, air quality, and reclamation exist, coordina-
ted impact-monitoring mechanisms do not exist to observe and
*Many of these issues are dealt with in the revised planning standards
and procedures initiated by BLM in 1978.
**The BLM has subsequently developed the EMARS and EMRIA systems, the
tract selection process, and otheT guidance needed for a Bureau-in-
itiated mineral leasing program.
***In 1975, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between the Governor
of Montana and the BLM State Director of Montana specifying, among
other things, coordination in land use planning and plan implementa-
tion.
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identify the effects of resource activities on the quality of
the environment. This information is needed to redirect these
activities and to reduce environmental degradation, and,
wherever possible, to enhance environmental quality.
14.	MFP recommendations treat environmental enhancement and pro-
tection as a category separate from BLM's resource categories,
resulting in potential conflicts and duplications. Environmen-
tal enhancement and protection recommendations are not well
integrated into the overall recommendations.*
15.	Current BLM resource inventory practices (URA) produce a great
quantity of data that are often too general or not required
for decision making, and little data of sufficient detail or
focus for this purpose. Specific data needs and the level of
detail required should be identified.*
16.	The "tunnel vision" approach of URA, Step 4, Analysis and
Recordation of all Technically Feasible Management Opportun-
ities, while theoretically sound, may be of limited practical
value. The inclusion of social, economic, legal, and other
constraints may improve this activity recommendation, and, in
fact, is required in the subsequent step of the planning
system (MFP, Step 1).
RECOMMENDATIONS
Governmental Preemption
Three major policy options for governmental regulation are available
to deal with the question of "Who should have the overall authority to
coordinate and regulate?" They are:
1.	Federal Control. Federal control exists when national author-
ity preempts state authority, and when tradeoffs among inter-
ests are made in favor of national interests. Because of this,
social costs of resource development are largely borne by the
local residents, while at the same time providing the greatest
benefits to the rest of the nation.
2.	Shared Responsibility. This option recognizes both state and
national authorities, with neither interest predominating.
Balancing conflicting interests and authority occurs as a
*Many of these issues are dealt with in the revised planning standards
and procedures initiated by BLM in 1978.
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result of negotiations between state and national agencies —
each restraining the other from imposing the major costs of
resource development on the people it represents. In this way,
the social costs of resource development in one locality are
shared by resource consumers (e.g., energy) throughout the
nation. (The system of joint federal and state land-use plan-
ning in the State of Alaska may be a good model.)
3. State Control. Here, state authority predominates, including
the ability to veto decisions by federal agencies about the use
of federal lands. Decisions on tradeoffs are made in favor of
state interests. The costs of resource development to local
residents are minimized and are placed on consumers throughout
the nation. In addition, opportunities exist to shift a sub-
stantial part of the state's tax burden onto resource consumers
in other states and onto resource-producing companies.
Of these policy options for governmental regulation, the policy of
shared responsibility offers the greatest potential for balancing local.
and national interests. This policy meets the needs and concerns of
resource-producing and resource-consuming regions, and satisfies national
objectives, all in an equitable manner. The environmental and social
burdens of resource development are not placed entirely on residents of
the resource-producing regions, but rather, these costs are shared, to
some degree, by the rest of the nation, while at the same time meeting
national objectives.
Implementation Mechanisms
Regulatory agencies with responsibility for the Decker-Bimey area
follow to a certain degree the principle of shared responsibility de-
scribed above. Certain improvements could be made, however, that would
increase their effectiveness in implementing the MFP recommendations.
These include:*
*Many of the implementation recommendations outlined are dealt with
through the BLM planning manuals of 1975, the 1975 cooperative agree-
ment between the Governor of the State of Montana and the BLM State
Director of Montana, and the requirement of the Federal Land Policy and
Management Act of 1976.
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1. Establishing local and regional goals and plans for resource
development and environmental protection — with extensive
public participation.
2.	Coordinating all public agencies so that their activities
align with the above goals and plans.
3.	Making advance studies and analyses of alternative resource
development, facility sites, and tradeoff strategies so that
the socioeconomic and environmental consequences of each
strategy are known prior to, and incorporated into, policy
and decision making. These studies should also be used to
prequalify certain sites for specific resource activities
that would be compatible with the local environment. Pre-
qualifications should take into account required develop-
mental stipulations and controls.
4.	Clarifying roles, authority, and jurisdictions. Current du-
plications and conflicts need to be sorted out. When resource
development may adversely affect local residents, state and
local regulations should predominate. Federal agencies should
set minimum standards and should monitor state practices for
compliance with them. Federal agencies should also provide
research and technical assistance and communicate knowledge
gained in monitoring resource activities in various states.
5.	Developing more efficient federal and state regulatory pro-
cedures, in consultation with private industry. State and
federal agencies should issue clear guidelines indicating the
conditions under which specific resource activities will be
permitted. This will reduce the time and frustration involved
with making permit applications for specific activities.
6.	The state should have a strong advisory role in future leasing
programs in which community impacts and reclamation effective-
ness are issues. Also, the state should control where power
plants are located, since local residents would bear any
adverse consequences of their construction and operation.
Federal agencies should retain the ability to make decisions
about sites that involve federal lands.
7.	The state should retain the authority to allocate water for
resource activities, deciding on a case-by-case basis, accord-
ing to the environmental and social effects of each situation,
recognizing the cumulative effects involved. Federal agencies
should provide research assistance in assessing the consequences
of groundwater or surface water withdrawals. The federal
government should retain its powers over water allocations in
federal reservoirs and lands for possible use in resource
development.
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8. State and local governments should have the power to tax in
order to recover the direct and indirect costs that resource
development places on them and on state and local taxpayers.
The federal government should limit these taxes to a level that
permits state and local cost recovery and so that resource con-
sumers throughout the nation are not required to pay undue costs.
Tradeoffs and Decision Making
The current BLM tradeoff process included in MFP, Step 2 should be
modified to provide a clear, step-by-step decision-making process that is
documented for future review. This process should clarify techniques
for comparing the effects of various combinations of resource activities,
criteria, and standards. These techniques should make it possible to
evaluate land-use alternatives in relation to planning objectives, and
to document the selection process. Recent advances in decision-analysis
techniques should be reviewed for their usefulness to this key part of
the BLM planning system. See Appendix D, Decision Analysis for the
Siting of Nuclear Power Plants — The Relevance of Multiattribute Utility
Theory.
Impact Monitoring
A coordinated impact monitoring program should be initiated to
guide resource management programs. See Section VI, Monitoring System
for the Decker-Birney Planning Unit.
Resource Inventories and Data Gathering
BLM resource-inventory and data-gathering tasks should focus on the
issues related to the specific programs in which they operate. Improving
the data-gathering effort may require first identifying the data areas
that are critical to the program issues, and which therefore will require
more extensive data-gathering activities and more detailed information.
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Urbanization
The planning system must be sensitive to the potentials for urbaniza-
tion near mineral development sites, including socioeconomic impacts and
the primary and secondary impacts of large numbers of people who will re-
locate to these areas. This issue, while not recognized in the study,
was recognized in the environmental assessment record prepared for the
Decker-Birney planning document.
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Ill
SETTING
GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF STUDY AREA
The Decker-Bimey study area encompasses roughly 900,000 acres of
land situated in a region containing significant portions of three
southeastern Montana counties: Big Horn, Powder River, and Rosebud.
Prominent physical features of the Decker-Birney study area are
river valleys and rugged buttes. Principal valleys are associated with
the Tongue River, Otter Creek, and Rosebud Creek drainages. These
drainages divide the region in a north-south direction. King Mountain,
Poker Jim Butte, Wild Hog Butte, and Horse Creek Butte are located in the
northeastern section of the Decker-Birney area. The Tongue River Reser-
voir is located in the southwestern portion of the study area. Elevations
in the study area range from 2900 to 4300 feet above mean sea level (MSL).
The topography of the Decker-Birney study area includes broad,
rolling uplands, sharply eroded mountainous terrain and badlands, and
two flat-bottomed valleys. The Tongue River and Otter Creek meander
through these valleys towards the northeast. A transition zone of
badland topography divides the. upland plain from the flood plains.
Roughly 75 percent of the area has been geologically eroded into a
broken terrain, a process that can be accelerated by grazing and/or man-
made disturbances. This broken terrain is a valuable winter shelter for
both livestock and wildlife. Farming is generally confined to river
bottoms because of the dry climate and the rough terrain.
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Hydrology
The Tongue River and Rosebud Creek are the two streams responsible
for transporting and receiving water and sediment in the Decker-Birney
study area. Both streams meander, flow generally northward, and empty
into the Yellowstone River. Drainage from the Tongue River accounts for
approximately 90 percent of the total drainage from the study area.
Located on the eastern boundary of the Decker-Birney area is Otter
Creek, which intersects the Tongue River one-half mile northwest of
Ashland. Drainage from Otter Creek accounts for roughly 20 percent of
the Tongue River drainage within the study area boundaries. Rosebud
Creek accounts for 10 percent of the total drainage in the Decker-Birney
study area and drains to its northwest corner. Rosebud Creek intersects
the Yellowstone River 32 miles upstream from the Tongue River and Yellow-
stone River confluence.
Vegetation
The vegetation found in the planning unit can be divided into five
major associations:
•	grassland association — found on upland plateaus; separates
higher elevations
•	big sagebrush and shrub association — dispersed throughout the
entire planning unit; found primarily at low to middle eleva-
tions
•	ponderosa pine association — well-stocked and intermixed with
a variety of vegetation types; generally found on north-,
west-, and southwest-facing slopes; occupies all exposures in
long, narrow valleys
•	pine woodland association — considered the transition between
the ponderosa pine and big sagebrush-shrub associations at
higher elevations. On some sites, the slopes are very steep
and the terrain is rough and broken. At lower elevations,
it caps hills and the head coulees,* extends along drainage
ways, and grades into grass and shrub types
*In this report, "coulees" refers to canyons.
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• broadleaf association — normally found along perennial streams,
primarily along the Tongue River and Rosebud Creek
A breakdown of the species of plants in the study area is given in
the appendix. The preceding information and the vegetation species
listed in Appendix A were taken from the physical profile section of the
BLM Decker-Birney Resource Study.
Soils
Ten major soil associations occur in the Decker-Birney study area.
The name and acreage of each are included in the following list, taken
from the soils section of the BLM Decker-Birney Environmental Analysis
Record #1.
Association
Acreage
Thedalund-Midway
271,490
IVib ax-The dal une-Sp earman
195,800
Ringling-Searing-Anegord
54,780
Wayden-Regent-Shale Outcrop
5,170
Kyle-Midway-Cabba
54,440
Ringling-Cabba-Midway
25,490
Haverson-Glenberg
54,230
Elso-Midway-Thurlow
158,100
Midway-Thurlow
26,590
Ringling-Fergus-Relan
52,620
Total Acres
898,710
Climate
The climate of the Decker-Birney study area can be classified as
semiarid and is typical of the northern Great Plains region. The broad
seasonal temperature fluctuations indicate cold winters and hot summers
with high evapotranspiration rates. Moderately strong winds are common
during spring and fall, and thunderstorms are common in summer. Table 1
17

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Table 1. SUMMARY OF TEMPERATURES, 1964-1971



Average
Average

Station
Maximum
(°F)
Minimum
(°F)
Maximum
(°F)
Minimum
(°F)
Average Number of
Days 32°F or Above
Birney
107
-45
102
-33
110
Busby
105
-43
101
-35
97
Kirby
104
-46
99
-32
82
Lame Deer
109
-38
103
-31
112
Moorhead
107
-37
103
-29
113
Otter
110
-32
101
-21
127
Sonnette
104
-41
101
-29
105
Source: Unit Resource Analysis, Decker-Birney Unit, Miles City District, U.S. Department of the
Interior, Bureau of Land Management, 1972.

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is a temperature summary taken from the BLM physical profile section of
the Decker-Birney Resource Study.
NATURAL RESOURCES
Cultural History
The Decker-Birney Planning Unit contains land that the Crow and
Cheyenne Indians fought to retain from the encroachment of the white man
in the 1870s. The most famous battle was at Little Big Horn, where
General Custer and his men were annihilated. The Cheyenne Indian
Reservation is in northern Rosebud County, and the Crow Indian Reserva-
tion is in the southwestern portion of Big Horn County. Numerous Indian
archaeological and historical sites that have contributed to the area's
overall culture have been inventoried in the Decker-Bimey study area.
Demography
The three major communities within the Decker-Birney study area
are Ashland (population 200), Birney (population 13), and Decker (popula-
tion 30)*. The major trading center in the vicinity is Sheridan, Wyoming,
located 30 miles southwest, with a population of 11,561 people. Hardin
(population 2733) and Miles City (population 9023), Montana, are used
as trading centers to a more limited extent.
The total population in the Decker-Birney study area is estimated at
1000. This figure was derived from a 1972 BLM study, which indicated
that there are 219 ranch families or households in the region.
The planning area adjoins two Indian reservations along portions of
its western boundaries: the Northern Cheyenne and Crow reservations.
Approximately 6800 Indians are now residing in these reservations and are
using facilities in the Decker-Birney study area. Therefore, the study
area has been heavily influenced by Indian cultural values.
*From BLM Preliminary Population Study of 1972.
19

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Land Use and Economic Activity
The livelihood of the study area's inhabitants depends primarily on
the livestock and agricultural production of the land, distantly followed
by mineral extraction and timber production. This is partly because of
Indian cultural influence and because the area's recreational and social
development is geared to a self-reliant, small-town atmosphere.
Land Ownership. The surface and subsurface ownership of the Decker-
Birney study area is summarized in Table 2. The table was taken from
the Bureau of Land Management's Decker-Bimey Summary Report. Approxi-
mately 39 percent of the planning area (359,333 acres) is underlain with
strippable coal. Of this, roughly 285,000 acres is composed of superior
and economic reserves containing 15 billion tons suitable for extraction
under current strip-mining practices. Of the federal mineral estate
that comprises 88 percent of the Decker-Birney area, only 2 percent of
the acreage has been leased. This is partly due to the recent morato-
rium on new coal leases and the land ownership structure of the study
site. This leaves open most of the planning options for the natural
resources found in the study area.
Political Boundaries. The term "political boundaries" refers to county,
Indian, and national forest lines that define federal, local, and state
government jurisdictions. The study area includes significant portions
of Big Horn, Powder River, and Rosebud Counties, part of the Custer
National Forest", and part of the BLM's Miles City District. Figure 1
illustrates the political boundaries of the Decker-Birney Planning Unit.
Resource Categories
The following paragraphs summarize the BLM resource categories in
the Decker-Birney area. The data were taken from the BLM's Decker-
Birney Resource Study Summary Report, and describe conditions in 1974.
20

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Table 2. SURFACE AND SUBSURFACE OWNERSHIP

Surface

Mineral


Estate
% of
Estate
% of
Ownership
(Acres)
Total
(Acres)
Total
BLM
78,673
9%
626,480
70%
Forest Service
153,496
17%
162,477
18%
State
48,000
5%
48,000
5%
Private
618,540
69%
61,752
7%
Source: Decker-Birney Resource Study Summary Report, Bureau of Land
Management and U.S. Forest Service, April 1974.
21

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LOCATION MAP
R39E ' R40E ' R41 E ' R42E ' R43E ' R44E ' R45E ' R46E ' R47E '
Figure 1. POLITICAL JURISDICTIONS MAP OF
DECKER-BIRNEY PLANNING UNIT

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Livestock. Two hundred nineteen families were engaged in 106 livestock
operations, with a total of 27,000 cattle and 2700 sheep. The annual
gross from the livestock operations was $3 million. The 800,569 acres
used for livestock forage are divided as follows:
Minerals. Sixteen billion tons of strippable coal, with a Btu range of
7800 to 9700 and seam thicknesses of 11 to 72 feet, underlie 39 percent
(359,333 acres) of the planning unit. Of this, 15 billion tons (285,000
acres or 30 percent of the study area) represent superior and economic
reserves.
Eighty oil and gas wells have been drilled. Six had noncommercial
show of gas and two had noncommercial show of oil. Low-key oil and gas
activity may not depict actual potential.
Recreation. Recreational opportunities include the enjoyment of scenic
geological features and historical and archaeological sites, hunting,
fishing, and water sports. Specific areas in the Decker-Birney area are
listed under Institutional Setting in this section.
Timber. The following table summarizes the pertinent information on timber
production in the Decker-Birney study area.
Timber Production	Saw Timber	Poles, posts, etc.
State
Private
Forest Service
BLM
525,900 acres
153,496 acres
78,673 acres
800,569 acres
Acres
Volume
40,148
100,370 tbf*
8,495
14,893 tbf
< 10 tbf/yr
Volume Sold
None
*tbf = 1000 board feet.
23

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Watershed. The following table summarizes the watershed erosion conditions
in the study area.
Watershed Percent of
Erosion Condition	Acres	Study Area
Stable	31,360	3.5
Moderate	758,892	84.8
Severe	104,960	11.7
The Decker-Bimey study area lies in the Yellowstone Subbasin and the
Tongue River is the watershed. The Missouri River is the ultimate
recipient of all the drainage in the area. This watershed is typical
of semiarid regions. Grazing and vehicular traffic and other man-caused
disturbances have accelerated considerably the area's natural erosion
processes. Most watershed improvement was intended to facilitate live-
stock management; watershed improvement itself was secondary.
Wildlife Habitat. The study area supports populations of antelope, mule
deer, white-tailed deer, and a wide variety of upland birds, waterfowl,
fish, and fur-bearers. See Appendix B for special listings.
INSTITUTIONAL SETTING
This section outlines the various federal, state, and local agencies
involved in governing the national resource lands and federal mineral
estates in the Decker-Birney study area, their responsibilities, and
their land-use management functions.
Federal Agencies
Twelve federal agencies are involved in governing the resources in
the Decker-Birney study area. Their jurisdictions are roughly defined
by the unit's cultural heritage and natural resources. As noted on the
political boundaries map (Figure 1), navigable waterways, a national
24

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forest, two Indian reservations, and abundant mineral reserves are
located within the study area. Many federal laws protect and control
these resources. Federal agencies committed to the Decker-Birney study
area are described in the following paragraphs.
Natural Resource Management Agencies. Two federal agencies are respon-
sible for establishing a multiple-use planning system for the timber and
mineral resources within the Decker-Birney study area: the United States
Forest Service, responsible for Custer National Forest, and the Bureau
of Land Management, responsible for national resource lands and the federal
mineral estate.
Bureau of Land Management. The jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land
Management includes the entire Decker-Birney Planning Unit because it is
underlain by extensive mineral (coal) deposits. BLM governmental and
administrative responsibilities include the classification and/or disposal
of federal lands, mineral leasing, and general land management via a
multiple-use planning system. The BLM multiple-use planning system is
roughly six years old. It was initiated in response to the Classifica-
tion and Multiple Use Act of 1964 and the program planning and budgeting
system emphasis in the mid-1960s. The Bureau of Land Management Land
Use and Development Planning (LUDP) system for national resource lands
and federal mineral estates considers the following major resources in
preparing a multiple-use resource management framework plan (MFP):
•	lands
minerals
•	livestock
•	timber
•	wildlife
•	recreation
•	watershed
25

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Because BLM is a permit-issuing agency, it can direct and control
the development of its lands. Direct controls are exercised by granting
permits for specific uses on national resource lands and by controlling
land exchanges and access. In addition, the Bureau of Land Management
can indirectly control non-BLM surface land through its mineral leasing
and lease stipulations programs. However, these indirect controls can
sometimes be preempted by state land-use management agencies.
U.S. Forest Service. The Ashland Division of the U.S. Forest Ser-
vice has jurisdiction over Custer National Forest, located in the Decker-
Birney study area (in Powder River and Rosebud counties). Its govern-
mental and administrative responsibilities include general administration
of national forest lands, management of timber resources, and development
of land-use management plans based on a multiple-use planning system for
Custer National Forest. These activities describe the National Forest
Service's response to the Multiple-Use Sustained Yield Act directives of
1960 and its planning obligations under the Wilderness Act, the Wild and
Scenic Rivers Act, and NEPA.
The land-use management function of the U.S. Forest Service in the
Decker-Bimey study area is to develop comprehensive plans for Custer
National Forest and multiple-use management schemes for these resources:
•	timber
•	livestock
•	watershed
•	recreation
•	wildlife
•	wilderness areas
The U.S. Forest Service is an agency of the Department of Agriculture
and is also a permit-issuing federal agency. Thus, it ensures that
timber development and other resource uses are consistent with its own
multiple-use management plan. It does so by issuing use permits, by
26

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by limiting access to the forest, by regulating resource production, and
by stipulating a user's rights in a permit.
Public Works Agencies. Two federal agencies are responsible for develop-
ing the water resources in the Decker-Bimey study area for the benefit
of the immediate and surrounding populations: the U.S. Bureau of Reclama-
tion (BuRec) and the U.S. Array Corps of Engineers (ACE). Historically,
BuRec's primary purpose has been to develop irrigation systems. However,
reclamation projects often include hydroelectric power components that
produce power for sale or lease; provide water supplies for industrial
and municipal purposes; and benefit navigation, flood control, recrea-
tion, and wildlife and fish preservation. The purposes of these re-
clamation projects overlap with those of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers'
multipurpose public works programs. However, the ACE's primary juris-
diction is over interstate navigable waterways, their maintenance and
development, and water quality control. The Corps has no direct juris-
diction over irrigation projects.
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. The governmental and administrative
responsibilities of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation include the develop-
ment of irrigation and water power sources, except where this is
accomplished by State agencies. BuRec was created in 1902 with the
passage of the Reclamation Act and reports to the Secretary of the
Interior.
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. In the Decker-Birney study area the
Army Corps of Engineers has jurisdiction over the Tongue River, an inter-
state navigable waterway. The agency's governmental and administrative
duties there entail construction of flood-control projects and develop-
ment of the Tongue River for navigation and power. The agency's land-
use management functions there, in addition to those mentioned previously,
include control of hydraulic mining debris. Its land-use control systems
27

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include determination of facilities placement (a single-use allocation
like that of the Bureau of Reclamation), issuance of permits for channel
modifications or impoundments, and regulation and storage of streamflows.
The Army Corps of Engineers has been accountable for public works projects
since the Flood Control Act of 1936. It reports to the Secretary of
Defense, and coordinates with the Secretary of the Interior.
Enforcement Agencies. Two federal enforcement agencies are charged with
regulating and preserving (by licensing and issuing permit stipulations)
the natural resources of the Decker-Birney study area. These agencies
are the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Geological
Survey (USGS).
The Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA enforces the Federal
Water Pollution Control Act (FWPCA) in the Decker-Birney unit. The
FWPCA establishes a permit system by which a permit for discharging
pollutants into navigable water (in this case the Tongue River) is
issued only after the federal requirements of the FWPCA's amendments are
satisfied. The EPA, under NEPA, can also comment on environmental im-
pact statements for coal development (i.e., strip mining) plans in the
unit. The EPA indirectly controls land use by reviewing such stipu-
lations before any development or resource extraction can be initiated.
The agency was established by President Nixon under Reorganization Plan
No. 3 of 1970.
U.S. Geological Survey. The primary responsibility of the USGS in
the study area is the technical examination and mapping of the federal
mineral estate and the unit's federal lands. The USGS inventories
mineral and water resources, classifies lands, and authors environmental
impact analyses. In coal mining operations, such as the ones found in
28

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include control of hydraulic mining debris. Its land-use control systems
include determination of facilities placement (a single-use allocation
like that of the Bureau of Reclamation), issuance of permits for channel
modifications or impoundments, and regulation and storage of streamflows.
The Army Corps of Engineers has been accountable for public works projects
since the Flood Control Act of 1936 and reports to both the Secretary of
Defense and the Secretary of the Interior.
Enforcement Agencies. Two federal enforcement agencies are charged with
regulating and preserving (by licensing and issuing permit stipulations)
the natural resources of the Decker-Birney study area. These agencies
are the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Geological
Survey (USGS).
The Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA's principal governmen-
tal and administrative role in the Decker-Bimey unit is to enforce the
Federal Water Pollution Control Act (FWPCA) and the National Environmental
Policy Act (NEPA), EPA's 1970 enabling legislation. The FWPCA establishes
a permit system by which a permit for discharging pollutants into navi-
gable water (in this case the Tongue River) is issued only after the
federal requirements of the FWPCA's amendments are satisfied. The EPA,
under NEPA, can also require a private industry to submit an environmental
impact statement for coal development (i.e., strip mining) plans in the
unit. The EPA indirectly controls land use by ensuring that such stipu-
lations are met before any development or resource extraction can be
initiated.
U.S. Geological Survey. The primary responsibility of the USGS in
the study area is the technical examination and mapping of the federal
mineral estate and the unit's federal lands. The USGS inventories
mineral and water resources, classifies lands, and authors environmental
impact analyses. In coal mining operations, such as the ones found in
29

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the Decker-Bimey unit, the USGS enforces operating and safety regula-
tions, which are directed almost entirely towards the safety of the
miner. The agency was created by Congress in 1879 and reports to the
Secretary of the Interior.
Licensing Agencies. The Federal Power Commission (FPC) is the only
licensing agency that has an active, functional jurisdiction in the
Decker-Birney area. Its responsibility there is to license and control
the hydraulic power generation and transmission resources on the navi-
gable waterways used in interstate commerce. The FPC's land-use man-
agement functions are: (1) to regulate energy development on federal
lands, and (2) to supervise and inspect hydroelectric projects to ensure
management of water-power resources for beneficial purposes (e.g.,
recreation, irrigation, and other public uses). The FPC was created in
1935 by the Federal Power Act and reports to the Secretary of the
Interior.
Service Agencies. Two federal service agencies have province in the
Decker-Bimey study area: the Soil Conservation Service (SCS) and the
Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service (ASCS).
Soil Conservation Service. The SCS is responsible for soil and
water conservation. It provides technical and financial assistance to
local and state governments for flood control, drainage, and irrigation
improvement projects on a cost-share basis. By so doing, the SCS
exercises its land-use management functions, including stream-flow
regulation, wildlife, recreation, and municipal and industrial use of
private lands. However, the program is limited to watershed and sub-
watershed areas not exceeding 250,000 acres and not including any single
structure with a flood-water detention capacity of more than 5000 acre-
feet or a total capacity of 25,000 acre-feet. The only land-use control
the SCS employs is a method of single-use allocations, i.e., facilities
30

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placement contracts. The Soil Conservation Service, an agency within
the U.S. Department of Agriculture, was created under the Soil Conser-
vation Act of 1935.
Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service. In the Decker-
Birney study area, the ASCS awards grants-in-aid for cropland adjustment
and conversion and for implementation of small-scale water and soil
conservation projects. The ASCS was created by the Soil Conservation
Act of 1936 and reports to the Secretary of Agriculture. It controls
land use by limiting funds for financing small-scale soil, water, and
wildlife conservation projects.
Indian Agencies
One federal agency and two Indian nations have specific responsi-
bilities for the well-being of the two Indian tribes surrounding the
Decker-Birney study area. They are the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA),
the Crow Indian Nation, and the Northern Cheyenne Indian Nation.
Bureau of Indian Affairs. The functional jurisdiction of the Bureau of
Indian Affairs in the study area is over the Crow and Northern Cheyenne
nations. The agency's governmental and administrative duties are to
implement federal programs directed toward the native American popula-
tions. The BIA's land-use management functions are to administer lands,
allotments, and resource allocations, and it is responsible for the
management of livestock, timber, recreation, and watershed resources.
The BIA controls land use through its use-permit system. The Bureau of
Indian Affairs was created in the War Department in 1824 and was trans-
ferred to the Department of the Interior when it was established in 1849.
The Snyder Act of 1921 provided substantive law for appropriations cover-
ing the conduct of activities by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The scope
and character of the authorizations contained in this act were broadened
by the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934.
31

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Crow and Northern Cheyenne Indian Nations. Both the Crow and the
Northern Cheyenne Indian nations have semiautonomous forms of government.
Both are responsible to their tribal councils and to the Secretary of
the Interior. Their land-use management systems employ comprehensive
land-use planning (controlled by area zoning), use permits, and access
control. The Crow Indian Nation was created by the Organic Act of 1868,
Section 15, Statute 652. The Northern Cheyenne Indian Nation was created
by the Organic Act of 1884.
State Agencies
Eight Montana agencies have governmental jurisdiction in the Decker-
Birney study area. Six of these are state departments that regulate the
development or use of the unit's natural resources by taxation or permit
or licensing power. Three of these departments have specific divisions
to implement the state's natural resource policies. The two other state
agencies function as advisory councils to the state legislature and the
governor. These eight agencies are:
•	Department of Revenue
•	Department of State Lands
•	Bureau of Mines and Geology
•	Department of Natural Resources and Conservation
•	Department of Fish and Game
•	Department of Health and Environmental Sciences
•	Environmental Quality Council
•	Governor's Office: Energy Advisory Council
Department of Revenue. The Department of Revenue controls the taxation,
classification, and assessment of all land in Montana. This department's
jurisdiction includes the Decker-Birney study area, which is especially
important because the three county governments of the study area are
general-purpose governments that are solely financed by this department.
32-

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The department's land-use management functions, then, include comprehen-
sive land classification and the limitation of land uses through taxation.
The Department of Revenue exercises these functions and related policies
as mandated by the Montana Economic Land Development Act (MELDA) by the
following means: single-tax classification, preferential assessment,
and land-use dedications and exemptions.
MELDA, passed in 1975, is an innovative response to political
pressure on the state to develop its mineral resources. An excerpt
(page 309) follows.
This act ... is designed to meet Montana's needs in
a unique way; by reducing the need for zoning and other
land control measures and placing our future develop-
ment under a free market system controlled not by land
regulation, but by economics. Specific goals are:
1.	to protect prime agricultural land . . .
2.	to encourage urban growth in an inward pattern,
rather than sprawl development . . .
3.	to guide industrial and commercial development in
Montana . . .
4.	in general, to provide for Montana a land use
directional policy which will not regulate our
future but rather motivate it into a pattern of
desirable economic growth based on the development
of private enterprise.
Because the Decker-Birney study area is underlain with almost
inexhaustible coal deposits, the Montana Department of Revenue (together
with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which owns the mineral rights
to that same area) will play a significant role in the area's develop-
ment .
Department of State Lands. The Department of State Lands is responsible
for administering 48,000 acres of both surface and mineral estate lands
in the Decker-Birney study area (5 percent of the total acreage).
33

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Two divisions of this department are answerable for reclamation and
leasing activities in the Decker-Birney study area. They are the
Reclamation Division and the Land Leasing Division.
Reclamation Division. The Reclamation Division is responsible for
administering water resources on state lands in the Decker-Birney unit,
primarily the Tongue River Reservoir and the state lands adjacent to it.
The Reclamation Division's land-use management function there is to
implement state reclamation laws for coal mining. It does so by requir-
ing private companies to meet state water quality standards; however,
the department has no permit or licensing powers.
Land Leasing Division. The Land Leasing Division has charge of all
the state lands' resources. In the Decker-Birney unit this would apply
to sections 16 and 36 of each township and to those lands not managed by
the Reclamation Division. The Land Leasing Division exercises land-use
control by issuing licenses for exploration for and development of surface
and/or subsurface minerals.
Bureau of Mines and Geology. The Bureau of Mines and Geology is respon-
sible for surveying mineral resources. It has no regulatory functions.
The bureau evaluates and compiles studies of the state's various deposits
and releases the studies to the general public.
Department of Natural Resources and Conservation. This department is
accountable for Montana's natural resources. Within the department is
a water resources board that has jurisdiction in the Decker-Birney unit.
Water Resources Board. The purpose of the Water Resources Board
is to develop and manage state waters and to administer the state's
groundwater code. The board is directly responsible for issuing water
permits, awarding water rights, and contracting water for irrigation.
34

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In doing so, the board can inventory the amount of water that is con-
tracted, its quality, and its source, in order to make plans for further
water development, flood management, and utility siting and to make
accurate environmental assessments of these plans.
Within the Decker-Birney unit, the Board has complete control over
the Tongue River Reservoir.
Environmental Quality Council. The Environmental Quality Council func-
tions as an advisory board to the state legislature and to the governor.
The council is also a watchdog agency, receiving and reviewing environ-
mental impact statements; however, it has no regulatory functions. The
nine-member council receives affidavits and contributes to the state's
environmental decision-making process. The council was created in 1971,
with the passage of the Montana Environmental Policy Act.
Governor's Office: Energy Advisory Council. The Energy Advisory Council
has no land-use regulatory functions in the Decker-Bimey unit, but it
plays a key role in the state's energy policy. The council evaluates
the state's energy/mineral resources and proposes regulatory policies to
the governor and legislature.
Department of Fish and Game. At this time the Department of Fish and
Game does not directly administer any lands in the Decker-Birney area,
but it does establish and enforce hunting, trapping, and fishing regu-
lations .
Department of Health and Environmental Sciences. The Department of
Health and Environmental Sciences oversees two bureaus that enforce air
and water quality standards: the Air Quality Bureau and the Water
Quality Bureau.
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Air Quality Bureau. The Air Quality Bureau establishes air quality
policy and enforces state ambient air quality standards. Because of the
nature of strip-raining operations, the bureau measures the air quality
before development (background) and tests air quality monitors before and
during use (measuring source). This is done in order to prevent "signifi-
cant deterioration of air quality." The bureau controls land use by
awarding and issuing permits for facility development.
Water Quality Bureau. The Water Quality Bureau is in charge of
establishing water quality policy and enforcing state water quality
standards. The bureau's primary area of jurisdiction in the Decker-
Birney unit is the Tongue River and the Tongue River Reservoir. The
bureau controls land development by granting permits for operating and
modifying wastewater disposal systems, sewage discharges, and industrial
wastes into the state's waters.
Local Agencies
Seven local government entities exercise political authority in the
Decker-Birney study area. Six of the seven are county bodies, and the
other is a regional body that represents five counties. They are the
Big Horn County Commission, the Powder River County Commission, the
Rosebud County Commission, three conservation districts (Big Horn County,
Powder River County, and Rosebud County), and the Yellowstone-Tongue
Areawide Planning Organization (representing Big Horn, Carter, Custer,
Powder River, and Rosebud counties). If the cities in the study area
were incorporated, they too would have political domain within the
Decker-Birney area.
Big Horn, Powder River, and Rosebud Counties. Large adjoining portions
of these three counties are located within the Decker-Birney unit. The
governmental and administrative duties of each of these counties are
identical. They are general-purpose forms of government that administer
36

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certain services through their county commissions and the state law.
Their land-use management functions include land classification and some
limited developmental regulation (except for Powder River County, which
has comprehensive development regulations). The counties' land-use
controls vary. Big Horn County utilizes single-tax classification and
subdivision regulations, Rosebud County employs the same land-use con-
trol methods as Big Horn County, in addition to spot zoning and issuing
of specific-use permits. Powder River County controls its land-use
development by employing single land-use classifications, proposed
single-district zoning and conditional-use permits; and by enforcing
subdivision regulations. These three county commissions report to the
Montana Department of Revenue on land classification and taxation
matters.
Big Horn, Powder River, and Rosebud County Conservation Districts.
These districts were created in 1976 by the Montana State Constitution
National Streambed and Land Preservation Act. The districts are re-
sponsible for the administration of the law by which they were created.
Their land-use management functions include flood control, control of
impoundments, and diversions of streams, and they control land use by
awarding permits for impoundments and stream diversions. The conserva-
tion districts are responsible to the State Soil Conservation Committee
and the Army Corps of Engineers.
Yellowstone-Tongue Areawide Planning Organization. The Yellowstone-
Tongue Areawide Planning Organization (YTAPO) is a regional planning
organization that has the assigned responsibility of studying and recom-
mending improvements for regional wastewater management and water quality
for Big Horn, Carter, Custer, Powder River, and Rosebud counties under
Section 208 of the Areawide Wastewater Management Program. Its land-use
management functions are:
37

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•	to coordinate regional wastewater management
•	to develop performance standards for point-source discharges
•	to develop non-point-source pollution abatement measures
•	to promote governmental coordination for environmental quality
improvement
Its land-use control systems include enforcing land-use plans and review-
ing performance standards, discharge permits, contracts for service
between local jurisdictions, and utility extensions. This agency is
responsible to each county. It is also responsible to the Environmental
Protection Agency for the Areawide Wastewater Management Program.
INSTITUTIONAL OVERVIEW
Table 3 describes the local, state, and federal agencies with
responsibilities in the Decker-Birney area. It includes descriptions of
their jurisdictions, responsibilities, land-use management functions,
land-use controls, enabling legislation, and the governmental unit to
whom they are responsible.
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Table 3-A. LOCAL AGENCIES WITH RESPONSIBILITIES IN DECKER-BIRNEY AREA
Govcrnmenta 1/
A J ii» imperative	Land-Use Manajenent	Enabling
Jurisdiction	kcsponsibi 1 ir les	Functions	Land-Uso Controls	Legislation	Reports to
Ui£ Horn
Ccur.ty
Co. mission
Ponder River
County
Corwjission
Big Horn
County
Powdei Rivoi
County
General government,
provision ^f ceitair.
services, adnunistra-
11 on of st-tu l.w,
land-use man.gement
General government,
provision of certain
servuei., adirinistra-
tion of state law,
land-use management
Land classifica:ion,
partial development
regulation
Land c1 asslflcation,
partial development
regulation
Single-tux classifi-
cation, subdivision
regulations
Single-tax classifica-
tion, subdivision regu-
lations, spot zoning,
spceific-uso permits
Montana State
Constitution
Montana State
Constitution
Montana State
Department of Revenue
Montana State
Deo~rtrcent of Revenue
Rosebud
County
Coinni ssion
Rosebud
County
General government,
provision of certain
services, admni stra-
tion uf state law,
land-use iriana£eir.i_nt
Land classification,
comprehensive develop-
ment classification
Single-tax classifica-
tion, sing1.: strict
zoning, c-nditlonal-use
permits, subdivision
regulations, develop-
ment contracts (sur-
face mining only)
Montana State
Consti tution
Montana State
Departnent of Revenue
04
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Table 3-B. STATE AGENCIES WITH RESPONSIBILITIES IN DECKER-BIRNEY AREA
Jurisdiction
Governmental/
Adni in s tra tivu
rtesOGns lb121 cic-s
Land-Ube Management
Functions
Land-Use Controls
Enabling
Legislation
Reports to
-fc.
O
Dep.-.:	of
ke /w-nuc
D. i I tTc.1t oc
i:are Lands
2ec ! annt i on
Di\Ls:cn
Land Leasing
Division
>cpartf e.it of
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Table 3-C. FEDERAL AGENCIES WITH RESPONSIBILITIES IN DECKER-BIRNEY AREA

Agency
Jurisdiction
Govcrnnuntal/
Admr.istruti vc
Responsibi1lties
l,and-Ui>e Management
I unctlons
Land-Use Controls
Enabling
Legislation
Reports to
Bureau of
Land
Management
Decker-Birney
Uni t
AdmiM stration of
natural iCiOuroe lands
and federal mineral
estate, classification
of and disposal of
federal lands; mineral
leasing and land-use
management of federal
lands
Land-use management and
planning for national
resource lands and
federal mineral estates;
multiple-uso resource
management for lands,
minerals, 1lvestock,
timber, wildlife, rec-
reation, and wateishcd
Direct controls, permits
on NRL, land cxchanges,
access control of non-
BLM surfaco through
runerals leasing and
leaso stipulations
President's Reorganiza-
tion Plan of 1346, Sec-
tions 402, 403,
numerous statutes and
executive orders
Secretary of the
Department of
the Interior
U.S. Forest
Service
Ash 1 and
Division,
Cus ter
National
Forea t
Adiunistration of
national forest lands;
jnanagei.-iort of timber
resources; land-uso
raanaje^ent
Comprehensive planning
of national forest
lands, niul t iple-use
nianu^er.cnt of resources
listed above, except
lands and minerals and
including wilderness
Use permits, access
control, timber sales
and stipulations
30 Stat. 11; 16 USC
(1897)
Secretary of the
Department of
Agriculture
U.S. bureau
of
Reclamation
Decker-Bimey
Unit
Water development for
irrigation and power
Managonc-i.t of certain
water resources for ir-
rigation, power genera-
tion, irumcipal and in-
dustrial uses, fisher-
ies, recreation, wild-
life, and flood control
Access control, resource
allocations, sales of
wuter and power facili-
ties placement (single-
use allocations)
Reclamation Act of
1902
Secretary of the
Department of
the Interior
U.S. Army
Corps of
Engineers
Navigable
waterways:
Tongue River
Development of water
for navigation and
power; flood control
Planning and construc-
tion of improvements to
navigable streams and
channels, flood control,
multiple-use projects,
control of hydraulic
mining debris
Facilities placement
(single-use allocations)
permits for channel mod-
ification or impound-
ments, regulation and
storage of stream flow*
Flood Control Act of
1936, 1944
Secretary of the
Defense, Secretary
of the Department
of the Interior
Environmenta1
Protection
Agoncy
Functional
Administration of the
Federal Water Pollution
Control Act, \i:PA, and
associated c-nviron-ncn-
tal statutes
Enforces FWPCA
Comments on EIS
Issues discharge permits
Reorganization Plan
No. 3 of 1970
The President
U.S.
Ccological
Scr\ cy
Functional
Survey or federal
mineral estates; survey
and mapping of national
tcnitory, associated
studies
Inventoiies cineral und
water :e^ources, con-
ducts survey and en\i-
rcnmontal impact aml-
ysos; classifies lar.d
Land classification,
permit supervision for
powor projects (func-
tional responsibility for
single-use allocations
20 Stat. 377, 43 USC
1879 •
Secretary of the
Department of
the Interior
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Table 3-C. (Continued)
Agency
Jurisdiction
Governmental/
Administrati\ e
Responsibi1ities
Land-Use Management
Junctions
Land-Use Controls
Enabling
Legislation
0
Reports "to
Federal	Functional
Power
Coru.ission
Soil Con-
servation
Service
Functional
Agricultural Functional
Stabi1i;ut i on
and Conserva-
tion Service
Licensing and control
of water power, its
generation and trans-
mission, resources on
navigable streams or
used in interstate
commerce
h'ater and soil conser-
vation, technical
assistance and finan-
cial aid lo local and
state governments
Awards grants-in-aid
for cropland adjustment
and conversion and for
implementation of small-
scale water and soil
consci*vaticr.
Administration of powoT
sito withdrawals on fed-
eral lands, supervision
and inspection of hydro-
electric projects to en-
sure management of water
power resources for ben-
eficial uses, including
recreation
Planning and financing
flood control projects,
drainage, irrigation,
stream-flow regulation,
wildllfe, lccreation,
and municipal/industrial
uso, NTE 25,000 AF
Financing of smal1-scalo
soil, water, and wild-
life conservation pro-
jects
Issues licenses, use
permits, and leasos
Federal Power Act of
1935
Facilities placement
contracts (single-use
allocations)
Funding
Soil Conservation Act
of 193S
Soil Conservation Act
of 1936
SecreTuf.y.of the
Department of
the Interior
Secretary of the
Department of
Agriculture
Secretary of the
Department of
Agriculture
Bureau of
Indian
Affairs
Crow and
Northern
Cheyenne
Croi. Indian Crow Indian
Nation	Reservation
Administration of fed-
eral prograns to native
American populations
General government,
semi autonomous
Administration of Indian
lands, allotments, al-
locations, functional
responsibility for
livestock, timber, rec-
reation, and watershed
management
Comprehensive lund-uso
planning
Use pormits
Zoning, uso permits,
access control
Act July 9, 1832
Chapter 174, Sec 1,
4 Stat S64
Organic Act, IS Stat
6S2 (1868)
Secretary of the
Department of
the Interior
Tribal Council,
Secretary of the
DeparttLent of
the Interior
No r c h e m
Cnc/enne
Indian
Nat ion
Northern
Cheyenne
Indian
Reservation
General government,
seruiautonomous
Comprehensive land-use
planning
Zoning, use pormits,
access control
Organic Act, HO 26-Nov
(1S84)
Triba1 Counci1,
Secretary of the
Depaitoer.t of
the Interior
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IV
BLM MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK PLAN
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
This section of the report describes the Decker-Birney Management
Framework Plan and the process that produced it. It includes observa-
tions on issues related to implementing the MFP, and its compatibility
with state and federal environmental policies.
The BLM's Management Framework Plan for the Decker-Birney area is
a general document that identifies areas in which coal development will
be allowed to take place, identifies areas in which some other resource
activities will be allowed to take place (watershed, recreation, wild-
life habitat), and sets forth general principles for multiple-use
management in the rest of the area.
Coal development is clearly the most significant resource use con-
templated in the MFP. Even though the plan identifies all areas that
might be leased, it does not address the specific activities that may
take place in specific locations. For example, if all of the recommended
coal resources (as identified in the MFP, some 6.5 billion tons) were
mined simultaneously for export, a worker influx on the order of 5000 to
8000 persons might result. On the other hand, a coal-development
scenario that included a much reduced level of mining in combination with
several power plants, gas plants, and pipelines could be associated with
a worker influx several times greater, occurring in a precipitous,
erratic, and wildly fluctuating manner. The ranges, types, and signifi-
cance of environmental and socioeconomic impacts associated with the
43
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former scenario are not sensibly compared in the MFP to those associated
with the latter scenario. This is to say that knowledge of the approxi-
mate locations where coal development will take place does not give a
clue to the location, type, severity, or significance of impacts that
may result.
The other resources considered in the BLM's MFP (timber, wildlife,
watershed, forage, recreation, and lands) can probably be managed suc-
cessfully to meet economic and environmental protection objectives.
However, the consequences of developing these resources pale when con-
trasted to the scale of impacts associated with coal development.
A study focusing on the MFP can identify the structure and process
for generalized resource planning in the Decker-Birney area, and it can
discuss the types of impacts associated with different resource uses. It
cannot address specific impacts in terms of scale, severity, or timing —
the MFP does not provide an appropriate basis for this type of analysis.
Areas of specific EPA interest — air and water quality, socioeconomic
impact, etc. — depend heavily on the form and location of specific coal
activities (export mine, power or gas plant, etc.). The BLM's MFP does
not indicate where, at what level, or when specific activities will
occur — this is the subject matter of the Energy Minerals Activity Rec-
ommendation Systems (EMARS). Hence, if the EPA questions the appropri-
ateness or adequacy of the efforts in the area of its Areawide Planning
Organization (APO), or the prospects for environmental degradation in
the area, or the relevance of its input to EIS review, the agency cannot
expect specific answers from a study of the MFP.
While, for the reasons described above, a review of the DeckeT-Birney
MFP may have limited value in determining the adequacy of environmental
protection in the study area, it will be valuable for subsequent
detailed investigations of the potential impacts of specific land-use
proposals.
44
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BACKGROUND
Brief History of BLM
The following excerpt from the National Resource Lands Digest
1975-76* provides an excellent overview of the BLM's history.
The General Land Office and the Grazing Service were
combined in 1946 to form the Bureau of Land Management.
As an agency of the U.S. Department of the Interior, BLM
is responsible for nearly 474 million acres of the Nation's
public lands.
As a multiple-use manager of more than half of all
Federally-owned lands, BLM seeks balanced management of
these lands and their resources. In addition to the land
itself, these resources include minerals such as coal, oil
and gas, plus forests, range vegetation, recreation, wild-
life, and water. The Bureau's objective is to carry out
the best possible mix of resource management practices for
the long-term benefit of the land, its resources, and the
public.
While the Bureau's work is administered from head-
quarters in Washington, D.C., State offices in 10 western
states and Alaska exercise jurisdiction over National
Resource Lands (NRL) in their respective states. National
Resource Lands in these states are further divided, admin-
istratively, into districts. Each district is then divided
into resource areas. The 343 permanent and part-time
employees assigned to BLM's Montana organization are re-
sponsible for management of 8,141,498 surface acres in
Montana, 68,442 acres in North Dakota, and 276,295 acres
in South Dakota.
At the present time, BLM district offices are located
at Billings, Miles City, Malta, Lewistown, Missoula, and
Dillon. The Bureau also maintains a project office at
Dickinson, N.D. and a resource area office at Belle
Fourche, S.D.
*U.S. Department of the Interior: Bureau of Land Management, National
Resource Lands Digest 1975-76, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota,
pp. 8-10.
45
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The Malta District, stretching across north-central
Montana between the Canadian border and the Missouri River,
is primarily a region of rolling rangelands and river
"breaks." Range management and wildlife habitat improve-
ments are among the more significant district programs.
Intensive grazing management shows great promise for im-
proved livestock and wildlife forage and cover plants.
The many acres of prime wildlife habitat on National
Resource Lands in the Malta District offer one of Mon-
tana's best opportunities for the big game, bird', and
waterfowl hunter, along with "blue ribbon" fishing in the
many prairie ponds. The Little Rockies area provides the
camper with excellent campground facilities.
Extending from Wyoming to the Canadian border and
encompassing National Resource Lands in North Dakota and
South Dakota, the Miles City District varies from the
pine-covered "exemption area" in the northern Black Hills
to stark badlands along the lower Yellowstone River, and
from the mineral rich region of southeastern Montana to
the grassy plains of western North Dakota. Although pre-
dominantly ranching country, the district has some of
Montana's finest big game and upland bird hunting. The
Federal mineral estate within the district reaches astro-
nomical proportions. More than half of Montana's 30+
billion tons of strippable coal is Federally owned and
most of it is in the Miles City District. The logical
development of this valuable resource along with safe-
guards against undue surface damage presents a major
challenge for Bureau officials at district and state
office levels.
The Billings District covers south-central Montana,
including most of the upper Yellowstone River drainage.
Within this area, the district manages 371,644 surface
acres and 800,249 subsurface acres. The Pryor Mountains,
about 50 miles south of Billings, were homeland to early
man. Cooperative archaeological surveys with the Forest
Service and National Park Service have delineated signi-
ficant sites in the Pryors and surrounding area. The
Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Range, established on National
Resource Lands in 1968, is home to about 140 wild horses
that eke out an existence in this harshly beautiful area.
The Lewistown District occupies Montana's heartland,
representing "Charlie Russell Country" at its best. Pri-
marily a region of rolling rangelands punctuated by small
but dramatic mountain ranges, the district features some
46
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of Montana's finest ranching country, ghost towns, excel-
lent hunting and fishing, and the strangely eroded "breaks"
area of the Missouri River. The rugged, timbered breaks
coupled with a "lightning belt" location makes Lewistown
District a critical fire area. Aerial observers operating
out of Lewistown provide detection service for major por-
tions of three districts. Early detection, slurry bombers
and quick initial attack by helicopter transported crews
are used to keep acreage burned by wildfire to a minimum.
National Resource Lands in the Missoula District pro-
duce valuable commercial timber, livestock forage and
important habitat for elk, deer, and other wildlife. Out-
standing trout streams, such as the nationally famous Rock
Creek, snowmobile trails, the historic old ghost town of
Garnet which is being preserved through Bureau efforts,
and many other recreational opportunities are available on
these lands. Numerous recreational-residential subdivi-
sions on private lands within the district are creating
management problems on adjacent National Resource Lands.
The Helena Fire Center is established each summer to pro-
vide quick response to wildfires starting on those
resource lands in the eastern part of the district.
The Dillon District occupies seven counties in south-
western Montana, basically the area drained by the upper
Missouri River and its tributaries south of Helena. This
is "Standing Up Country," a region of broad valleys tra-
versed by world famous trout streams, and a backdrop of
majestic mountains. The Dillon District is an important
livestock, lumbering, and mining region, and also contains
important habitat for elk, deer, moose, antelope, and
other wildlife. The snowmobile trails, ski areas, ghost
towns, rockhounding, Indian artifacts, historical sites
including Montana's first and second territorial capitals
at Bannack and Virginia City, attract numerous tourists
and outdoor enthusiasts year-round.
Table 4 identifies the extent of public lands under the BLM's exclusive
jurisdiction.
Brief History of BLM Planning Activities in the Decker-Birney Area
Current BLM planning activities in the Decker-Birney area began in
May 1972 with a compilation of information from many sources about the
major natural resources of the area. Information related to the social
47
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Table 4. PUBLIC LANDS IN MONTANA UNDER EXCLUSIVE JURISDICTION
OF THE BLM
County
Acreage
County
Acreage
Beaverhead
661,700
McCone
202,696
Big Horn*
27,208
Meagher
10,461
Blaine
459,298
Missoula
25,923
Broadwater
66,883
Musselshell
104,686
Carbon
207,005
Park
13,376
Carter
512,693
PetToleum
337,652
Cascade
25,537
Phillips
1,100,895
Chouteau
111,999
Pondera
1,328
Custer
341,995
Powder River*
258,388
Daniels
200
Powell
78,168
Dawson
67,171
Prairie
450,735
Deer Lodge
5,846
Ravalli
40
Fallon
121,906
Richland
52,902
Fergus
360,564
Roosevelt
4,635
Gallatin
8,611
Rosebud*
233,650
Garfield
516,574
Sheridan
300
Glacier
1,083
Silver Bow
45,186
Golden Valley
8,275
Stillwater
5,716
Granite
47,283
Sweet Grass
16,566
Hill
14,370
Teton
16,956
Jefferson
96,147
Toole
28,023
Judith Basin
14,111
Treasure
11,884
Lewis § Clark
63,617
Valley
1,022,970
Liberty
7,046
Wheatland
2,195
Lincoln
1
Wibaux
25,882
Madison
257,291
Yellowstone
85,801

TOTAL ACREAGE
- 8,141,498

*Within Decker-Birney planning area.
Source: U.S. Department of the Interior: Bureau of Land Manage-
ment, National Resource Lands Digest 1975-76, Montana,
North Dakota, South Dakota.
48
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and economic issues of the area was also assembled. The data were
analyzed, and opportunities for achieving the maximum potential for
each resource area were identified. The opportunities were then
analyzed in terms of the constraints placed upon them by existing laws,
regulations, economic and social factors, and policies. These analyses
led to the broad recommendations that are part of Step 1, Activity
Recommendations, of the BLM Management Framework Plan. The recommen-
dations were published in December 1973.
Over 700 individuals,, special-interest groups, and local agencies
were contacted, and informal meetings were held to review existing data
and' to gather additional information.
Subsequent BLM planning activities in the Decker-Birney area in-
cluded the tasks of MFP, Step 2, Multiple-Use Analysis. These tasks
included comparing all resource recommendations generated during MFP,
Step 1 and preparing a set of multiple-use recommendations for resolving
or minimizing resource conflicts and overlaps. This work also included
supporting analyses for each multiple-use recommendation.
Approximately 215 private landowners were interviewed in order to
gather information from local residents with intimate knowledge of the
area under study. BLM also initiated a remote-sensing program to inven-
tory and analyze the study area further. BLM and Forest Service resource
specialists also made field investigations. Whenever possible, outside
experts were engaged to supplement data gathering (e.g., archaeological
studies). During this period, authorization was received to initiate
soil surveys and water resource studies, and other public agencies par-
ticipated in them. The Montana Air Quality Bureau has gathered air
quality data, and the Montana Energy Advisory Council has developed a
socioeconomic analysis. The Step 2 multiple-use recommendations were
published in April 1974.
In addition to the above planning activities, an environmental
impact statement was prepared for the Decker-Birney Management Framework
49
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Plan and its planning alternatives. This environmental impact statement
meets the requirements of the then-current environmental legislation and
includes a mailing list of approximately 520 persons.
Description of the BLM Planning System
The Land Use and Development Planning (LUDP) process of the BLM
planning system begins with the preparation of a Unit Resource Analysis
(URA) for a specific planning unit within a district. The URA is fol-
lowed by the preparation of a Management Framework Plan (MFP).
Unit Resource Analysis (URA). The Unit Resource Analysis (URA) is the
resource-data-information component of the LUDP process and, by defini-
tion, is a comprehensive physical resource inventory and analysis of the
current production, use, condition, and the resource potential and oppor-
tunities within a planning unit, including a profile of environmental
values. Its stated objectives are:
•	to provide a comprehensive inventory and analysis of resource
problems, conditions, uses, production, quality, capabilities,
and management potential for use in preparing Management
Framework Plans
•	to provide summarized resource information of all types on a
unit in one place for use in all phases of resource management,
including public contact
•	to provide a means of achieving continuity in resource-data
retention and maintenance*
Management Framework Plan (MFP). Completion of the URA, including the
environmental profile and all other informational documents, leads to the
preparation of the Management Framework Plan. By definition, the MFP
comprises a group of planning decisions for one or more planning units,
which indicates the resource values to be protected, establishes uses to
be managed and their relative magnitude, and provides a multiple-use
*U.S. Department of the Interior: Bureau of Land Management, Planning
System Manual, Section 1605, April 17, 1975.
50
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framework into which more detailed plans (called Program Activity Plans)
must fit. Its objectives are:
•	to provide a structured method of synthesizing specific resource
programs and to support activity proposals with detailed recom-
mendations for land-use management within a designated area
•	with managerial approval (based on public input) of the final
recommendations, to provide guidance for ongoing bureau action
programs and to permit specific resource programs to proceed
through more detailed planning and implementation stages*
The BLM planning system defines seven physical resources that are to
be inventoried and analyzed in developing the Management Framework Plan.
These seven resources are land, minerals, forest products, range, water-
shed, wildlife habitat, and recreation. The procedure used to evaluate
potential management activities for these resources is separate from the
procedures for environmental protection or enhancement. Instead, the
environment is dealt with as a separate section of the MFP. BLM states
that resources and the environment are physically identical, but func-
tionally different. The seven resource categories are related to some
ultimate use, while the environment is the place or setting for particular
activities by organisms existing within communities.
An "ecological profile" of the planning unit is prepared as a separ-
ate step in the Unit Resource Analysis. The purpose of the profile is to
describe the ecological communities in the planning unit, evaluate their
present conditions and trends, and determine management opportunities
either for enhancement and improvement of the environment or protection
and maintenance of present conditions. These management opportunities
are determined independently from the management goals for other resources.
"Critical environmental areas" within the planning unit are also
identified separately in the URA as part of the Planning Area Analysis.
The significance of these critical areas to institutions within the
*U.S. Department of the Interior: Bureau of Land Management, Instruction
Memo, 73-38, September 24, 1973.
SI
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planning unit and outside it are also described during this step in the
BLM planning system.
In the first step of preparing the Management Framework Plan, each
activity specialist must modify the resource management opportunities
that he or she recommended in the URA so that they comply with BLM
program-wide standards (Planning System Manual Section 1602), program
activity policy statements (Planning System Manual Section 1603), and
the Planning Area Analysis (Planning System Manual Section 1607). The
standards set forth in sections 1602 and 1603 include several measures
for environmental protection. The standards that are applicable to all
BLM management activities are:
•	All land-use and resource-management program decisions must
be consistent with federal or state air and water quality
standards and with public health and safety standards affec-
ting solid-waste disposal and noise abatement
•	In all land-use and program decisions, the capacity of eco-
systems to sustain themselves and the conditions and require-
ments of all species within these ecosystems will be fully
considered
•	In all land-use and program decisions, protection of natural
and man-made elements that have aesthetic values of natural
beauty, harmony, variety, or uniqueness in the environment
will be fully considered
•	In all land-use and program decisions, protection of natural
and man-made environmental elements that contribute to the
cultural heritage of human society or to human understanding
of ecological processes will be fully considered
•	If there is no cost involved, ecological, aesthetic, or human-
interest values will be protected or enhanced through careful
design and execution of BLM programs. If preservation or en-
hancement of these values would result in loss of other resource
values or increase in program costs, the long-range cost is
compared to the long-range results. Great weight is given to
preservation of a wholesome, continually productive environment
for future generations
In applying these standards to program activities, BLM personnel are
directed to:
52
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•	increase their ability to identify and analyze ecosystems and
their functions on the ground
•	develop procedures for measuring and analyzing the condition of
those ecological processes most directly related to management
activities
•	develop the capability to participate in an interdisciplinary
analysis of environmental conditions and impacts resulting from
management activities
•	apply ecosystem management principles to planning and decision
making
•	develop management practices that will minimize damage to and,
if possible, enhance the environment
•	develop and apply stipulations to protect environmental values
to guide lessees, permittees, and others who use the public
lands
In managing mineral resources, BLM personnel must ensure that damage
to the environment and other resources caused by mineral exploration,
development, and extraction is minimized and that plans are provided for
the rehabilitation of affected lands. In managing for recreation, the
overriding consideration in the decision-making process is the preserva-
tion and protection of environmental values. At minimum, activities
related to watershed management must meet state and federal air and water
quality standards. In developing forest products, environmental feasi-
bility is a prerequisite to the adoption of any intensive management
practice, no matter how economically attractive the practice is. Stipu-
lations for the protection of environmental quality must be included in
all forest-related contracts, leases, and permits. Roads constructed on
BLM land must be located and designed to harmonize with the topography,
to cause the least damage to the environment, and to avoid immediate
proximity to streams, lakeshores, or other rare or valuable environmental
features.
Although the Planning System Manual identifies the types of environ-
mental protection measures that are to be used by BLM area and district
managers, it does not provide procedural guidelines for implementing
53
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these measures. Interpreting the standards and choosing the methods used
for environmental protection is left to field personnel and may vary be-
tween districts. The measures devised for protecting and enhancing the
environment in the Decker-Birney Planning Unit are discussed in Section V.
THE DECKER-BIRNEY MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK PLAN
Summary Description
The Decker-Birney MFP generally follows the steps outlined in sec-
tions 1601 through 1608 of the BLM manual, dated March 6, 1975. These
steps consist of the following:
•	Step 1 - Preparation of a base map of the planning area
with narrative and overlays that indicate the distribution of
resources
•	URA, Step 2 - Preparation of a physical profile of the basic
physical characteristics of the area, including: climate,
topography, hydrology, vegetation, soils, and geology
•	URA. Step 3 - (1) The analysis and recording of the present
situation for each of the following resource categories as
part of the Environmental Analyses Records: lands, minerals,
forestry, livestock forage, watershed, wildlife, recreation,
and environmental enhancement; and, (2) the preparation of
the Environmental Profile
•	URA, Step 4 - Descriptions are prepared of management oppor-
tunities for each resource category described in URA, Step 3
Completion of URA, Step 4, the Environmental Profile, and all other
informational documents leads to the preparation of the Management
Framework Plan, which includes the following steps:
•	MFP, Step 1 - Program activity recommendations have been pre-
pared that provide the basis for an optimum plan for the
protection and enhancement of each resource. A summary report
of this step, dated December 1973, has been published
•	MFP, Step 2 - Multiple-use recommendations have been prepared
for resolving (or minimizing) conflicts among the activity pro-
grams generated in Step 1 of the MFP — for coordinating activ-
ity overlaps and for identifying the support recommendations
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necessary to carry out the multiple-use recommendations. A
summary report of this step, dated April 1974, has been pub-
lished. In addition, Environmental Analyses Records Nos. 1
and 2* describe the potential impacts of the proposed actions
and of the alternative actions.
Specific Objectives Related to the Decker-Birney MFP. Specific objectives
related to the Decker-Bimey area include:
•	to respond to the increasing and renewed interest in coal as
part of our nation's attempt to achieve energy independence
•	to develop coal and other resources in a manner that produces
the minimum adverse impacts on the environment
•	to provide advance resolution of conflicts among and within
mineral leasing programs
•	to provide a planning framework for other land-use activities
in a manner consistent with BLM's objectives and responsibili-
ties
•	to provide a framework for evaluating mineral lease and other
development applications in a comprehensive manner within the
context of the entire Decker-Birney planning area.
MFP Recommendations ,
The multiple-use recommendations developed during Step 2 of the
Decker-Bimey MFP have been analyzed in terms of the resource type, the
related activity, the wording of the MFP recommendation itself, and the
category of the recommendation (e.g., standard, nonspecific enforceable
guidelines, policy, and study). This information has been organized
into a table, which, due to its length, comprises Appendix C, "Management
Framework Plan Recommendations for the Decker-Birney Planning Unit."
This table identifies the specific nature of each recommendation, and
displays the relevant factors in relation to each resource activity.
~Department of the Interior: Bureau of Land Management, Decker-Birney
Environmental Analysis Records, Nos. 1 and 2, 1972.
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Analysis of MFP Recommendations
The Bureau of Land Management divides the nation's resources into
seven land-use categories (land, minerals, timber, livestock, watershed,
wildlife, and recreation) in order to assess resource development
possibilities and to produce a multiple-use Management Framework Plan
for a given study area. Such an evaluation was conducted of the Decker-
Birney study area; the analysis is summarized in the following paragraphs.
Land Uses Considered. The three, principal land-use classes in the Decker-
Birney unit are urban and suburban, agricultural, and public uses.
Urban and Suburban. The Decker-Birney unit has three small communities
that provide their citizens with somewhat limited public services. The
community of Ashland (population 200*) offers residential, recreational,
commerical, and educational facilities; Bimey (population 13) has resi-
dential, commerical, and educational facilities; and Decker (population 30)
consists only of a post office, a general store, a bar, and a slowly devel-
oping trailer park. The BLM-administered land within the unit consists
primarily of isolated tracts with poor access. In the event of local indus-
trial development, the fairly rough topography limits residential growth to
existing communities. Presently, the private lands in the unit are better
suited to commercial, residential, industrial, educational, and institu-
tional development associated with industrial expansion than are the BLM-
administered lands. The advantage of the privately owned lands is their
location adjacent to water supplies (Tongue River, Hanging Woman, Otter,
and Rosebud creeks) and to other major transportation routes.
Agricultural. Approximately 3.5 percent of the total acreage of the
Decker-Birney unit (898,709 acres) has been developed for agricultural
benefit. Of these 31,000 acres, 12,000 are irrigated and 19,000 are
~Population figures are from the Bureau of Land Management's Preliminary
Population Study of 1972.
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dry-land farms. The Tongue River Reservoir, which belongs to the state,
is the only irrigation project in the unit.
The reservoir was developed for irrigation down river, and the users
belong to an irrigation cooperative. The principal irrigated crop is
alfalfa hay, which is grown along the Tongue River and Hanging Woman and
Otter creeks. Irrigation in these areas is accomplished by border dikes
and spreader dike systems. The foremost dry-land crops are hay and grain,
which are used primarily as livestock forage. They are not sold as cash
crops.
Potential agricultural areas in the unit are generally small in
size and limited to isolated ridgetop plateaus or the broader valley or
coulee bottoms. The public lands in the Decker-Birney unit are too
rough and broken for any practical agricultural development.
Public Uses. This category is a catch-all for remaining land uses
and includes landfill disposal sites, transportation routes, and rights-
of-way.
•	Landfill disposal sites. There is a tract of land located adjacent
to Ashland designated as a landfill disposal site
•	Transportation. The unit's major transportation routes are adjacent
to the three primary drainages in the unit. They will have to be
expanded in the event of any industrial and associated municipal
growth
•	Rights-of-way. The public-domain lands in the subject are rela-
tively small and consist of widely scattered tracts surrounded by
privately owned land. Coordination of rights-of-way activities with
state and local agencies will be essential to maximize development
potential and minimize adverse effects of other land uses and land
values
Minerals. Presently, there are no operating oil or gas wells in the
planning unit, but the large strippable coal deposits in the Decker-
Birney unit have been evaluated and proposed for extraction. Presently,
one coal company is operating in the unit; Decker Coal Mine at Decker is
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actively shipping coal to eastern markets. Transportation systems, in-
cluding railway extensions and a network of vehicle roads, are needed in
the study area if the coal fields are to be developed. Because the Decker-
Birney unit has little or no sand and gravel on public lands, the potential
for industrial development will depend on the area's extraction of the
extensive coal deposits.
Timber. The only logging activity in the Decker-Birney unit has been in-
dividual tree selection on a very limited scale. Presently, the Ashland
Pine Company is operating in Custer National Forest. Because its demand
for timber exceeds the annual allowable cut for the entire Ashland Divi-
sion of the U.S. Forest Service, privately owned timber has satisfied
the balance of its demand.
The timber found on the BLM land in the study area has had no com-
mercial value for saw timber, and little use has been made of the timber
resource except for posts and poles. The public-domain timber lands
cannot be managed as productive commercial forest lands.
The commercial forest (part of Custer National Forest) consists of
ponderosa pine ranging from pole size to mature and overmature timber,
with ages varying from 35 to 80+ years. The Custer National Forest
timber lands are intensely managed and protected areas.
Livestock. The public lands in the study area are licensed or leased
according to the forage production of the land, measured in AUMs (animal
unit months). BLM lands are licensed directly to the users. Some users
are issued annual licenses and others are granted 10-year permits.
Users of national forest lands are licensed on a 10-year permit basis,
and special-use permits are issued for national forest lands used in
conjunction with private livestock wintering. Past grazing practices
have led to heavy use of some ranges and little use of others. The
total forage resource has been poorly utilized, although the area has
outstanding potential for increased forage production by natural means.
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Because livestock grazing has the greatest single impact on the unit's
forage, livestock management practices must recognize the physiological
needs of forage production.
Watershed. BLM's watershed program is directed toward two goals:
•	the conservation of watersheds to protect them from further
deterioration
•	the development or improvement of watersheds to meet identi-
fied needs, such as water quality and quantity requirements
and the reduction of damage from flooding and sedimentation,
both on and off public lands*
Roughly 104,960 acres on the project site (11.7 percent of the total
acreage) are in the critical-to-severe erosion class. Livestock grazing,
off-road vehicle use, and man-made surface disturbance have contributed
significantly to the soil deterioration and loss.
Watershed conservation suggests maintaining the present watershed
conditions in an attempt to restore areas where man's activities have
caused deterioration. Hence, increased livestock grazing, coal develop-
ment, and road building are contrary to any conservation objective in
the Decker-Birney unit. However, watershed potential can be developed
in this area by the following activities:
•	construction of small stock reservoirs, since there is a high
drainage density in the unit
•	retention of snow water by construction of snow fences in
channels with large numbers of drains, gullies, and canyons
•	cloud seeding to increase the annual precipitation
•	drilling of horizontal wells into the sides of some scoria*"*
buttes to obtain stock and domestic water
Wildlife. The most popular big game species in the Decker-Birney unit
is the mule deer. Antelopes are also present, but are found in the more
*U.S. Department of the Interior: Bureau of Land Management, Planning
System Manual, Section 1603, February 12, 1973.
**The term "scoria," as used in this report, refers to a precipitous
sandstone outcropping.
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rolling grassy areas where few trees or rugged drainages impede their
movement. Sharp-tailed and sage grouse are hunted, as are pheasants,
near agricultural lands. The Tongue Reservoir and River are the primary
sport-fishing areas. The reservoir offers a wide variety of warm-water
species, such as the walleye and northern pike, crappies, and bass.
Warm-water species, such as bullheads, smallmouth and rock bass, and
crappies, are caught below the dam. These areas are managed by the
Montana State Department of Fish and Game and the Ashland Division of
the U.S. Forest Service. Wildlife management plans for the public-
domain lands are made in cooperation with the Montana State Department
of Fish and Game.
Recreation. The Decker-Bimey study area has been classified into four
broad categories in order to evaluate the possibilities of developing
the public lands for recreational purposes. They are:
1.	Category A (exceptional). Outstanding scenic areas (Category
A) become important recreation destinations within the unit.
The present scenic qualities and aesthetics of these areas
must be retained for use by future generations. Although the
Category-A areas have spectacular scenic and aesthetic quali-
ties, they are relatively small in size.
2.	Category B (excellent). Category-B lands provide much of the
scenic beauty in the area. There are several existing periph-
eral roads and internal roads from which the scenery can be
observed. Although recreational use is minimal at the present
time, scenic areas of the quality should be preserved for use
by future generations of recreationists.
3. S 4. Category C (moderate) and Category D (slight). The moderate-
and slight-scenic-category lands are vital to the visual
aesthetics of the area. These lands constitute a majority of
the visual surface resources in this particular planning unit.
Since several different people-influence zones pass through
these two areas, large-scale surface disturbances will be
highly visible.
Presently, the only recreational sites in the unit are located
adjacent to the Tongue River Reservoir and limited areas in Custer
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National Forest. Further evaluation of the unit's scenery, wildlife
management plan, historical points of interest, and the demand for
winter-sport facilities will be required by the BLM to determine rec-
reational development possibilities.
Implementation Techniques
The BLM has techniques available with which to implement the multiple-
use recommendations of the Management Framework Plan. These techniques
range from the establishment of policies that make the multiple-use recom-
mendations operative to the granting of permits and leases for specific
uses of lands under BLM jurisdiction. The following paragraphs describe
several implementation techniques and how they are applied.
BLM Policies. General policies for the use and management of federal
lands are contained in the Federal Land Policy Management Act of 1976
(PL 94-579). This act includes policies on:
0 land ownership and/or disposal
•	periodic and systematic inventories of the present and future
.use of federal lands
•	reviews of public lands not previously designated for any
specific use
•	the withdrawal or dedication of federal lands for specific
purposes
•	the establishment of comprehensive rules and regulations
•	judicial review
•	the establishment of goals and objectives as guidelines for
public land-use planning and management
•	environmental protection and preservation
•	fair market value for the use of federal lands and their
resources
•	uniform procedures for the disposal, acquisition, and exchange
of federal lands
•	protection of public-land areas of critical environmental
concern
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•	management of public lands, recognizing the need for domestic
sources of minerals, food, timber, and fiber
•	payments to compensate states and local governments for the
immunity of federal lands from state and local taxation
In addition to these general policies, BLM district managers have
a certain amount of discretion in establishing specific policies in re-
sponse to recommendations contained in the MFP. In effect, the selection
of the MFP recommendations to be implemented and the degree of implemen-
tation are local BLM policy decisions. The establishment of these
policies and their applications are major implementation techniques at
the management level.
Lease Stipulations. Lease stipulations are BLM land-use restrictions or
reclamation requirements for specific tracts of land being offered for
lease. These stipulations may also include requirements for the reduc-
tion or elimination of environmental hazards or damage (as well as for
rehabilitation) derived from the environmental analysis or impact state-
ment .
Designation of Leasable Tracts. By designating the tracts to be leased
and establishing leasing schedules, the BLM can control the location,
timing, and rate of the leasing program under its jurisdiction.
Direct Control. The BLM has direct controls available for implementing
the MFP recommendations. These include:
•	Designation of special- or restrictive-use areas within the
context of the MFP
•	Withdrawal of entry and occupancy rights from specific surface
and subsurface public lands
•	Designation of areas and sites for specific uses (e.g., areas
with special historical values, geologic features, snow and
ice features, special habitat areas, coal resource areas,
special livestock forage areas, special timber management
areas, off-road vehicle areas, etc.). Special controls are
designated for each of these areas in order to maintain or
improve the special qualities of the area
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•	Withdrawl of locatable minerals from the public domain: The
BLM can withdraw the public's right to explore and develop
areas of locatable minerals
•	Land-use planning: The BLM is responsible for developing land-
use plans for public lands. The planning process designates
allowable uses for specific areas of these public lands and
can exclude certain uses
•	Sales: The BLM has the authority to sell certain public lands
that meet specified disposal criteria. Such sale or disposal
removes the land from the BLM's control
•	Withdrawals: In addition to the withdrawal of entry and occu-
pancy rights to public lands, the BLM can withdraw an area of
federal land from sale. The purpose of withdrawing these lands
from sale, lease, or other use is to limit activities in order
to maintain other public values in the area or to reserve the
area for a particular public purpose or program
•	Acquisitions: The BLM is authorized to acquire, by purchase,
exchange, donation, or eminent domain, lands or interests con-
sistent with BLM philosophy and with applicable land-use plans
Permits. BLM issues permits for the use of public lands and thereby
exercises a form of control on their use. These permits include:
•	Grazing permits: Issuance of grazing permits is part of the
BLM's range management program and is an important implementa-
tion tool. These permits are given within the BLM's Allotment
Management Plans (AMP), which provide specific plans for the
management of livestock to meet certain range, watershed, wild-
life, and aesthetic objectives
•	Timber sales: The BLM's timber sales program is an implementa-
tion technique for the management of timber for sustained pro-
duction and for improvement of the vigor and^ age distribution
of the timber stands
•	Right-of-way permits: The BLM is authorized to grant or renew
right-of-way permits over, upon, under, or through public
lands for specific purposes. The control of rights-of-way is
an effective management and implementation tool for minimizing
adverse environmental impacts on BLM lands
•	Special-use permits: The BLM issues special-use permits for
the temporary use of public lands
•	Archaeological survey and excavation permits: The BLM issues
permits for making archaeological surveys and excavations
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•	Crossing permits: The BLM issues permits to allow livestock to
cross federal lands
•	Prospecting permits: The BLM issues prospecting permits in
areas where coal resource information is inadequate
Leases. One of the BLM's major implementation techniques is through its
leasing program. This program includes the exploration foT and extrac-
tion of coal, oil, and gas from lands under its jurisdiction. In addi-
tion, the BLM issues leases for geothermal activities and for the
exploration for and extraction of sulfur, potash, sand, and gravel. By
imposing conditions on the use of BLM lands to be leased, the BLM can
exercise significant controls on these uses and can ensure that reclama-
tion and other mitigating measures will reduce adverse environmental
impacts. The bureau's position in imposing these safeguards has recently
been strengthened by federal legislation designed to control strip
mining in the United States. In addition, cooperative agreements have
recently been signed between the Department of the Interior and the
State of Montana. Under the terms of these agreements, the state will
be principally responsible for the administration and enforcement of
surface-coal-mine reclamation operations on federal coal leases within
the state. This will improve the enforcement of these safeguards.
Interagency Review. The BLM's review of other agencies' plans and
programs and the agencies' reviews of the BLM's proposed activities
provide opportunities for coordination and joint implementation of pro-
grams handled by several agencies. This review process ensures that
programs of different agencies are compatible. The A-95 review process*
requires interagency review and comment to ensure that proposed plans
and activities of federal, state, regional, and local agencies conform
with adopted plans. A further requirement is compliance with the regula-
tions of the Montana Environmental Policy Act (MEPA) and the National
*U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-95 requires inter-
agency review of and comment on federal actions that could significantly
affect the quality of the environment.
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Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Both acts require environmental
impact reports before initiating a proposed action. (For example, the
final environmental impact statement on the proposed operation of the
East Decker and North Extension surface coal mines in southeastern
Montana by the Decker Coal Company has recently been prepared by the
U.S. Geological Survey and the Montana Department of State Lands.)
In addition to interagency review and comment, certain interagency
coordinating agreements can be used as tools to meet mutual objectives
of separate agencies. For example, Bureau of Reclamation water improve-
ment projects can be coordinated so that the BLM can use the same pro-
jects to improve forage and grazing on national resource lands.
Provisions for Interagency Cooperation
Within the language of the MFP recommendations, there are a small
number of explicit provisions for interagency coordination of land-use
management; these are discussed below. Within the larger context of
federal law and state-federal relations, several important coordination-
cooperation arrangements appear to be influential in implementing the
Decker-Bimey MFP recommendations. Foremost among them are:
•	The NEPA and OMB Circular A-95 both require interagency review
and comment on major federal actions that could significantly
affect the quality of the environment
•	1976 federal legislation adopting Montana surface-mining and
reclamation regulations on federal coal leases in that state
t 1977 agreement between the federal government and the State
of Montana, whereby the state agreed to enforce surface-
mining and reclamation regulations on federal coal leases
•	federal-state agreements transferring authority for regulatory
functions to approved state agencies (such as the potential
transfer of responsibility from the EPA to the Montana Depart-
ment of Health and Environmental Sciences for administration
of the National Pollution Discharge Elimination System permit
program)
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The Decker-Birney MFP recommendations contain eight provisions
for interagency cooperation, most of which are nonspecific about loca-
tion, timing, or means of implementation. The provisions are:
1.	The BLM should encourage and work with local planning and
zoning authorities to control and guide suburban growth and
expansion.
2.	The BLM should restrict conveyance of national resource lands
to private ownership until such time as adequate planning
and zoning ordinances have been enacted.
3.	The BLM should use its land disposal and exchange functions
to meet state and local government needs for land and to
consolidate public lands for more effective management.
4.	If appropriate, the BLM will dispose of certain national
resource lands to the State of Montana in order to satisfy
land entitlements granted to the state by the Statehood Act.
5.	The management of deer range on BLM lands will be subject to
the direction of the Montana Department of Fish and Game;
the BLM commits itself to cooperate in this connection with
its livestock grazing programs and agrees to allow the state
to regulate the deer harvest in BLM lands.
6.	The BLM agrees that all predator-control programs and activi-
ties are to be approved by the Montana Department of Fish and
Game and the Bureau of Sports Fisheries and Wildlife.
7.	Stocking of reservoirs with fish is to be coordinated with
the Montana Department of Fish and Game and the Bureau of
Sports Fisheries and Wildlife.
8.	The BLM should encourage the appropriate state and federal
agencies to monitor and control emissions from land uses that
may be associated with air quality degradation.
Public Participation
t
In order to obtain the views of interested parties, all federal
agencies are required by Executive Order 11514* to develop procedures to
ensure the timely provision of the fullest practicable public information
on federal plans and programs that could have an environmental impact.
*Executive Order 11514, March 5, 1970, Section 2(b).
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In order to meet this requirement, the BLM prepared a summary report
of the resource study of December 1972 and mailed it to approximately 440
interested parties, with a request for their comments. Approximately 70
written responses were received. The respondents included the following
groups: ranchers and the general public, mineral interests (private indus-
tries), federal agencies, professional groups, state agencies, universities,
and county governments. In addition, five informal public meetings were
held to discuss the material contained in the summaries. Forty-one persons
attended these meetings and offered comments on the summary. Five
additional written responses were received during this second review.
The Decker-Birney inventory and proposed recommendations were amended
to reflect the comments received from interested parties, and a second
summary was prepared and distributed in Decemher 1973.
In August 1976, additional information was mailed to the persons and
organizations on the Decker-Birney, Coalwood, and South Rosebud mailing
lists. This material stated that although the initial planning efforts
for these areas had been completed, several of the resource-use recommen-
dations included in the initial summaries had been revised, and several
of the planning recommendations that were presented in the Management
Framework Plan had been adjusted. Further, ideas that had been generated
from the public were now incorporated into the planning recommendations.
This mailing indicated that complete planning documents were on file at
the Miles City District office, where they were available for public
review.
In addition to the process described above, interviews of residents
of the area were conducted as part of socioeconomic studies done by the
state and universities. Results of these interviews were available to
the BLM staff.
Although - BLM involved the general public from the outset of the pro-
ject, the BLM public-participation procedures were generally based on a
responsive mode; that is, the public was asked to respond to the proposed
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resource recommendations rather than to participate in the formulation of
these recommendations. In addition, the public was not given the oppor-
tunity to review the tradeoffs involved in the resolution of conflicts
between the individual resource plans of MFP, Step 1, in order to develop
the multiple-use recommendations of MFP, Step 2. The consequences of
differing tradeoff combinations for energy production and for environ-
mental protection are not discussed in the material that was furnished
to the public.
In a broader sense, while the BLM manuals require public participa-
tion, they do not specifically identify when this participation should
occur, and they neither prescribe nor suggest public participation tech-
niques.* Public input should be secured during the data-gathering stage
of URA, Step 4, and in the individual activity recommendations of MFP,
Step 1. Alternative tradeoffs should be brought to the attention of
the public, together with the potential consequences of each alterna-
tive. Public comments on the various alternatives should be used to
shape and modify the final multiple-use recommendations of the MFP and
should also be used for final decision making by the BLM district manager.
Environmental Protection Provided by the Decker-Bimey MFP
The strip mining of coal in the Decker-Birney Planning Unit may cause
extensive environmental changes. The Bureau of Land Management has the
difficult task of analyzing both the national need for energy and the
types and magnitudes of environmental impacts. The mining of all strip-
pable coal reserves in the area would maximize the area's contribution to
this nation's energy supply, but would cause major disruptions to the
environmental quality of the Decker-Birney Planning Unit and the surround-
ing region. Conversely, a recommendation not to mine any of the strip-
pable reserves would maintain the environmental quality of the region,
but would contribute nothing to the improvement of the energy shortage.
*1975 revisions to the BLM manual do address these issues.
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The BLM has recognized this conflict and has initiated an extensive
analysis of the Decker-Bimey Planning Unit to determine what level of
mining activity (and other resource development activities) can be
implemented without causing unacceptable environmental disruptions.
Although several of the area's resources may be utilized, mining the
strippable coal resource is the major proposed action. The associated
impacts of developing this resource overshadow the impacts associated
with the possible development of the other resources.
The MFP presents two major recommendations that address the conflict
between the development of the coal resource and the protection of the
environment. The first recommendation states that 166,000 acres of pri-
marily federal coal deposits should not be mined because of the magnitude
of the resulting impacts. The second recommendation states that any
future raining of federal coal should be confined to 119,000 acres of the
strippable coal reserves. These two recommendations represent the BLM's
compromise between mining all strippable coal reserves and minimizing
environmental impacts. The BLM's rationale for these recommendations is
that the 119,000 acres provide enough coal reserve to provide for the
predicted requirements from the area and they will also have the least
impact on other resources if developed. The BLM evaluated the signifi-
cance of each resource in various areas of the planning unit and held a
tradeoff session to determine which areas had significant environmental
conflicts. This tradeoff session determined that mining in various
areas, totaling 166,000 acres, would cause unacceptable environmental
conflicts. The significant attributes of these 166,000 acres include:
•	55 wells
•	163 springs
•	233 reservoirs
•	7000 acres of cultivated land
•	151,000 acres of rangeland
•	47,000 animal-unit-months
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•	60 ranch operations
•	102,000 acres of antelope habitat
•	24,000 acres of sage grouse habitat
•	22,000 acres of turkey habitat
•	165,000 acres of deer and sharptail grouse habitat
•	50 miles of county roads
•	3 historic battlefields
•	6820 acres of fossil areas
•	1000 campground visitor-days
The actual degree of environmental protection that will be provided
by implementation of the MFP is difficult to assess since the MFP recom-
mendations are not the final step in the planning process. These recom-
mendations form the basis for the Activity Plans, which will describe in
some detail the procedure for implementing the recommendations. If the
MFP is to be a successful step in the BLM process of providing environ-
mental protection, the MFP recommendations should:
•	consider all of the major environmental resources
•	provide for long-term maintenance of the resources
•	be sufficiently detailed to guide the Activity Plans
The MFP for the Decker-Birney Planning Unit is more successful in
satisfying the first two requirements than in satisfying the third
requirement. The first requirement, concerning the consideration of all
the major environmental resources, is accomplished in the basic format
of the MFP. The MFP discusses seven major categories (land, minerals,
timber, recreation, livestock forage, wildlife habitat, watershed) and
has an eighth category, environmental enhancement and protection, that
specifically addresses the issue of environmental quality and discusses
some resources not included in the other seven categories. Among other
subjects, these eight categories take into account archaeology, paleon-
tology (fossils), historic values (battlefields), geological features
(sandstone caves), air quality, cultural values, and aesthetic values.
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The MFP also provides for long-terra maintenance for most of the
resources considered. Specific recommendations dealing with erosion
control, water and air quality standards, and wildlife habitat were
formulated to ensure that these values are not destroyed over the
long-term, even when some short-term losses occur as a result of mineral
extraction or other resource exploitation. Recommendations pertaining
to socioeconomic values are minimal and do not clearly define long-term
goals.
The recommendations must be presented in sufficient detail to guide
the development of the Activity Plans. If the recommendations are vague
or too general, the Activity Plans may not meet the objectives intended.
The wildlife recommendations are particularly well presented. For
example, the recommendation to maintain at least a 20-percent canopy
cover for sage grouse (in those areas where this minimum exists),
especially on ridges and swells where sage is between 10 and 14 inches
in height, clearly states the objective and where it is to apply. From
this information the appropriate Activity Plan can be developed. Other
adequate recommendations call for "restriction," "control," or "mainten-
ance" of various environmental qualities.
Recommendations to "consider" or "encourage" do not indicate the
objectives for the resource in question specifically enough for accep-
table Activity Plans to be prepared. An example of a poorly stated
recommendation is the recommendation to "encourage investigations of
feasibility of limited control structures on the lower reaches of some
drainages." It is unclear whether the desired goal of this watershed
recommendation is some number of control structures, just a determina-
tion of feasibility, an investigation, or merely some encouragement.
Many of the recommendations that are unclear or too general pertain to
the lands, watershed, and recreation categories. Much of the ambiguity
can understandably be attributed to the lack of data needed to make
specific recommendations. If these values are to be protected, however,
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and if the MFP is a critical step in the BLM planning process, some
decisions are needed concerning the actual recommendations to be made.
COMPATIBILITY WITH FEDERAL AND STATE ENVIRONMENTAL POLICIES
Summary of Policies
Federal. The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) was
enacted "to encourage productive and enjoyable harmony between man and
his environment." The federal government recognized that such a
national commitment would require all federal agencies to cooperate and
coordinate their plans, functions, programs, and resources so that the
nation could:
•	fulfill the responsibilities of each generation as trustee of
the environment for succeeding generations
•	ensure for all Americans safe, healthful, productive, and
aesthetically and culturally pleasing surroundings
•	attain the widest range of beneficial uses of the environment
without degradation, risk to health or safety, or other un-
desirable and unintended consequences
•	preserve important historic, cultural, and natural aspects of
our national heritage, and maintain, wherever possible, an
environment that supports diversity and variety of individual
choice
•	achieve a balance between population and resource use that
will permit high standards of living and a wide sharing of
life's amenities
•	enhance the quality of renewable resources and approach the
maximum attainable recycling of depletable resources
To achieve these objectives, congress authorized and directed all
federal agencies to:
•	utilize a systematic, interdisciplinary approach that will
ensure the integrated use of the natural and social sciences
and the environmental-design arts in the planning and deci-
sion making that may have an impact on man's environment
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•	in consultation with the CEQ,* identify and develop methods
and procedures that will ensure that presently unquantified
environmental amenities and values may be given appropriate
consideration in decision making, along with economic and
technical considerations
•	prepare environmental impact statements '
•	study, develop, and describe appropriate alternatives to
recommended courses of action in any proposal that involves
unresolved conflicts concerning alternative uses of available
resources
•	recognize the worldwide and long-range character of environ-
mental problems
•	make available to states, counties, municipalities, insti-
tutions, and individuals advice and information useful in
restoring, maintaining, and enhancing the quality of the
environment
•	initiate and utilize ecological information in the planning
and development of resource-oriented projects
In summary, this congressional act directs all federal agencies to
include environmental considerations together with economic and techni-
factors in evaluating all major federal actions that might significantly
affect the quality of the environment. These considerations should be
presented in an environmental impact report that includes appropriate
comments from federal, state, and local agencies, and from the public.
State. The State of Montana established similar legislation to provide
environmental protection at the state level as described in the Montana
Environmental Policy Act of 1971 (MEPA). This act was modeled after the
federal act, and the wording of some sections, such as agency purpose,
policy, and direction, is almost identical in the two acts.
Compatibility of the BLM Process with the NEPA and the MEPA
The BLM Planning System is a process that incorporates the objec-
tives and federal directives of the NEPA into BLM planning procedures.
*U.S. Council on Environmental Quality.
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This system meets NEPA requirements by systematically considering seven
types of resources as well as environmental components of the region.
Socioeconomic, aesthetic, archaeological, paleontological, and histori-
cal factors are also included.
The Planning System incorporates all of these factors into a some-
what cumbersome series of procedures consisting of a Resource Inven-
tory, Unit Resource Analysis, Planning Area Analysis, Management Frame-
work Plan, Proposed Activity Plans, Environmental Analysis, and the
final Activity Plans. The URA and MFP are further divided into four
and three steps, respectively.
This Planning System meets NEPA requirements by virtue of the
systematic', interdisciplinary approach; the attempt to balance national
energy requirements against environmental impacts; the examination of
alternative levels of resource exploitation and associated impacts; the
utilization of quantified information, when possible, concerning socio-
economic, cultural, and ecological considerations; and the preparation
of an environmental impact statement. The interaction of the BLM with
other federal agencies, as well as with state and local agencies and
other concerned groups or individuals, increases the compatibility of
the BLM Planning System with the NEPA.
The Planning System is also compatible with the MEPA because its
wording is nearly identical with that of the NEPA. Benefits to the
people and environment of Montana are addressed frequently during various
phases of the system because the people and the environment of Montana
will be most directly affected by the impacts, especially in the vicinity
of the Decker-Birney Planning Unit.
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V
REGULATORY/INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK
OVERVIEW OF LAND-USE MANAGEMENT IN THE DECKER-BIRNEY UNIT
Participants
This section identifies those governmental entities that partici-
pate in land-use management within and around the Decker-Birney Planning
Unit. The discussion first focuses on those entities that can exercise
direct controls over specific, identifiable jurisdictions within the
planning unit. Second, it proceeds to those entities that indirectly
affect land-use allocation within the planning unit through the regula-
tion of specific activities or resources. The section concludes with a
discussion of entities that exercise direct or indirect controls over
land uses in the areas outside of but adjacent to the planning unit.
Direct Controls
Seven governmental entities are directly involved in land-use
management in the Decker-Birney area, generally in a traditional land-
owner or police-power role.
Bureau of Land Management. The BLM exercises direct controls over
national resource lands and the federal mineral estate in the area. It
manages these resources under a multiple-use concept, which in effect
strives to achieve a maximum level of economic benefit from land uses
that are compatible with long-term stability of the resource base and
with environmental protection goals. The BLM directly plans for and
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controls land uses on the surface of natural resource lands; its control
mechanisms on these lands include physical development, access regula-
tion, leases, permits, and rights-of-way. Permitting specific uses on
these lands is not done in accordance with a rigid, physical land-use
plan, but rather under the guidance of a set of recommendations for
prudent resource management (the MFP). In some cases, these recommenda-
tions have a spatial dimension and define types of development or limits
to development in certain land areas; more often, however, the recom-
mendations are free from locational reference and prescribe management
practices in relation to individual resources.
The BLM also directly controls development of federal subsurface
resources; of primary interest in the Decker-Birney area are strippable
coal deposits. The management of these resources is subject to a more
elaborate planning process (Energy Minerals Activity Recommendation
System — EMARS), whose products are well-defined in terms of location,
timing, and performance standards. Because most of the coal resource is
located beneath private land, and because widespread surface mining is
associated with land-use conversions on a very large scale (rapid urbani-
zation, industrial and transportation development), the BLM is manifestly
responsible for land-use allocation on nonfederal land surfaces. The
extrajurisdictional land-use effects of surface mining are recognized by
the BLM and embraced by the MFP recommendations. The MFP provides the
local policy context within which EMARS decisions (the availability and
end use of specific leasable tracts) are reached. The BLM directly
controls subsurface resources by selecting tracts to be offered for
lease; it indirectly controls the surface land uses associated with sub-
surface development by controlling the location of mining and directly
by lease stipulations.
U.S. Forest Service. The U.S. Forest Service exercises land-use manage-
ment of the surface of national forest lands. Strippable coal deposits
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beneath Forest Service lands are the responsibility of the BLM, although
their management is coordinated with the surface-use policies of the
Forest Service. The Forest Service is engaged in multiple-land-use
planning; the products of the planning process are definitive with
respect to location and specific resources. Individual land-use plans
in the planning area are vertically integrated with those of the Forest
division, the individual National forest, and the federal region. Land
uses are allocated with specific-use permits issued in accordance with
small-area land-use plans.
State of Montana. The State of Montana is ultimately responsible for
land-use allocations on private and state-owned land. Through the
Montana Economic Land Development Act, the state seeks to classify these
lands for specific uses or combinations of uses. Eventually, implemen-
tation of MELDA will result in a statewide land-use plan, which will
promote state land-use objectives, but which will be enforceable at the
local level. MELDA does not specify a planning approach, but Montana's
land-use objectives are clearly stated and reflected in the state's
enforcement mechanisms. Land classification is the privilege of in-
dividual counties and may be accomplished through planning methodologies
of variable refinement. Lands that are not classified by the county
will be classified by the state, presumably in relation to their present
use and in accordance with MELDA policy directives. State and county
land-use plans are enforceable at the state level through taxation.
Proponents whose land-use plans conform to adopted classifications and
advance state land-use policy (e.g., increasing density and land-use
intensity in an urban area or long-term agricultural dedications in
rural areas) are rewarded with preferential assessments and tax exemp-
tions. Conversely, land uses that contravene state policy and are at
variance with classifications are tax-penalized.
In addition to its comprehensive land-management-through-tax-
classification powers, the state also directly regulates certain land
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uses, such as power plants that are built on nonfederal lands. No
planning is specifically associated with this responsibility, but
regulated uses presumably will be evaluated with respect to state and
local plans and land classifications. The enforcement mechanism here is
a certificate of compatibility and necessity.
The state also controls the waters and shoreline of the Tongue
River Reservoir. This facility is intended to enhance agricultural pro-
ductivity in the area, so it is managed for reliability of supply and
maintenance of environmental and water quality. Controls over this
resource include regulation of access and regulation of water use.
Big Horn, Rosebud, and Powder River Counties. These three counties are
empowered to develop and enforce land-use plans on private lands in the
Decker-Bimey Planning Unit. The land-use plans that they adopt may be
accepted as land classifications for the taxation purposes described
above. Their land-use plans may also be enforced through zoning ordi-
nances, which serve as the local counterpart to the state's tax-based,
land-use-policy enforcement mechanism. Zoning variances or special-use
permits may be granted by the counties, but unless the land uses in
question support state land-use policy, county action will not result in
a change in tax status. County zoning is enforceable through police
power.
Indirect Controls
Several governmental entities exercise control over certain func-
tions or resources without regard to specific location. While these
agencies do not have explicit land-management responsibilities, their
actions are influential in allocating land for different uses.
Army Corps of Engineers. The COE regulates impoundments, diversions,
and channel modifications in navigable waterways. Thus, for example,
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on- or off-channel impoundments of Tongue River water for agricultural
or industrial purposes require a permit from the Corps.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA indirectly affects land-
use decisions through the designation of air-quality regions, the is-
suance of permits for airborne and liquid wastes, and the administration
of federal funds for environmental improvement projects (mainly waste-
water treatment).
State of Montana. The state issues environmental permits for most
industrial facilities, in addition to regulating certain land uses,
described above. In addition, by agreement with the federal government,
the state regulates the conduct of surface mining and reclamation opera-
tions on federal lands. While advance planning is neither required nor
implied by their authority, the power to approve or deny permits and to
modify industrial development plans can significantly affect the pattern
of land uses in the Decker-Bimey area.
Yellowstone-Tongue Areawide Planning Organization. The YTAPO is directly
responsible for regional water-quality management planning. The agency
conducts resource inventories and analyses related to water quality,
prepares wastewater management and pollution-control plans for adoption
by constituent local governments, and prepares recommendations for
environmental-quality protection and enhancement for consideration by
local, state, and federal government agencies. The YTAPO does not issue
permits, but its findings have significant, if not controlling, in-
fluence on the permitting and funding decisions of other government
bodies.
Federal and State Courts. The judicial systems of both the federal and
state governments have a pervasive but unheralded influence on land
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uses, particularly in a multijurisdictional, energy-impact area like the
Decker-Birney unit. Judicial interpretations on such issues as surface-
subsurface conflicts, governmental preemption, or aboriginal water
rights can change the ground rules upon which development plans are
based. While it is not traditional for courts to intervene in the
legitimate planning function of other branches or units of government,
they can issue interpretations that affect the ability to implement es-
tablished plans and policies.
External Controls
The management of land uses adjacent to the Decker-Birney unit can
materially affect the suitability and implementability of land-use plans
within the planning area. Notable exogenous influences are the land-
management activities of the Crow and Northern Cheyenne Indians and the
State of Wyoming. Each of these entities has comprehensive land-use-
control authority over its jurisdiction. Using enforceable plans,
ordinances, permits, and regulatory powers, they can allocate land uses
that satisfy policies and objectives developed independently from the
planning processes of the Decker-Birney area. Thus, for example, an
Indian decision to permit surface mining and associated industrializa-
tion and water use on land adjacent to the Decker-Birney unit can seri-
ously affect the implementability of state or BLM plans for wildlife or
watershed management within the Decker-Birney unit.
Classification of Management Systems
As discussed in the previous sections, a number of governmental
entities are engaged in planning, regulating, or otherwise managing land
uses, and the approach to land-use management varies from agency to
agency. No single central agency takes responsibility for all land-use
decisions made in the area, and no agency takes sole responsibility for
coordinating the functions and decisions of other agencies. The alloca-
tion of land for various uses in the Decker-Birney area will depend on a
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relatively complex and highly interrelated system of independent decision-
making bodies. This section describes how the components of this multijur-
isdictional setting might interact in the future and how certain aspects
of their interaction could influence the likelihood of implementing the
BLM's MFP recommendations.
The absence of widespread and intensive mineral development in the
region makes it difficult to imagine whether the variety of planning and
management approaches by many separate agencies prefigures an orderly
pattern of equitable and environmentally sound development or chaos.
The complexity of this multijurisdictional setting may be approached by
classifying the approaches of separate agencies into groups of similar
management systems. Such a grouping is useful for identifying similar,
duplicative, or conflicting roles and for pointing out apparent regula-
tory or administrative voids. Then, in relation to this grouping, the
activities of individual agencies can be characterized as isolated,
parallel, redundant, or opposing. Three types of land management systems
are discussed:
•	comprehensive planning and management of defined, continuous
jurisdictions
•	regulation of specific lands and resources
•	regulation of specific land uses
Comprehensive Management Systems. The comprehensive land-management
concept is used here in reference to a system of planning, control, and
enforcement of all land uses within a defined and relatively continuous
jurisdictions. Typically, the management function has its basis in a
jurisdiction-wide, land-use-planning process. Individual land-use
decisions are either implicitly regulated by advance allocation of areas
for specific uses (such as zoning) or are explicitly regulated by speci-
fic-use permits, variances, or plan amendments. The comprehensive
management systems in and around the Decker-Birney area are:
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•	the State of Montana single-tax land classifications
•	countywide zoning (Rosebud, Powder River, and Big Horn counties)
•	U.S. Forest Service land-use planning in the Ashland Division
of Custer National Forest
•	ordinance making and land-use regulation powers of the Crow
and Northern Cheyenne Indian reservations
Only the state land classifications and Forest Service planning
system are currently in operation. The other agencies are empowered to
control all land uses in their jurisdictions, and all have made some
moves in that direction. The jurisdictions of the State of Montana and
of the three counties do not include federal lands, but are relatively
continuous and surround the federal out-parcels. The state jurisdiction
is mainly conterminous with that of the three counties, but specifically
includes state-owned land that is not subject to county control. The
state's land classifications are supposed to derive from the county
level, and any adopted county land-use plans are supposed to be incor-
porated into the statewide classification program. In the absence of
county activity, the state classifies all lands. State land classifica-
tions are enforceable at the state level through a program of tax sanc-
tions; reclassification (analogous to a zoning variance) incurs a tax
penalty unless it is associated with a county plan amendment and com-
plies with state classification objectives. State classifications
derived from county plans are enforceable at the local level through
zoning or specific-use permits. State classifications in inactive
counties may be adopted at the local level and enforced as described
above. One method of county land-use management that has received some
attention in Powder River County is classification of the entire county
as agricultural land, adoption of that state classification as a single-
district zoning map, and regulation of all uses through specific-use
permits. (Surface-mining permits require a performance contract with
the county government — an unusual and highly focused application of
contract zoning).
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The state and county land-use-regulation powers do not usually
extend to subsurface resources, unless they are owned by state or
private interests. In the Decker-Birney area, most of the mineral
estate is federally owned. Where land under state and county jurisdic-
tion is underlain by federal minerals, land surface development in
connection with mineral development is subject to control through state
and local enforcement mechanisms. It is intended that the interagency
coordinative aspects of the BLM-planning process and of EMARS will make
it possible to resolve in advance the opposing land-use decisions of
federal and other agencies; it is unclear how unresolved, opposing land-
use decisions will be treated.
Aside from boundary disputes (as in contiguous cities with conflict-
ing land-use plans), there is little opportunity for direct conflict
among comprehensive land management systems, where their jurisdictions
are discrete. Thus, for example, it is unlikely that a county zoning
plan would seriously conflict with the implementation of land-use plans
in Custer National Forest. Conflict is more likely where the jurisdic-
tions overlap. The most notable jurisdictional overlaps are between the
state and its counties, and between surface and subsurface jurisdictions
(state and county versus federal). The state and county management
systems are intended to be complementary, with the counties participat-
ing in the formulation of statewide classifications. However, once the
land classifications are adopted, any county-initiated modifications are
subject to state review and approval. The state has developed explicit
objectives and criteria that must be met by any proposed reclassification
If local, land-use-management objectives (which are mutable) are not
closely aligned with the state's objectives (which are cast in statutory
language), there is a potential for state-county conflict over subsequent
proposed land reclassifications. The state has a clear, constitutional
advantage over the counties in matters of legal dispute, and presumably
the state would prevail in a land-classification conflict.
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The land management system of the Forest Service is based on a
land-use-planning process and is enforced through special-use permits.
While coal development on Forest Service lands is administered by another
agency (BLM), the Forest Service has significant influence in deciding
which coal deposits will be produced and has absolute control over
surface land uses that are ancillary to coal development.
The two Indian reservations abutting the Decker-Bimey area are
semiautonomous jurisdictions. The Indian nations have ordinance-making
power and in this regard are similar in their land-management capabili-
ties to an incorporated city or a county government. The Crow nation
has tentatively adopted a land-use zoning ordinance enforceable with
tribal police power. Full utilization of this ordinance implies a
tribal land-use-planning function and an administrative structure for
permits, compliances, and appeals.
Regulation of Specific Lands and Resources. This type of management
system is distinguished from the comprehensive approach by its limited
scope and the geographic discontinuity of its jurisdiction. In the
Decker-Birney area, the one agency in this classification is the BLM.
Strictly speaking, the BLM jurisdiction is limited to the national
resource lands (9 percent of the Decker-Birney surface area) and the
federal mineral estate (88 percent of the subsurface). The national
resource lands are dispersed and consist mainly of small, relatively
isolated parcels. Although the BLM regulates land uses in all of these
parcels through a permit system, the geographic discontinuity of the
land surface makes this management approach responsive rather than
prescriptive, and limits the effectiveness of NRL management in meeting
broader BLM land-use objectives. The federal mineral estate, on the
other hand, is more or less continuous throughout most of the Decker-
Birney area, and the BLM can control the location, timing, and means of
its development. The coal resource has been the subject of intensive
planning and farsighted study; nevertheless, the BLM is not in a position
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to manage all of the land area that will be associated with coal develop-
ment. It can control the use and restoration of the land surface at the
site of a surface mine, and the decision about where the mines will be
goes a long way towards determining future land-use patterns in the
area. It should be remembered, though, that the BLM's control of non-
federal surface land through leasing can be partially or completely
abrogated by the decisions of other governmental bodies. This is to say
that while there is no question that the BLM can make the decision about
where coal development will take place, the issue of whether its deci-
sion is the most effective one depends to a great extent on the decisions
of other governmental units.
More important, perhaps, is the subject of the BLM's influence on
nonmining land uses. The greatest land-use changes in the area are not
likely to be strip mines themselves, but rather the new urban areas,
transportation systems, industrial facilities, and related support
systems that attend mineral development. All these changes will take
place on the land surface, which is largely controlled or controllable
by governmental entities other than the BLM. In deciding which portions
of the federal coal resource would be included in the MFP's mineral
recommendations, the BLM went to great lengths to determine the resource
base and land-use capabilities of lands mostly outside of their juris-
diction. The recommended mineral areas were selected on the basis of
the BLM's judgment that other (nonrecommended) coal resource areas
should be managed for other uses, and in the course of making these
judgments, the BLM identified what the other uses should be. This was
not presumption, but rather a case of making the best of their jurisdic-
tional deficiencies by simulating a comprehensive land-management system.
The fact remains, however, that the BLM's management capability is
not comprehensive, and that decisions regarding most major, new land-use
allocations will be made by others. At the time the MFP was prepared,
only one of the agencies endowed with comprehensive land-management
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authority (the Forest Service) was engaged in that activity. This
situation has changed appreciably in the meantime, and as development of
the coal resource looms closer, it can be expected that the latent regu-
latory capabilities of state, local, and Indian agencies will be more
fully developed. When large-scale coal development begins in earnest,
these other agencies may have adopted plans or other regulatory devices
that will seriously affect the applicability and implementation of the
MFP recommendations.
Regulation of Specific Land Uses. The most common land-management
approach in the Decker-Birney area is the regulation of individual land
uses, generally through a permit procedure. Governments and agencies
with regulatory power are: the State of Montana (in its industrial
siting function), county governments (in their specific regulation of
surface mining), and an impressive number of federal agencies, such as
the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Power Commission, the
Bureau of Reclamation, and the Army Corps of Engineers. The specific-
use-regulation approach to land management does not usually include
planning, although compliance or compatability with local plans is often
a prerequisite to permit issuance. This management approach generally
has its basis in a set of standards or criteria, which are rarely de-
veloped with local or regional objectives in mind. A single facility,
such as a power plant, may require multiple permits and must usually
respond to different and even conflicting standards and criteria. In
jurisdictions that do not have comprehensive land-management systems in
operation, i.e., where there is a regulatory vacuum, this building-
permit approach to land management can have devastating effects on a
jurisdiction's pattern of development, since each major land use is
considered in isolation and without the benefit of an area-wide policy
context. In jurisdictions that have strong, comprehensive land-management
systems, the regulation of specific uses is often redundant in terms of
land-use planning, but useful in terms of environmental protection. If
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the state, local, and Indian comprehensive land management systems were
not seen to be emergent in the Decker-Birney area, there would be reason
for concern over the specific-use permit approach to land management.
In the context of strengthened state and local planning and management,
the specific-use approach provides a valuable additional opportunity for
environmental protection and for increased public-policy input to land-
use decisions.
IMPLEMENTATION OF THE BLM's MFP GUIDELINES IN THE DECKER-BIRNEY AREA
Implementation Mechanisms
The management systems described above serve as mechanisms that are
available to implement the MFP recommendations and to enhance envir-
onmental quality in the Decker-Birney area. The following is a review
of these mechanisms and the types of controls that they include.
Montana Economic Land Development Act (MELDA). This act has the follow-
ing goals:
1.	To protect prime agricultural land as it is the backbone
of today's Montana economy and the heart of tomorrow's need
for a well-fed and healthy economy, keeping Montana's posi-
tion, in the future, as the breadbasket of the nation;
2.	To encourage urban growth in an inward pattern, rather than a
sprawl development, yet through the use of open space provide
a greater percentage of open land and a higher density on the
developed lands than the urban area;
3.	To guide industrial and commercial development in Montana;
4.	To develop a program which is controlled and directed on a
local level, with the actual land use direction and classi-
fication left wherever possible with the local land owner; and
5.	In general, to provide for Montana a land use directional
policy which will not regulate our future but rather motivate
it into a pattern of desirable economic growth based on the
development of private enterprise.*
*The Montana Economic Land Development Act, EN.84-7501, Section 1,
Chapter S49, L.1975.
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This act develops a land classification system for all of the land
within the state, using the following categories: agricultural, recrea-
tional, residential," commercial, industrial, and open space. Once the
land has been classified, it is managed by the governing body to en-
courage its continued use in that classification.
This management system utilizes tax incentives for those who comply
and tax penalties for those who do not comply with the land uses speci-
fied in the classification system. Incentives are in the form of tax
reductions for the period of time during which the land is dedicated to
the specified use. This management system also includes tax incentives
and penalties for the location of specified uses and their densities..
This system is, in effect, a highly effective, statewide, land-use
management system.
Countywide Zoning. Countywide zoning within the Decker-Bimey area has
not proven to be an effective tool for implementing the MFP recommenda-
tions and enhancing environmental quality. For example, under this
system, surface mining would be considered a special use and would
require a special-use permit. The discretion of policy makers in grant-
ing these special-use permits for surface mining provides the potential
for a form of "spot" zoning by contract.
Comprehensive Management of Exempted Jurisdictions. Lands belonging to
the Indian nations and national forest lands are exempted from the land
use management systems of other public agencies.
Indian Lands. The Indian lands are regulated by their autonomous
governments, which regulate property within tribal jurisdictions. The
Indians' right of self-government has been consistently protected by the
courts and has gone through several periods of organization by treaty
and legislation. In relation to the implementation of the MFP recom-
mendations and the enhancement of environmental quality, the Indian
nations prepare their own land-use plans and implementation ordinances.
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In addition, in leasing their lands to the mining companies, the Indians
can put certain restrictions into the leases, thereby controlling land
use activities within their lands.
U.S. Forest Service. The U.S. Forest Service is responsible for:
•	management, protection, and development of the national
forests and national grasslands
•	cooperation with state and private forest owners, wood pro-
cessors, and public agencies to improve and extend the nation's
forest resources
•	research needed for the above and for forest and rangelands in
general
The Forest Service's planning system involves a series of steps
beginning with the identification of national needs and objectives and
ending with plans for managing specific units of land for specific
purposes. This planning system includes national environmental programs
and budgets, area and regional guides, land-use plans for national
forests, and plans for units of lands smaller in size than a national
forest. Under this planning system specific land-use plans are developed
in order to manage National forest lands in a manner consistent with its
objectives and guidelines. This planning and management system is an
effective mechanism for the development of land-use plans and controls
on national forest lands.
BLM Regulations of Specific Lands and Resources. The BLM's jurisdiction
over the surface of national resource lands and over the federal mineral
estate provides the BLM with effective and strong mechanisms for imple-
menting the MFP recommendations in a manner that will enhance the envi-
ronmental quality of these lands.
Regulation of Specific Uses
Various public agencies, such as the State of Montana, local counties,
and federal agencies (including the Environmental Protection Agency, the
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Federal Power Commission), have the authority to regulate specific uses
within the Decker-Birney area. This authority can be used effectively
to implement the MFP recommendations for the Decker-Birney area. The
agencies and the uses that they are authorized to regulate are:
State of Montana. The state regulates surface mining and the location
of energy facilities. In addition, the state generally regulates these
activities, some also being controlled by local agencies:
•
building codes and restrictions
•
zoning
•
fire inspection
•
water pollution and sewage
•
water use and supply
•
geophysical exploration
•
agriculture
•
transportation
•
commercial and industrial uses
•
food processing and service
•
hunting and wildlife
•
lodging and camping
•
natural resource development
•
road use and fuels
•
solid and hazardous wastes
•
subdivisions
•
utilities
•
weather modifications
In addition to the above, the state has special land use and acti-
vity restrictions for activities to be located in these special areas:
•	airport zones
•	antiquity sites
•	conservation districts
•	floodways or floodplains
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•	forest areas
•	highway rights-of-way
•	lake shores
•	open space and natural areas
•	stream beds, stream banks, and wetlands
Counties. Within the context of the Decker-Birney MFP, the counties
could regulate surface-mining activities.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA regulates air and water
quality and establishes standards for these functional areas.
Federal Power Commission. The FPC regulates the location of power
plants and transmission lines.
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. BuRec regulates water improvements for ir-
rigation and power, except where this is done by state agencies.
Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps is responsible for navigable water-
ways, and it regulates water improvements, channel modifications, and
flood control operations for reservoirs on navigable streams.
KEY ISSUES AFFECTING IMPLEMENTATION OF THE MFP RECOMMENDATIONS
A number of major issues will affect the implementation of the MFP
recommendations. These include:
•	governmental preemption and the problem of dealing with con-
flicting or inconsistent regulations at the local, state, and
federal levels
•	property rights — surface and subsurface ownership conflicts
•	Indian water rights — local needs versus mining needs
•	Indian land-use powers — local powers versus national energy
needs
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• litigation — the role of the courts in relation to the MFP
recommendations
Each of these issues is discussed below.
Governmental Preemption
A major problem affecting the implementation of the MFP recommen-
dations is dealing with conflicting or inconsistent regulations at the
local, state, and federal levels. For example, the federal government
may institute a program to regulate mining procedures, and state or
local authorities may supplement this program by enacting their own,
more rigorous programs. The state or local programs may go far beyond
the scope of the regulations envisioned by the federal government. The
implied or direct powers of the local authorities to regulate an acti-
vity may have a substantive rather than a procedural effect. The mining
industry may challenge these more rigorous local restrictions as being
prejudicial to their industry by minimizing effective production, inter-
fering with interstate commerce, or causing an unconstitutional preemp-
tion of state-to-local, federal-to-state, or federal-to-local statutory
authority.
Montana provides a good example of the problems of articulating
conflicting interests under the federal system. Because of the simi-
larities among and the urgency of federal, state, and local interests in
fostering multilevel land and resource control and because of the diffi-
culty in ascertaining when some of these controls have progressed from
supplemental to conflicting interests, the chances are great that the
courts will soon act on several landmark cases to decide the proper
limits of federal, state, and local interests.
Environmental protection is one area in which many conflicts are
expected. The federal government has already established certain cri-
teria in this area.* It has also specifically allowed the state to
*Nationwide strip-mining reclamation regulations were promulgated by Secre-
tary of the Interior Thomas Kleppe in June 1976. The BLM's MFP for the
Decker-Birney unit also includes a number of standards for environmental
protection.
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regulate the use of its environment and the mining industry. Such state
regulations may go beyond the control the federal government had envi-
sioned giving to the state; the legislative history of these federal
acts must be studied to determine if this is the case. The national
importance of the coal industry in the United States will be considered
in the court's decision and in future legislation in the Congress. The
urgent demand for energy in the U.S. may be considered as conflicting
with the effective environmental protection of energy-resource areas and
may suggest that less prohibitory standards be adopted for the mining
industry. In other words, some policy standards developed or recognized
by the judiciary or Congress might be used to weigh the variations
between national welfare and local welfare in determining priorities.
The question of which level of government has the power to regulate
a specific activity arises with increasing frequency in federal-state-
local conflicts; the difficulty in determining the autonomy of one level
of government from the others is the core of a problem that will face
mining operators. No clear-cut establishment of judicial rulings on
preemptory governmental authority in such matters can be found. The
courts will probably look to the stated and implied objectives of
higher statutory authority, the objectives of the conflicting authority,
and the effects that these conflicts could have. The key question for
this project is whether the Montana laws will be viewed by the courts as
supplemental to federal law and consistent with the scope of any federal
enabling act, or whether they will be viewed as preempting the power of
the federal government and thus interfering with interstate commerce.
Local control of land use is different from the outright control of
the environment by state law. Local control involves the exercise of
local governmental authority through the enactment of zoning ordinances,
which may exert a direct control over the mining industry. In order to
invalidate a zoning ordinance, a property owner must do more than place
the validity of the ordinance in doubt; he must show that the ordinance
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has no relation to the public health, safety, morals, or general welfare
of his community or that it imposes a specific and unreasonable hardship
on him or her. Since there is no set formula to determine where regula-
tions end and where property rights begin, any antizoning argument must
emphasize the unreasonableness or confiscatory nature of a zoning re-
striction — not simply its vague impact on people's living arrangements
or on town growth patterns. The courts will weigh the benefit to the
community against the detriment to the individual or industry that the
ordinance affects.
Points that the courts have considered in weighing zoning provi-
sions that regulate mining are the temporary nature of the mining use,
the economic value of the property to the plaintiff (the homeowner or
rancher), the previous condition of the land, the distance from the mine
to developed areas ("not within 1500 feet of a dwelling" has been used
as a criterion for mining activities), and the proximity of the land to
preexisting operating mines. These criteria have been used against
zoning ordinances in Illinois and Kentucky to uphold strip-mining activ-
ities in areas that are more heavily populated than Montana. If the
courts base their decisions solely on the local zoning issue, the surface-
mine operators could well overturn a local zoning ordinance in the
sparsely populated, relatively unurbanized areas of proposed operation.
A local government may not have the power to regulate mining opera-
tions that take place within municipal boundaries if the industry is
considered by the courts to be a state rather than a municipal concern.
In addition, the language of a state statute that regulates strip-mining
activities may give exclusive jurisdiction over all coal mining opera-
tions to the state or to a state administrative body.
In deciding local zoning disputes, the courts may consider the eco-
nomic effects on the property owner and the community, as well as the
physical effects of strip mining on the specific parcel of land in
question. The courts may also consider the aesthetic effects of strip
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mining. Courts generally have held that aesthetic considerations alone
are not a sufficient basis for upholding a zoning ordinance. This view,
however, is being undermined by decisions that consider aesthetics such
an important factor that it alone justifies the zoning. This is prob-
ably due to the courts' increasing awareness of the impact of mining on
the environment.
Surface and Subsurface Property Rights
In Montana and other western states, a large portion of the strip-
pable coal has been severed from the surface, either by reservation or
grant, in a manner that has left most agricultural surface owners with
no ownership of the coal under their lands. The vast majority of mineral
rights affected by this severance are retained by the federal government,
although mineral rights are also retained by the State of Montana,
Indian tribes, and some individuals.
The issue of the owner of a severed subsurface estate using the
surface for the purpose of strip mining and conducting associated activ-
ities to the detriment of the surface owner has been questioned. First,
the doctrine of the mineral estate does not take precedence over the
surface estate and, second, the emergence of state and federal legisla-
tion that requires environmental and operational planning and protection
makes it extremely important for lessees to have complete access to the
surface areas.
To ensure protection for the owners of surface land and other
interested parties in a mining area, the Montana Strip Mining and Recla-
mation Act of 1975* requires that a plan be submitted to state authori-
ties showing the location of the proposed mine, access to the area, and
the names and addresses of the owners of record of (1) the affected
*Section 10-1039(2).
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surface area, (2) the area within one-half mile of the affected area,
and (3) all subsurface minerals in the lands in question. Further-
more, written permission must be given by the surface owner before any
surface disturbance (e.g., road building) is made.*
i
The complex property-ownership pattern of southeastern Montana is
characterized by multiple surface ownership by federal, state, and
Indian-nation owners, as well as by some individual owners. An equally
varied subsurface-ownership pattern exists with mineral rights, which
are mostly controlled by the federal government and Indian nations.
Starting with the Homestead Act of 1862, and through succeeding
acts, the federal government granted parcels of land to anyone willing
to work them. The original grants gave to settlers the surface and
mineral rights to the land, but the federal government eventually began
to reserve the coal and other minerals. The result is that there is a
scattered surface-ownership pattern in the homesteaded areas, with the
federal government controlling the right to mine the coal and other
minerals on land for which it has no surface rights. The federal govern-
ment has recognized the rights of the Indians to the minerals on their
reservations by express treaties and has granted ownership of mineral
rights in certain areas of Montana to the state and to the railroads.
This scattered ownership pattern complicates coal operations in various
ways. A reasonably large contiguous area is required to make mining
economically feasible. This would require combining rights to enough
land with adequate coal reserves to support a mining unit and obtaining
the necessary rights-of-way. The problem of costly litigation and
injunctions against proceeding with the mining operations can be avoided
by leasing or purchasing the surface parcels within the area of opera-
tions .
Leasing requirements with the Indian nations have been considerably
simplified by a recent Supreme Court decision. Under the Northern
Cheyenne Allotment Act of June 3, 1926, members of the Cheyenne tribe
were allotted lands for individual ownership and given vested rights to
*Sections 15-1302, 15-1303.
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the minerals, the ownership of which was to vest in June 1976. In the
Northern Cheyenne Tribe vs. William Hollowbreast, et al., No. 75-145,
May 19, 1976, the Supreme Court ruled that the act of July 24, 1968, 82
Stat. 424, which terminated the grant to allottees and reserved the
mineral rights in perpetuity for the benefit of the tribe, was consti-
tutional and did not constitute a taking of property without due process
of the law. This gives the tribe the sole bargaining and leasing power
of the area; this is easier to deal with than several hundred separate
owners.
Two methods for obtaining the surface rights needed for coal mining
are purchase and surface leases. A surface lease is a contractual
arrangement between the owner of the coal, or someone with an interest
in the coal, and a lessee who wants to mine the lessor's coal. The
lease should give the lessee the right to explore the lands for coal and
the right to extract coal from the premises. If coal is to be extracted
by strip mining, it is absolutely essential that the lessee obtain as a
part of the lease broad rights to use the surface of the leased lands,
roads, and water sources. A lease may authorize disruption of the
lessor's groundwater supplies and thereby protect the lessee from a
claim for such disruption occurring beyond the actual mine site.* A
lessor may require the lessee, in a lease of this magnitude, to be
responsible for any disruption occurring beyond the actual mine site.
Many firms have attempted to acquire surface rights by the outright
purchase of lands overlying coal deposits. The contract should specify
that the lands are purchased for the purpose of strip mining of coal and
conducting other activities pertaining to strip mining; both activities
should be explained. If the parties decide to lease the land back to
the seller to farm until it is needed for mining operations, Montana
imposes a 10-year limitation on agricultural leases.
*Such a claim would be pursuant to Montana Rev. Code Ann. 50-1055
(Supp. 1974).
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The coal-bed owner who has surface rights has the right to remove
as much of the overlying stratum of the leased surface as is necessary
to work the coal and the right to use space to transport the coal, but
the mining operations are still subject to the state or federal regula-
tions concerning environmental protection and reclamation. If specified
protection conditions cannot be met, the BLM district manager or the
state agency official may restrict or prohibit operations on any part of
the area covered by the permit or lease. An exploration plan and a
mining plan providing for the protection of the area must be filed by
the operator and must be approved by the BLM district manager before
beginning mining or surface-disturbing exploration activities. Under
certain circumstances, such as when the surface is owned by the state
and is subject to state law but the subsurface area is federally owned,
or when scattered and mixed ownership patterns cause overlap in the
jurisdictions in control, both federal and state rules could apply.'
Indian Water Rights
The problem of Indian water rights is one component of the conflict
of rights in the area. In southeastern Montana, water is necessary for
surface mining operations, power generation, irrigation, watering of
livestock, and recreation. The effects of the operation of surface
mines in this area will depend on the mines' proximity to water and the
amount of water used on the Indian lands.
When the federal government creates a national forest or an Indian
reservation, it reserves sufficient water to serve the needs of the
area of the grant. Under treaties between the U.S. and the Indians, the
right to the use of water was reserved for the Indians, at least to the
extent necessary to irrigate and use these lands. These rights continue
to exist against the U.S. and its grantees as well as against the state
and its grantees. This theory of reserved rights, known as the Winters
Doctrine,* holds in essence that when Indian or other federal reservations
*After Winters vs. the U.S., 207 U.S. 564 (1908).
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are established from the public domain, water rights sufficient to
fulfill the needs or purposes of the reservation are reserved from
sources that traverse, underlie, or border upon the reservation to the
extent necessary to support the proposed activities on the reservation.
The priority of this right extends from the date of the reservation or,
in the case of the Indian reservations, since time immemorial. Unlike
appropriative rights, reserved rights may exist although no water is
beneficially used. For example, if a stream provides only water enough
to meet the needs of the Indians, the Indians are entitled to the entire
amount. Also, surface flows of many streams depend on full or near-full
underground aquifers that connect with the surface flows; any use of
these reserves, whether on or off the reservation, that prevents the
Indians' use of water to meet their needs will not be allowed.
The Indians in the area control large (but hard to quantify) amounts
of water. This could cause difficulties for mining operations in plan-
ning potential resource development and in calculating the related
costs. Estimates will have to be made of the quantity of water to be
used at the surface mining sites, of the approximate water needs of the
Indians, and of how the former will affect the latter. The rate of in-
crease in Indian water use could be assumed over the length of the lease
to ensure a margin of safety for continued mining operations.
The rights of the landowners who share a common groundwater source
with an Indian reservation are also affected by whether the land on
which the mining operations are to take place is land leased from the
Indians. If so, the land is still subject to control by the tribe.
While lessees of land situated within an Indian reservation are allowed
to divert as much of the water flowing through a reservation as their
predecessors in interest, the lessees are not permitted to use more than
that prescribed amount. After meeting the reservation's needs, and
after allowing enough water for irrigation, the tribe is responsible for
allocating or leasing remaining rights. This could create problems if
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all the other land uses (industry, mining, or recreation) could not
operate with the remaining water; however, the mine operators now appear
to be the sole lessees of the leased lands. Additionally, the leases
with the Indians could specify that the needs of the mining operations
must be met before those of any other consumer and that no thermal
discharge or pollution of any stream would result in any compensation to
any other lessee.
If the mining lands are adjacent to the Indian reservation, the
streams may be used and the groundwater tapped only to the extent of the
basin's safe yield and pursuant to state law. As time passes and the
Indians or the federal government put these waters to use, claims made
under state law that have low priorities will be reduced to the differ-
ence between the safe yield and the amount pumped by the Indians or the
federal government. State law, in this case, will determine the priori-
ties between the non-Indians or nonfederal water users and allocate any
remaining amounts of water among them. If the state does not deal with
this type of problem in a manner that is fair to the Indians, or if
conflicts develop, the Secretary of the Interior may intervene to ensure
the just and equal distribution of irrigation water to the Indians.
It is apparent that the use of water for mining operations will
have some effect on the Indians' use of their land. If the mining oper-
ations are upstream from the Indian reservation or if drawing water from
a basin affects the streams flowing into the reservation, the effects
will be pronounced. How the thermal discharges will affect the area —
how they will interfere with the Indians' use of the area and with
irrigation of their lands — is one of the principal uncertainties that
the mine operators will have to deal with. If there appears to be a
conflict between the Indians and the mining operators over the water,
the courts can quantify the amount of water that the Indians would
otherwise have used and investigate the possibilities of tapping other
on-reservation water sources to compensate for the loss from the pol-
luted areas.
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In summary, an analysis must be made concerning the lands the
operator will use. If the lands are leased from the Indians, additional
payments will probably have to be made on waters used beyond what would
be used for irrigation purposes. (This issue has never been before the
courts, but the tone of recent Supreme Court decisions has been defin-
itely pro-Indian.) Also, regardless of the classification of the land,
care must be taken to meet the needs of the Indians for the duration of
the lease. This would require, among other things, careful analysis of
water use at the proposed mining sites and the effect of the thermal
discharges on the Indians' water use. It will also have to be deter-
mined if there are any alternative on-reservation sources that the
Indians could use to satisfy their needs.
Indian Land-Use Powers
The General Leasing Act of August 9, 1955, provides, among other
things that:
Any restricted Indian lands, whether tribally or individually
owned, may be leased by the Indian owners, with the approval of the
Secretary of the Interior, for public, religious, educational,
recreational, residential, or business purposes, including the
development or utilization of natural resources in connection with
operations under such leases, for grazing purposes, and for those
farming purposes which require the making of a substantial invest-
ment in the improvement of the land for the production of special-
ized crops as determined by said Secretary. All leases so granted
shall be for a term of not to exceed twenty-five years, excepting
leases for grazing purposes, which shall be for a term of not to
exceed ten years.
The act exemplifies the Indians' right of self-government, which
has been consistently protected by the courts and which has gone through
several periods of organization by treaty and legislation. Congress has
been occupied with more pressing national affairs, and the states have
been precluded from exercising powers of government in connection with
Indian affairs. The result has been that government control is exerted
by the Indians themselves or by the officials of the Department of the
Interior.
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The course of judicial decisions on the nature of Indian tribal
powers has been marked by adherence to three fundamental principles:
•	an Indian tribe possessed all the powers of a sovereign state
•	conquest rendered the tribe subject to the legislative power
of the U.S., and in substance terminated the external powers
of sovereignty of the tribe
•	the internal powers were subject to qualification by treaties
and by express legislation of Congress, while leaving many
powers of internal sovereignty to the Indian tribes and their
duly constituted organized government
Tribal powers of self-government are now considered to be municipal
in character. In the earliest days of the republic, the Indian tribes
were recognized as distinct political communities and were permitted to
exercise powers of self-government — not necessarily by virtue of any
delegation of powers from the federal government, but rather by reason
of their original tribal sovereignty. Treaties and federal statutes
have sometimes been viewed by the courts as limitations upon those
original tribal powers; the rule has been accepted that Indian law is
binding, except when modified by positive federal enactments.
While the federal government has limited the powers of the Indian
tribes, the Indians, for the most part, can regulate property within the
jurisdiction of the tribe. This power was not granted by Congress,
but was an inherent power of a limited sovereignty that was nullified by
federal action. An Indian tribe is, however, subject to the United
States Constitution in the same sense that the City of San Francisco is.
The power the Indians have over their leased lands overlaps with the
power of the federal government; this is exemplified by the federal
controls and regulations pertaining to the environment on these leased
lands. In a situation with as much impact as the administration of
energy resources, the Indians would most likely be prevented from con-
trolling land uses beyond the scope of the lease, by congressional
legislation or by the courts' considering such moves as confiscatory and
interfering with interstate commerce.
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The Indians, on the other hand, may have put certain restrictions
into their leases — restrictions which were approved by the BIA. One
restriction could be that the use of water by the mining companies
depends on the Indians' needs and the amount the Indians allocate
to the mining company. This allocation would be based to some extent on
the mining companies' needs, but if these needs were to change or if
thermal discharges had a more deleterious effect than anticipated, the
Indians could control the land use by obtaining an injunction. In a
case of this sort, the courts would probably favor the Indians. The
needs of the mining companies and the Indians would be considered, as
would any alternative approach to the problem that would allow mining
operations to continue. Royalties to the Indians could be increased or
the Indians could find an alternative solution to the problem by using
resources from other parts of the reservation. The added impact caused
by the federal environmental control regulations should be considered by
the courts; there is no clear-cut precedent as to how the courts will
rule.
Litigation
In the past few years, several proposals have been made to amend
the U.S. Constitution to provide, in various forms, a constitutional
right to a healthy environment. A number of federal cases have con-
sidered claims that such a constitutional right already existed by
virtue of the fifth, ninth, and fourteenth amendments, but no federal
court has yet accepted the proposition that such constitutional rights
exist. Recently, this sort of argument has been made less frequently in
environmental litigation.
The citizen can bring action if pollution or degradation is a
public nuisance (as that term is defined in case law), and if the citi-
zen has suffered special damages, or if the state permits an action
without proof of special damage.
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Regarding pollution or degradation that can be considered a nuis-
ance, a state has the power under common law to bring criminal or civil
action to abate the nuisance, even if it arose outside the state's
borders. If the state refuses to sue, the following alternatives may
apply:
•	there may be a statute allowing the citizen to sue in his own
name or on behalf of the state
•	there may be a common-law theory that the right that the state
sues to vindicate is really the right of the citizen to a
clean environment, and he or she can sue in his or her own
name
•	the state, by refusing to sue, may be violating the citizen's
civil right by the inaction, so that he or she can sue both
the state and the polluter
The strongest case illustrating a common-law right to sue in the
absence of a statute is the case of Alameda Conservation Association vs.
California.* In this case, four individuals who owned property from one
to six miles away from San Francisco Bay were found to have the right to
enjoin a salt company from filling the bay. Their basis for the action
was that the threatened bay fill would injure fish and wildlife and
would affect the climate around them. The case rests on a general right
to a clean environment, and the right of a property owner to claim
injury to his or her property by environmental degradation anywhere that
makes his or her property less valuable because of climatological changes.
However, it should be noted that the relative damages to the salt com-
pany were small and the possibility of finding another fill was finan-
cially feasible.
The courts act as a check on administrative agencies in ascertain-
ing whether the proper procedural and substantive safeguards and rules
have been adhered to before an operation of large magnitude, such as a
mining operation, is allowed. The Administrative Procedure Act** pro-
vides that a "reviewing court shall . . . hold unlawful and set aside
*437 F2d 1087 (9th Cir. 1971).
**5 USC 706 (1964 ed., Supp. V).
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agency action, findings, and conclusions" found not to meet six separate
standards. In all cases, agency action must be set aside if the action
was arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in
accordance with the law, or if the action failed to meet statutory,
procedural, or constitutional requirements. In certain narrow, speci-
fically limited situations, the agency action can be set aside if the
action was not supported by substantial evidence or was unwarranted by
the facts. This does not mean that a court can ignore an agency's
rulings and come up with its own decision, but that the court should
decide whether the agency correctly discharged its duties by considering
all relevant factors and has based its considerations on substantial
evidence. The court should not consider the desirability of the result,
or attempt to substitute its judgment for that of the commission.
Unless gross incompetence on the part of the agency is shown, the court
may be expected at most to issue a temporary injunction until the un-
resolved issues have been reconsidered by the agency involved. If the
agency does not have the power to do what it proposes to do, the court
will protect the plaintiff until Congress grants specific authority to
the agency to continue operating in the same manner.
Before a preliminary injuction will be granted by a court, the
plaintiff must show that the failure to grant the preliminary injunction
will result in irreparable harm for which there is no adequate legal
remedy. This appears to be the situation in any action that would arise
concerning the strip-mining activities in Montana. However, when grant-
ing preliminary injunctions in environmental suits against federal
agencies, many courts have indicated that before such relief will be
granted there must be some indication that the plaintiff will be suc-
cessful when the case is tried on its merits. Unless it is reasonably
suspected that the plaintiff will succeed, no temporary injunction will
be given. In these cases, courts cannot revoke licenses or permits, but
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they can force the agency to review its procedural policies in light of
strong public and governmental feeling, or they can issue an injunction
until certain prerequisites have been met.
Several defenses exist that might be used in the face of litigation
and judicial review by the courts. One important defense is the ques-
tion of ripeness. Ripeness relates to whether the administrative acti-
vity has progressed to a po-int where it is ready for review by the
court. Agencies are protected from judicial interference until an
administrative decision has been formalized and its effects felt in a
concrete way by the challenging parties.
Another defense that can be used by the defendent in a suit is that
the plaintiff who is bringing the action has waited an unreasonably long
time before starting the action. This delay results in prejudice against
that defendant in the form of large economic losses, which could have
been avoided if the suit had been brought at an earlier time.
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JUSTIFICATION FOR MONITORING SYSTEM
¥1
MONITORING SYSTEM FOR THE
DECKER-BIRNEY PLANNING UNIT
Implementation of the multiple land uses proposed or envisioned
for the Decker-Birney Planning Unit would cause several changes in the
physical, biological, and socioeconomic environment of the region. The
greatest impact would result from coal mining and related increases in
population. Other land uses under consideration include increasing
agricultural productivity, oil and gas exploration, timber and forage
production, and recreation development. These land uses are being care-
fully and systematically evaluated to ensure that their environmental and
socioeconomic impacts do not exceed their anticipated benefits. Certain
impacts can be predicted with reasonable accuracy before they occur, and
in some instances appropriate mitigating measures can be implemented to
reduce the impact substantially. Because of the many variables (such as
those involving housing, employment, meterology, geology, hydrology, and
biology) and the complexity of the relationships among these variables,
the magnitude of the actual or anticipated impacts cannot be adequately
determined during the environmental-evaluation phase of the proposed
land-use project. Therefore, a program for monitoring selected key
environmental and socioeconomic parameters is an important component of
large-scale development, such as the proposed coal mining projects in
the Decker-Birney Planning Unit.
While coal mines, power plants, and the like may be individually
monitored for certain parameters pursuant to a specific-permit program,
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it is uncommon for radical changes in population, housing, public ser-
vice demands, industrial productivity, or urban land-use intensity to be
followed so closely. Yet these socioeconomic effects can, taken together,
be of greater consequence to the individuals and communities involved
than incremental degradations of air or water quality. In the same vein,
the synergistic or cumulative impacts from multiple projects may approach
natural or biological thresholds that are not perceptible at the individ-
ual project level. These notions suggest that a regional impact-monitor-
ing system should be very broad in scope, broader perhaps than the
purview of any existing institution. The monitoring system described in
this section relies on the participation of several government agencies
and members of the public to attain the perspective and integration
appropriate to the complexity of the problem.
OBJECTIVE
The objective of the monitoring program is to detect adverse changes
or impacts, and to initiate mitigating steps to reduce or eliminate the
adverse impact.
APPROACH
A desirable monitoring program should include carefully planned
procedures for data collection and analysis and a comprehensive manage-
ment system to evaluate the results efficiently and to make appropriate
recommendations. Many procedures for data collection and analysis have
been suggested for the environmental resources that may be affected by
large-scale projects. Some of these procedures have been suggested in
relation to monitoring nuclear power plants,* but are often applicable
*Northwest Laboratories and Columbus Laboratories, "Environmental Impact
Monitoring of Nuclear Power Plants," Source Book of Monitoring Methods,
Vols. 1 and 2, February 1975.
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to other projects involving various degrees of environmental disturbances.
The Environmental Protection Agency has made a considerable effort to
monitor air and water quality; hence, methods for measuring various
aspects of these two environmental components are quite well documented.
The monitoring of aquatic and terrestrial ecology and of socioeconomic
components has received considerably less emphasis; as a result, methods
are less precise or are not statistically valid. The monitoring of
impacts on socioeconomic conditions that result from a major project has
been particularly lacking. This absence of appropriate socioeconomic
monitoring methods is related to the complexity of this subject and to
the fairly recent consideration of impacts on socioeconomic conditions.
While programs have been proposed or are currently in progress in
various areas of the United States to monitor specific aspects of the
environment (the changes in the turbidity of a stream or the concentra-
tion of NO^ in the atmosphere, for example), the establishment and opera-
tion of monitoring management systems have received much less attention.
Such a system should coordinate the many specific environmental monitor-
ing tasks conducted or supervised by various federal and state agencies,
carefully evaluate the conclusions from each task, review the adequacy
of the methods, and formulate decisions or recommendations concerning
any significant increases in an adverse environmental impact. This sec-
tion of this report describes a proposed environmental monitoring system
for the land-use projects envisioned for the Decker-Birney Planning Unit
and places particular emphasis on the management aspect of such a
monitoring system.
The purpose of this proposed monitoring system is regularly to measure
appropriate environmental parameters in the Decker-Birney area in order
to detect the occurrence or accumulation of any unacceptable impacts
resulting from exploitation of the various resources. Such unacceptable
impacts may necessitate some type of action, such as mitigation, compen-
sation, or project modification. The following attributes were consid-
ered in developing a monitoring system:
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•	All significantly impacted resources should be monitored
•	The data management aspect should be an integral part of
the monitoring system — it should not be developed after
collection of the data
•	Review procedures should be incorporated into the system
•	The knowledge and experience of experts should be incorporated
into the system
•	An organizational framework should provide for a smooth working
relationship among the affected government agencies
•	An annual report should be published detailing the findings and
recommendations
•	A method for periodic public review and input should be incor-
porated into the system
•	A staff function should be created to lend continuity and sus-
tained technical supervision to the system
RECOMMENDED MONITORING SYSTEM
The recommended system consists of a series of logical, step-by-step
procedures (Figure 2) that begin with identifying the proposed land uses
and end with publishing an annual monitoring report. The system is
cyclical and is not actually completed when the annual report is published.
The system is designed so that data acquisition and evaluation continue
until it is clear whether or not significant environmental changes are
accumulating or anticipated.
The main element of the system is a monitoring committee. The mem-
bership would be drawn from agencies, organizations, and individuals who
have an interest in, responsibility for, or information about land uses
or natural resources in the region. The Bureau of Land Management should
be the lead agency for the management of the monitoring system and should
initiate formation of the committee. The recommendation is based on the
amount of BLM-administered land that is involved and on the agency's
orientation toward multiple-use resource planning. In addition, the
district director of the BLM is in the best position to initiate the
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Public Comments
to Annual Report
MC Publishes
Annual Report
List Proposed
Land Uses
MC Modifies
Monitoring Program
MC Reviews
Entire Program
I
MC Formulates
Recommendations
MC Determines Significance
of Environmental and
Socioeconomic Changes
List Affected
Resources
X
Select Appropriate
Monitoring Committee (MC)
MC Identifies
Probable Impacts
MC Selects
Variables to Monitor
Experts Advise
Experts Advise
i
MC Chooses
Methods

Experts Advise

Contractors Collect,


Reduce, and
4—
Q/A
Evaluate Data


Figure 2. MAJOR STEPS OF RECOMMENDED MONITORING SYSTEM
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monitoring cycle, due to his knowledge of and participation in major land-
use decisions in the area.
It is further recommended that the staff of the Yellowstone-Tongue
Areawide Planning Organization serve as the technical staff for the
committee. This suggestion is made on the basis of YTAPO's specific
interest and experience in environmental monitoring in the Decker-Bimey
area. The duties of the staff would include doing research, providing
technical information to the committee, supervising subcontractors hired
by the committee, compiling and analyzing monitoring-network data, and
preparing reports as directed by the committee.
A qualified BLM employee should be designated as the director (or
other suitable title) of the monitoring program; a YTAPO counterpart
should be designated as staff leader. The director should initiate the
program by identifying proposed land uses and the resources that such
uses might affect, so that a monitoring committee can be appropriately
selected. The monitoring committee would then act as the decision-
making body, with responsibility for the orientation and operation of
the monitoring program. The identification of proposed land uses and
affected resources, the formation of the monitoring committee, and a
discussion of remaining key steps of the monitoring program are pre-
sented below.
Identifying Proposed Land Uses
A logical step with which to begin formulating a monitoring system
is to identify the anticipated land uses in the Decker-Bimey Planning
Unit. These possible land uses were preliminarily identified in the MFP
and, if implemented, could cause significant changes in the physical,
biological, and socioeconomic resources of the region. Coal mining and
related development, including community expansion, will have the largest
impact on the available resources. Increases in the production of
agricultural crops, timber, and forage; the exploration for and development
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Table 5. SELECTED EXAMPLES THAT ILLUSTRATE THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PROPOSED LAND USES,
POTENTIAL IMPACTS, KEY PARAMETERS, AND METHODS
Proposed
Land Use
Potential Impact
Key Parameters
Methods
MINING
Loss of vegetative
productivity
Number of acres
Percent ground
cover
Pounds of vegeta-
tion/acre
Aerial photography; ground measurements
Aerial photography; line interceptions;
plant diameters
Stem lengths; harvesting; capacitance
meter
Disruption of
surface water
Flow rates
Dissolved oxygen
Content
Turbidity
Surface floats; dyes; cross-sectional
measurements and current
Winkler method; D.O. meter
Turbidity meter; Secchi disc
Housing shortage
Building permits
issued
Vacancy rates
Chamber of Commerce
Mobile home permits
issued
County records
Post office, local realty associations
County records
School overcrowding
Available capacity
vs. enrollment
Age structure of
new residents
Student-teacher
ratio
School district records
Community census, employee records,
school district records
School district records
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of oil and gas; and the development of recreation facilities are also
envisioned as land uses in the planning unit. See Table 5.
It is important for the committee to be aware of the interconnected-
ness of land uses, and to account for the causal chain of events resulting
from a single land-use decision. For example, consideration of an export
coal mine would initially imply land-use allocations and associated im-
pacts related to the coal mine itself, to rail transportation facilities,
and to housing needs for a few hundred people. But these land uses can
precipitate requirements for additional resource commitments, such as
aggregate and fill for railroad construction, or sewage-treatment
facilities for a new population. As the scale of proposed activities
grows, so also will the chain of land uses grow longer and more inter-
related. Therefore, the range of influence will reach beyond the Decker-
Birney Unit. For example, socioeconomic impacts may be experienced in
Sheridan, Wyoming, and in Hardin and Broadus, Montana, and elsewhere.
Listing Affected Resources
A variety of the significant resources will be affected by implemen-
tation of the several land uses proposed for the Decker-Birney Planning
Unit. Some of the proposed land uses Ccoal mining, for example) would
affect many of the major resources, while other proposed land uses
(development of recreational facilities, for example) would affect rela-
tively few of the major resources. See Table 6. Some of the effects to
resources can be determined by reviewing proposed project plans and
identifying the types of disturbances that may occur, such as clearing
land for building sites or other uses, constructing roads, and disposing
of wastes into the air or water, among others. Once the scope of a
project is reviewed, identification of the significant resources that
will be directly affected is basically straightforward. For example,
plowing rangeland to produce new croplands would disrupt the land features
but not the geology of the area, since only surface soils would be dis-
turbed .
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Table 6. EXAMPLES OF RESOURCES THAT MAY BE AFFECTED BY PROPOSED LAND USES
Proposed
Land Uses


Affected Resources




Geology
and
Soils
Hydrology
and Water
Quality
Air
Quality Vegetation
Wildlife
Socioeconomic
Cultural
Resources
Mining
•
•
• •
•
•
•
Agriculture
•
•
•
•
•
•
Timber
•
•
•
•
•
•
Livestock Forage

•
•
•
•

Recreation Facilities


•
•
•
•
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It is not as easy to identify resources that may be indirectly
affected by a project or combination of projects, but effects may be
identified if the chain of land uses is carefully constructed. The
process of identifying resources affected by primary and lower-order
actions is well documented in the literature of cost-benefit analysis.
The process of detailing possible effects of land use on resources in the
Decker-Bimey area should be thorough, because the findings will greatly
determine the composition of the monitoring committee.
Selecting the Monitoring Committee
The monitoring committee is one of the most important aspects of
the monitoring system. The objectives of the monitoring committee are:
•	to monitor the environment for any significant changes related
to land use
•	to coordinate the efforts of the specific monitoring agencies
in order to maximize benefits and minimize duplication of
effort or expenditures
•	to make recommendations as necessary to ensure protection of
the environment and to provide continuity and direction to the
efforts of diverse agencies
The monitoring committee would consist of approximately 10 to 15
people and would be composed of the director (a BLM employee), represen-
tatives of selected agencies, industry representatives, representatives
of the Indian nations involved, and the general public. See Figure 3.
One member each would be selected from those federal, state, and local
agencies considered to have major responsibilities for those resources
that will be affected by the proposed land uses. See Table 7. More
than one agency may represent the same resource, if appropriate. Con-
versely, one agency may be selected to represent more than one resource
(e.g., the EPA is responsible for monitoring both air quality and water
quality). The composition of the committee is intended to change from
time to time in response to evolving patterns of development and resource
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GOVERNMENT
AGENCIES
FEDERAL*
BLM, USFS,
USGS, SCS.
EPA. HUD,
USDA, BIA
STATE'
(Montana and Wyoming)
Dept. of Fish and Game,
Bureau of Mines and Geology
State Lands, Reclam. Div.
Water Resources Board
Water Quality Bureau
Air Quality Bureau
Dept of Community Affairs
Old West Reg. Comm.**
LOCAL*
Yellowstone-
Tongue Areawide
Planning Organization,
County Representatives
Rosebud
Powder River
Big Horn
Shendan
City Representatives:
Sheridan
Harpin
Broadus
* Members to be selected from
the agencies listed or others
* * Joint federal-state agency
Figure 3. ORGANIZATION OF MONITORING COMMITTEE
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Table 7. EXAMPLES OF FEDERAL AND STATE AGENCIES THAT HAVE
RESPONSIBILITIES FOR AFFECTED RESOURCES
Affected Resource
Geology and soils
Hydrology and water quality
Air quality
Vegetation
Wildlife
Socioeconomic
Cultural resources
Agency
USGS; SCS; BLM; USDA; Montana
Bureau of Mines and Geology
EPA; USGS; SCS; BuRec; Montana
State Lands, Reclamation Division;
Montana Water Resources Board,
Montana Water Quality Bureau
EPA; Montana Air Quality Bureau
BLM; SCS; USFS; USDA
BLM; USFS; BuRec; SCS; Montana
Department of Fish and Game
Old West Regional Commission; HUD;
Montana Department of Community
Affairs, BIA
BLM; USFS; Montana Fish and Game
Commission, Parks and Recreation
Division
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use. Continuity of purpose is provided through the guidance of the
director and the presence of a staff.
The participation of the mining industry in the monitoring program
is important, but problematic, because of the number of companies that
might be involved. One method of achieving equitable participation is
to offer two committee positions to the Montana Mining Association, to
be filled by representatives of companies that are active in the area.
This representation from the industrial sector is intended to add another
dimension of balance and input to the monitoring committee. The partici-
pation of this group is anticipated to be especially helpful during the
phase of the monitoring program that deals with recommending realistic
mitigating measures or project alterations.
Two members of the monitoring committee would be selected from the
public to provide a nonagency perspective. These members should be
generally knowledgeable of the development of energy-related resources
in Montana and should have somewhat diverse or unrelated backgrounds.
The monitoring committee would meet on a regular basis (bimonthly
or quarterly, for example) to ensure that monitoring objectives are
being accomplished in a timely fashion. The director of the monitoring
committee could also meet with the members at other times, as the situa-
tion demands.
The duties of the monitoring committee should include, but not be
restricted to, the following tasks:
•	identify the anticipated impacts
•	select the proper environmental and socioeconomic parameters
to monitor
•	select the appropriate methods for monitoring the key environ-
mental parameters
•	evaluate the data capabilities of member agencies and identify
the need for contractor assistance
•	provide quality assurance to the data collection task
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•	analyze results of monitoring tasks and identify any environ-
mental changes (including cumulative and synergistic effects)
that have occurred as a result of ongoing land-use projects
•	develop a systematic technique for the quantitative assessment
of impacts
•	determine significance of identified environmental changes
•	formulate recommendations
•	prepare an annual report that describes the year's activities,
findings, and recommendations
•	review and make necessary adjustments to each step in the
monitoring program
•	provide documentary, data-base, and expert-testimony capabili-
ties as needed in regulatory and adjudicative proceedings
Identifying Potential Impacts
The potential impacts should be identified by the monitoring commit-
tee as a means of focusing on the specific components of the environment
that may actually be impacted. A proposed project may not have an effect
on every aspect of water quality or disrupt every species of wildlife or
cause hardships on every member of the local communities. The monitor-
ing committee can determine the specific components that may be impacted
by reviewing appropriate environmental reports (JEAs, EARs, EIRs, EISs,
among others), having personal knowledge of the members, and collecting
information from other experts. Examples of anticipated impacts include
the following:
•	hydrology and water quality — alteration to or loss of an
aquifer; change in the surface water turbidity, salinity, pH,
temperature, or oxygen content
•	air quality — change in humidity, air currents, or particulates
(N0x, S02, etc.)
•	biology — disruption of plant and animal population dynamics
(carrying capacity, reproductive potential, survival of off-
spring), loss of wildlife habitat for some species, loss of
vegetative productivity
•	socioeconomic conditions — overloading of municipal service
systems; impaired fiscal viability; rapid, unplanned urban
development
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Selecting the Key Parameters To Monitor
Once the monitoring committee has identified the potential impacts,
the committee must select specific parameters to be measured that will
indicate significant changes to components of the affected resources.
Every parameter in the environment cannot be monitored because of the
overwhelming number of parameters, their complexity, the difficulty in
adequately measuring each parameter, and the associated costs. The
selection of parameters to measure (Table 5) is one of the more critical
duties of the monitoring committee and will require the professional
judgment of many experts, including committee members. This is somewhat
of a "shotgun" approach and is one of the reasons that the review pro-
cedure discussed below is an important aspect of the monitoring program.
The monitoring committee should periodically review its choice of param-
eters to determine if some parameters need to be added to or deleted from
the list.
It is not necessarily appropriate to monitor all possible parameters
related to a particular land use or a specific resource. To be useful
for monitoring, a parameter must differentiate between project-related
environmental changes and the many, continuously occurring, natural,
environmental changes. For instance, if a project is anticipated to have
an impact on the insect population, one possible parameter would be the
number of insects per unit-area through time. Theoretically, the normal
baseline number could be determined, and any changes occurring during
the project operation could be detected as changes from this normal
number. In reality, the number of insects in a population fluctuates
dramatically from area to area and from one week to another under normal
conditions, without any exogenous influences. Thus, it is entirely likely
that any changes in an insect population measured during the operation
of the project could not be clearly attributed either to the operation
of that project or to the normally occurring changes in that insect
population. A population parameter with more constant values (perhaps
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the concentration of a potentially harmful chemical in the tissue of the
insects) would be a more acceptable parameter.
In the area of socioeconomic impacts, parameters to be monitored
would include impacts on overall population demographic characteristics,
housing, employment, income, public finance, taxes, local economic charac-
teristics (retail sales, etc.), and community services (public facilities,
social services, etc.).
Selecting Assessment Methods
A number of assessment methods may be available to quantify each key
parameter (Table 5). The selection of an appropriate method can be
extremely important in establishing a successful monitoring program.
Methods vary with respect to:
•	the equipment or technique required to collect the data
•	the number and qualifications of people needed to collect the
data
•	the clarity and statistical reliability of the results
•	the time required to collect the data
•	the cost associated with each method
The monitoring committee will select the method that it feels will provide
the desired information, with the above considerations in mind. The
significance of cost is a factor that cannot be ignored. One of the
benefits of having a centralized monitoring committee is its ability to
balance the portion of the budget appropriated to each data-collection
task with the importance of each specific aspect of a resource. It would
not be in the best overall interest of the monitoring program or of the
resources themselves to expend 75 percent of the monitoring budget on
monitoring an uncommon threatened species if the potential impact to
several other resources (big game species, fish populations, or socio-
economic conditions, for example) is anticipated to be more significant
or of a much greater magnitude.
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Selecting an assessment method requires a knowledge of the state-of-
the-art technology in the specific fields of concern. While some of the
members of the monitoring committee are certain to be familiar with some
of these techniques, it may be necessary for the monitoring committee
occasionally to seek the knowledge and advice of outside experts. It
would be valuable if the monitoring committee could evaluate more than
one assessment method per parameter and be aware of the pros and cons,
costs, and limitations of each method. While an expert may recommend
the best technical method, the monitoring committee may wish to select
one of the alternative methods that represents a more suitable combination
of man-hour, educational, and cost requirements, as well as technical
considerations.
The monitoring committee should be especially cognizant of the type
and format of data output that is possible with each method. Some
methods may result in only qualitative results and not be acceptable for
statistical analysis. Other methods may be quantitative, but be of
limited value because of inherently large standard errors or confidence
limits (± values about a mean). The latter problem would make it diffi-
cult to distinguish those changes resulting from a project's operation
from those changes that are simply related to the normal fluctuations of
the existing environmental systems. To the extent that data on certain
parameters or data that refer to certain projects may bear upon regula-
tory or adjudicative proceedings, the methods used to quantify and
analyze these data should be rigorous, formal, and defensible.
Collecting, Reducing, and Evaluating the Data
The monitoring committee will be responsible for selecting and
managing the agencies and outside contractors who will collect the data,
for coordinating the various data collection tasks, and for providing
quality assurance of the data as necessary. These functions can be
facilitated by using data structure analysis. This technique requires
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a preview of the entire monitoring program in terms of data flow. From
the data flows necessary to achieve the desired results of each poten-
tial monitoring task, a composite "data structure diagram" can be pre-
pared, showing data sources, monitoring techniques and locations, analy-
tical processes, and all of the intermediate and final "destinations" of
data used in the monitoring program. Typically, these diagrams reveal
opportunities for consolidating data collection and analyzing and permit-
ting effective coordination in terms of time, budget, methods, and data
format. For example, this analysis may show that data collection for a
water-quality parameter can be collected by the same individual and at
the same time as data collected for a fish-population parameter. Soil
samples may similarly be taken in conjunction with vegetation sampling.
The data management program should prescribe the periodicity of
measurement and specify the handling of the data after they have been
collected. The selected agencies and outside contractors should perform
the required field work and reduce the data, using the procedures and
statistical tests specified by the monitoring committee. Data evaluation
should include a determination of whether observed environmental changes
are normal, project-related, or ambiguous.
Determining Significance of Any Environmental Changes
It is the responsibility of the monitoring committee to determine
the significance of changes in the monitored parameters. Because the
committee has the advantage of a perspective that embraces the whole
monitoring program, this determination should be assigned to the com-
mittee as a whole rather than to individual agencies or contractors.
The efficacy of the monitoring effort depends on a rational approach
to this task. It is insufficient to assume that the significance of
change in an environmental parameter varies in proportion to the magni-
tude of change. For instance, it is intuitively clear that the destruc-
tion of an entire, unique, plant community is more than twice as bad as
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the destruction of 50 percent of that community; the relation between
magnitude and significance of impact is not linear. It is also important
to consider the range over which change in each parameter might occur;
without this information it is difficult to make a valid comparison
(tradeoff) between change in one parameter and change in any or all
others. These requirements imply the use of analytical methods, such as
utility theory or value functions, that can explicitly account for the
ranges, magnitudes, and significance of environmental change. In the
simplest application of these methods it is possible to develop concepts
of acceptable limits of change in a parameter, beyond which any additional
change is significant. These notions of threshold values for environmen-
tal parameters are based on generalized criteria, which can be preferen-
tially established by the committee. As examples of the use to which
such generalized criteria could be put, the committee could determine
that change in any parameter is significant if the change:
•	endangers the health of any human
•	threatens the existence of adjacent wildlife or plant species,
especially endangered or threatened species
•	results in any unanticipated property damage or value reduc-
tion
•	causes an unacceptable degradation of the environment
•	is an abnormal increase in a known or suspected harmful agent
•	is potentially harmful in the future if the change continues
at the similar rates
As the monitoring program becomes more complex with the introduction
of new and different land uses to the region, the need for a more formal
technique to assess the significance of change in each parameter will
become more acute.
Formulating Recommendations
One of the principal duties of the monitoring committee will be to
formulate recommendations to regulatory agencies and other interested
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parties pertaining to the operational projects. These recommendations
will be based on the extent of the significant environmental changes
related to the projects. In general, the monitoring committee can make
four kinds of recommendations (or combinations of the four). They can
recommend:
•	no changes to the projects in operation
•	mitigating measures or some type of action to compensate for
the impacted resource
•	alterations to the projects
•	reevaluation of continuation of the project
A recommendation to continue the project without any changes may be
considered appropriate, even if some environmental changes were judged
significant. The changes may have been a one-time occurrence or may
have already been corrected. It is also possible that more observations
of the changes would be needed before a specific action would be consid-
ered necessary.
One of the objectives of the monitoring program is to detect adverse
changes or impacts and to initiate mitigating steps to reduce or eliminate
the adverse impact. Preferably, the monitoring committee should make
every effort to recommend several alternative mitigating measures that
are realistically possible. The monitoring committee can draw on its
members' experience (especially that of the project representative) or
the experience of others who may have encountered similar problems.
A recommendation to alter a project may also be necessary, espe-
cially if observed environmental changes are considered severe or harmful.
Project alteration, as discussed here, refers to an action that will
reduce the production or output of an operating land-use project. For
example, this could mean reducing the annual timber harvest or coal
production.
If extremely severe impacts are documented by the monitoring pro-
gram, the monitoring committee could conceivably recommend that the
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project be reevaluated to determine if continuation is still feasible.
This kind of recommendation would be considered appropriate only if all
possible mitigating measures were tried without success or if an immedi-
ate health emergency or other catastrophe were likely to occur if the
project continued to operate.
In reality, a recommendation to alter or stop the operation of a
project is unlikely; it is anticipated that for most problems created by
a project an acceptable mitigating measure or compensation can be designed
and implemented.
Publishing an Annual Report
The monitoring committee should prepare an annual report that con-
tains the following information:
•	an overview of the monitoring program and the composition of
the monitoring committee
•	a summary of the activities of the monitoring committee
during the last year
•	a discussion of the selection of key parameters not previously
discussed
•	a discussion of new methods or modifications used to collect
data
•	a discussion of the results and analysis provided by each
contractor
•	a discussion of the monitoring committee's decisions about the
environmental changes, if any, that were considered signifi-
cant
•	a discussion of the monitoring committee's recommendations
regarding solutions to any significant environmental impact
problems
•	a list of newly proposed or expanded land uses or projects,
including the resources that may be affected and that will be
addressed by the monitoring committee during the next year
•	a request for comments from persons (including the public)
that review the annual report
•	a discussion of how the comments will be used during the
monitoring committee's review of the monitoring program
•	a brief summary of the report
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The report should be written in easily understood language, since
it will be read by many people with varying backgrounds. The availability
of the report should be announced through accepted methods (Federal
Register, press releases, etc.), and the number of copies printed should
be sufficient to meet the demand.
Reviewing the Monitoring Program
The monitoring committee should carefully and completely review the
entire monitoring program annually. Each task in the program should be
carefully examined to determine whether all of the task objectives are
being met and whether other objectives should be added. Problems pointed
out and suggestions provided by the contractors in their reports and
public comments about the annual report should be addressed by the moni-
toring committee.
An annual review of the key parameters selected for study is
extremely important. The monitoring committee should carefully determine
whether each parameter is still appropriate, whether a different method
should be used to measure the parameters, or whether other parameters
should be used instead. Since every parameter of every affected resource
cannot be monitored, the monitoring committee has a major responsibility
to remain continually aware of any impacted components of the environment
that may require monitoring and that have not previously been considered.
Modifying the Monitoring Program
The above review process would culminate in a series of modifica-
tions to improve the monitoring program, to be implemented the following
year. Each contractor affected by the modifications would be notified
of forthcoming changes. The notification would include the justification
for these any changes and a detailed description of the modifications to
the data-sampling methods or other changes in the scope of work.
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A monitoring program is expected to last several years, depending
on the life of the project and the expected level of impact, but is not
expected to be a permanent program. Therefore, at various intervals, it
is necessary to assess the appropriateness of continuing or terminating
the monitoring program. The program may be considered complete if CI)
the project in question is no longer in operation and all significant
environmental parameters have returned to normal or have stabilized,
or C2) no significant environmental impacts are detected during a reason-
able period of examination and none are anticipated in the future.
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MONITORING PROGRAM AND ENVIRONMENTAL BASELINE STUDIES
Distinguishing between a monitoring program and the environmental
baseline studies preceding the operation of a proposed project can often
be confusing. The distinction is important and can result in considerable
savings of time, effort, and money to both programs. A monitoring
program is not an extension or continuation of an environmental baseline
program. The confusion arises because the same environmental parameters
discussed in the baseline program can sometimes be used in a monitoring
program. The purpose of each program must be kept in mind. An environ-
mental baseline program attempts to describe the existing environmental
conditions in order to predict how the proposed project may impact that
existing environment and to provide a comparative base for some param-
eters. The descriptive portion tells about the climate, soils, plants,
animals, archaeological and historical sites, and socioeconomic condi-
tions in the affected area. A monitoring program attempts to differentiate
normal environmental changes from project-related environmental changes.
The methods used to describe and predict in the baseline program are not
necessarily appropriate in order to differentiate the changes described
in the monitoring program, although some may be. For example, describing
the habitat requirements of waterfowl in an area may be appropriate for
the baseline program but may not be sufficient (or may not be the correct
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parameter) to detect an adverse impact on these birds caused by a land-
use project.
The baseline and monitoring programs are naturally related, however,
and coordination of their planning would be beneficial to both programs.
The data-collection task of the monitoring program should begin before
operation of the proposed project begins in order to have some preopera-
tional data for comparison. The monitoring and data-collection task
could begin at the same time as the baseline studies or between the
baseline program and operation of the project. The latter is more
likely, since the monitoring program would probably be initiated only
after the project is approved and, therefore, after the environmental
evaluation processes that include the baseline studies are complete.*
However, the baseline program can be designed to include examination and
measurement (using methods approved for monitoring) of some of the more
important parameters that experience or research has shown may be impacted.
For example, if chemical X were known to be extremely harmful above a
certain concentration in the bones of certain waterfowl, and if the
proposed project were expected to emit chemical X, the baseline program
could be modified to include an analysis of the birds' bone tissue for
chemical X.
Too often, baseline studies are performed in order to provide
useful monitoring data, but fall short of this objective. The main
reason for this failure appears to be the different emphasis of the two
programs, the selection of parameters, and the methods of measurement.
The methods used are often statistically unacceptable because they can't
provide results with a sufficiently small standard of error C± value)
to differentiate project impacts during the monitoring program.
*In the case of activities already underway in the planning unit,
a minitoring program, as described in this section, should be initiated
as soon as possible.
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CONCLUSIONS
It is recommended that a system be instituted to monitor environmental
and socioeconomic changes that may occur in the Decker-Birney Planning
Unit as a result of the expected future land uses discussed in the BLM
Management Framework Plan. The system should incorporate a management
group — the monitoring committee — to coordinate and supervise the
operation of the monitoring program. The monitoring committee should
consist of representatives from the affected agencies, companies con-
ducting major land-use projects, Indian nations, and the public. The
monitoring committee should determine the environmental and socioeconomic
parameters to be measured, the methods to be used, and the contractors
to be employed to collect and analyze the data. The committee should
then determine which project-related environmental and socioeconomic
changes are significant and formulate recommendations for reducing or
eliminating the adverse impacts or for modifying the projects. The
system should provide for direct public input through membership on the
committee and through comments on an annual report published by the
committee. The system presented attempts to protect environmental
quality by using a monitoring program that begins before implementating
the proposed land-use activities and by maximizing organizational and
planning procedures.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Berkeley Planning Associates, Adaptation or Reversal: Policies on the
Quality of Life in Economically Declining Parts of Montana, North
Dakota and Wyoming, 1975.
Billings Geological Society, Symposium Committee, Montana Oil and Gas
Fields, A Symposium, 1958.
Bureau of Business and Economic Research, School of Business Administra-
tion, University of Montana at Missoula, The Decker-Birney-Ashland
Area and Coal Development: An Economic Study, 1975.
Bureau of Land Management and Department of Agriculture: Forest Service
of the U.S. Department of Interior, Summary: Decker-Bimey Resource
Study (includes Management and Framework Plan), 1974.
Cameron Engineers, Inc., and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Market
Prospects for Montana Coal, 1975.
Crow Tribe Land Use Zoning Ordinance.
Cumin Associates and Mountain West Research, Rosebud County, Montana,
Economic-Demographic Analysis, Baseline and Projections 1976-1990;
A Study for the Rosebud County Planning Board, June 1976.
Custer County Interim Zoning Regulations.
Federation of Rocky Mountain States, Inc., Summary of 1975 Rocky Mountain
Land Use and Natural Resource Bills, 1975.
Hodder, Richard L., Strip Mine Reclamation Research Located at Decker
Coal Company, Decker, Montana, 1975.
Honkala, R.A., for Old West Regional Commission, Surface Mining and
Mined Land Reclamation, 1974.
Intermountain Planners, Inc., Comprehensive Plan: Big Horn County
Planning Jurisdictional Area, 1974-1995, 1974.
132
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Kutak Rock Cohen Campbell, Garfinkle and Woodward, for Old West Regional
Commission, A Legal Study Relating to Coal Development — Population
Issues: Volume One, Responding to Rapid Population Growth, Omaha,
Nebraska, 1974.
Kutak Rock Cohen Campbell, Garfinkle and Woodward, for Old West Regional
Commission, A Legal Study Relating to Coal Development — Population
Issues: Volume Two, Land Use Planning and Growth Control-Statutory
Responses from Outside the Region, Omaha, Nebraska, 1974.
Kutak Rock Cohen Campbell, Garfinkle and Woodward, for Old West Regional
Commission, A Legal Study Relating to Coal Development — Population
Issues: Volume Three, Summary of Montana, North Dakota and Wyoming
Statutes-Financing and Population Issues: Bibliographies, Omaha,
Nebraska, 1974.
Kutak Rock Cohen Campbell, Garfinkle and Woodward, for Old West Regional
Commission, A Legal Study Relating to Coal Development — Population
Issues: Volume Four, Montana Statutes Relating to Rapid Population
Growth, Omaha, Nebraska, 1974.
Kutak Rock Cohen Campbell, Garfinkle and Woodward, for Old West Regional
Commission, A Legal Study Relating to Coal Development — Population
Issues: Volume Five, North Dakota Statutes Relating to Rapid
Population Growth, Omaha, Nebraska, 1974.
Kutak Rock Cohen Campbell, Garfinkle and Woodward, for Old West Regional
Commission, A Legal Study Relating to Coal Development — Population
Issues: Volume Six, Wyoming Statutes Relating to Rapid Population
Growth, Omaha, Nebraska, 1974.
Lawson, Don C., for the State of Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology,
Directory of Mining Enterprises for 1974, Bulletin #95, Butte,
Montana, 1975.
Magi 11, E.A.; Hubbard, C.R.; Koch, C.A., Mineral Resources and Their
Potential on Indian Lands: Crow Reservation, Big Horn and
Yellowstone Counties, Montana, U.S. Bureau of Mines, 1966.
Magill, E.A.; Hubbard, C.R.; Stinson, D.L., Mineral Resources and Their
Potential on Indian Lands: Northern Cheyenne Reservation, Big Horn
and Rosebud Counties, Montana, Preliminary Report 170, U.S. Bureau
of Mines, 1967.
Miller, Steven G., Thomas E. Carroll Associates, for Old West Regional
Commission, Environmental Impacts of Alternative Conversion
Processes for Western Coal Development, Washington D.C., 1974.
133
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Montana Clean Air Act, chapter 313, Laws of 1967.
Montana Environmental Policy Act, Title 69, chapter 65, R.C.M., 1971.
Montana Refuse Disposal District Law, Title 69, chapter 60, R.C.M., 1969.
Montana Refuse Disposal Law, Title 69, chapter 40, R.C.M., 1969.
Montana Refuse Disposal Regulations, Montana Administrative Code;
Title 16, 1972.
Montana State: Bureau of Mines and Geology, Directory of Mining
Enterprises for 1974, Bulletin #95, April 1975.
Montana State: Bureau of Mines and Geology, and U.S. Geological Survey,
Mineral and Water Resources of Montana, special publication #28,
1968.
Montana Strip Mining and Reclamation Act of 1973.
Montana Utility Siting Act of 1973.
Montana Water Pollution Control Law, Title 69, chapter 48, R.C.M., 1947.
Montana Water Use Act, chapter 462, Montana Session Laws 1973, sections
1 through 38.
Nehring, Richard; Zycher, Benjamin; and Wharton, Joseph, Coal Development
and Government Regulation in the Northern Great Plains: A Preliminary
Report, Rand Corp., August 1976.
Old West	Regional	Commission Bulletin,	Volume	III,	#16,	August 1976.
Old West	Regional	Commission Bulletin,	Volume	III,	#15,	August 1976.
Old West	Regional	Commission Bulletin,	Volume	III,	#14,	July 1976.
Old West	Regional	Commission Bulletin,	Volume III,	#13,	July 1976.
Old West Regional	Commission Bulletin,	Volume III,	#12,	June 1976.
Old West Regional Commission and U.S. Forest Service, Surface Environment
and Mining, Energy Research Information System Quarterly Report,
Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1975.
Pacific Coal Gasification Company, Transwestern Coal Gasification
Company, Utah International, Inc., Coal Gasification: A Technical
134
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Description, 1974.
Pegis, Anton G., Mineral Industries Bulletin: Encroachment of Competing
Land Uses on Mineral Development, July 1976.
Pierce, W.G., The Rosebud Coal Field, Rosebud and Custer Counties,
Montana, U.S.G.S. Bulletin #847-B, 1936.
Planning Support Group, Department of the Interior: Bureau of Indian
Affairs, Draft Programmatic Environmental Statement: Projected
Coal Development, Crow Indian Reservation, 1975.
Schwarz, Charles; Thor, Edward; Eisner, Gary, for the U.S. Forest
Service: Pacific Southwest Forest and Range Experiment Station,
Wildland Planning Glossary, 1976.
Strip Mined Coal Conservation Act of 1973.
Supreme Court of the United States, No. 75-145, The Northern Cheyenne
Tribe vs. William Hollowbreast, 1976.
Thorn, W.T.; Hall, G.M.; Wegeman, C.H.; Moulton, G.F., Geology of Big
Horn County and the Crow Indian Reservation, Montana, U.S.G.S.
Bulletin #856, 1935.
Toner, William, Planning: Montana's Land-Use Bill: Is It Just a Pie
in Big Sky?, February 1975.
U.S. Code, Title 25: "Indians," West Publishing Company, St. Paul,
Minnesota, 1963.
U.S.D.A. Committee for Rural Development, 1975 Situation Statement:
Rosebud and Treasure Counties, 1975.
U.S. Department of the Interior: Bureau of Indian Affairs, Administration
of the Indian Service Today, Section 3.
U.S. Department of the Interior: Bureau of Indian Affairs, F.L. 51:4241,
Resources Management, The Bureau of National Affairs, 1976.
U.S. Department of the Interior: Bureau of Land Management, B.L.M. Planning
System, 1973-1975.
U.S. Department of the Interior: Bureau of Land Management, Decker-Birney
Environmental Analysis Record #1, 1974, and #2, Existing Environment,
1974.
135
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U.S. Department of the Interior: Bureau of Land Management, Decker-Birney
Planning Area Alternatives (includes "Woodshed Session"), 1974.
U.S. Department of the Interior: Bureau of Land Management, Decker-Birney
Resource Questionnaire, 1973.
U.S. Department of the Interior: Bureau of Land Management, Decker-Bimey
Unit Resource Analysis, 1974.
U.S. Department of the Interior: Bureau of Land Management, Decker-Birney
Unit Resource Analysis: Physical Profile, 1974.
U.S. Department of the Interior: Bureau of Land Management, Final Environ-
mental Impact Statement: Proposed Coal Leasing Program.
U.S. Department of the Interior: Bureau of Land Management, F.L. 51:4251,
Energy and Minerals Management, The Bureau of National Affairs, 1976.
U.S. Department of the Interior: Bureau of Land Management, National
Resource Lands Digest 1975-76 for Montana, North Dakota and South
Dakota, 1975.
U.S. Department of the Interior: Bureau of Land Management, The Federal
Register: 43CFR, Parts 3500, 3520, circular 2377: Coal Leases,
1976.
U.S. Department of the Interior: Bureau of Land Management, and U.S.D.A.:
Forest Service, Summary, Decker-Birney Resource Study, April 1974.
U.S. Department of the Interior: Bureau of Mines, F.L. 51:4201, The
Bureau of National Affairs, 1976.
U.S. Department of the Interior; Geological Survey, Guide for Preparing an
Environmental Impact Analysis-Draft.
U.S. Department of the Interior: Geological Survey, Preliminary PTaft —
Requirements for Mining and Reclamation Plans.
U.S. Department of the Interior: Geological Survey, Proposed Revision:
Coal Mining Operating Regulations.
U.S. Land Policy and Management Act of 1976.
U.S. Surface Mining Control Reclamation Act of 1975, as proposed.
Van Voast, Wayne, Hydrological Effects of Strip Coal Mining in South-
eastern Montana — Emphasis: One Year of Mining Near Decker, 1974.
136
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VTN Consolidated, Inc., for the Shell Oil Company, Environmental Assess-
ment: Proposed Youngs Creek Mine, Crow Indian Reservation, 1974.
VTN Consolidated, Inc., The National Environmental Policy Act Process
Study: An Evaluation of the Implementation and Administration of
the NEPA by the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management,
February 1975.
Walter, Warren, U.S. Forest Service, Land-Use Planning in the National
Forest System: Conference Paper #229, 1974.
Woodward-Clyde Consultants, Environmental Impact Report: North Dakota
Gasification Project for ANG Coal Gasification Company, 1975.
Wyoming Environmental Quality Act, 1973.
Wyoming Industrial Development and Citing Act, 1975.
Wyoming Land Quality Rules and Regulations, 1975.
Wyoming Local Government Assistance Act, 1975.
137
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APPENDIX A
PLANT CHECKLIST, DECKER-BIRNEY AREA
A-1
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Appendix A. PLANT CHECKLIST, DECKER-BIRNEY AREA
Scientific Name
Common Name
Grasses and Grasslike Plants
Agropyron dasystachyum
Agropyron spicatum
Agropyron smithii
Agropyron subsecundum
Andropogon gerardi
Andropogon scoparius
Andropogon hallii
Aristida longiseta
Bouteloua curtipendula
Bouteloua gracilis
Bromus .anomalus
Bromus carinatus
Bromus j aponicus
Bromus tectorum
Buchloe dactyloides
Calamagrostis montanensis
Calamagrostis rubescens
Calamovilfa longifolia
Carex eleocharis
Carex filifolia
Carex nebraskensis
Danthonia unispicata
Distichlis stricta
Elymus cinereus
Festuca idahoensis or ovina
Festuca octoflora
Hordeum jubatum
Koeleria cristata
Muhlenbergia cuspidata
Muhlenbergia squarrosa
Orzyopsis hymenoides
Phlaris arundinacea
Poa canbyi
Poa nervosa
Poa pratensis
Poa secunda
Sitanion hystrix
Spartina gracilis
Spenopholis obtusata
Sporobolus cryptandrus
Stipa columbiana
Stipa comata
Stipa spartea var. custiseta
Stipa viridula
Thickspike wheatgrass
Bluebunch wheatgrass
Western wheatgrass
Bearded wheatgrass
Big bluestem
Little bluestem
Sand bluestem
Red threeawn
Sideoats grama
Blue grama
Nodding brome
California brome
Japanese chess
Downey chess
Buffalo grass
Plains reedgrass
Pinegrass
Prairie sandreed
Needleleaf sedge
Threadleaf sedge
Nebraska sedge
One-spike oatgrass
Desert saltgrass
Giant wildrye
Idaho fesque
Six-weeks fescue
Foxtail barley
Junegrass
Plains muhly
Mat muhly
Indian ricegrass
Reed canarygrass
Canby bluegrass
Wheeler bluegrass
Kentucky bluegrass
Sandberg bluegrass
Squirreltail
Alkali cordgrass
Prairie wedgegrass
Sand dropseed
Columbiana needlegrass
Needle-and-thread
Porcupine grass
Green needlegrass
A-2
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Forbs
Achillea millefolium
Agoseris glauca
Allium spp.
Amaranthus retroflexus
Ambrosia artemisifolia
Ambrosia psilostachya
Antennaria dimorpha
Antennaria parvifolia
Arnica fulgens
Arnica sororia
Arnica cordifolia
Artemisia dracuncuius
Artemisia ludoviciana
Asclepias pumila
Asclepias viridiflora
Astragalus spp.
Astragalus drummondi
Bahia oppositifolia
Balsamorhiza sagittata
Besseya cineria
Calochortus nuttalii
Camelina sativa
Campanula rotundifolia
Cerastium arvense
Chrysopsis villosa
Cirsium arvense
Cirsium canovirens
Cirsium undulatum
Collinsia parviflora
Collomia linearis
Comandra pallida
Crepis acuminata
Cryptanthe bradburyana
Delphinium bicolor
Dyssodia papposa
Echinacea pallida
Epilobium angustifolium
Erigeron spp.
Eriogonum spp.
Eriogonum flavum
Erysimum asperum
Fragaria vesca
Gaillardia aristata
Galium boreale
Gaura coccinea
Geranium viscosissimum
Western yarrow
Pale agoseris
Onion
Redroot pigweed
Low ragweed
Western ragweed
Low pussytoes
Small-leaf pussytoes
Leafy arnica
Arnica
Heartleaf arnica
False tarragon sagewort
Cudweed sagewort
Plains milkweed
Green milkweed
Milkvetch
Drummond milkvetch
Opposite leaf bahia
Arrowleaf balsamroot
Kittentail
Segolily mariposa
False flax
Roundleaf harebell
Field chickweed
Hairy golden aster
Canada thistle
Thistle
Wavy leaf thistle
Blue-eyed Mary
Narrow leaved collomia
Bastard toadflax
Tapertip hawksbeard
Miners candle
Low larkspur
Prairie dogweed
Purple coneflower
Fireweed
Daisy fleabane
Eriogonum
Yellow eriogonum
Plains wallflower
Woodland strawberry
Gaillardia
Northern bedstraw
Scarlet gaura
Sticky geranium
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Geum triflorum
Glycyrrhiza lepidota
Grindelia squarrosa
Hedeoma drummondi
Helianthus annuus
Helianthus petiolaris
Heuchera cylindrica
Humulus lupulus
Hymenoxys spp.
Hymenoxys acaulus
Hyoscyamus niger
Iva axillaris
Kochia scoparia
Lactuca pulchella
Lappula redowskii
Lesquerella alpina
Lesquerella argestea
Leucocrinum montanum
Liatris puctata
Linum lewisii
Linum rigidum
Lithospermum spp.
Lomatium spp.
Lupinus caudatus
Mamillaria spp.
Medicago lupulina
Mentzelia laevicaulis
Opuntia fragilis
Opuntia polycantha
Oxtropsis lambertii
Penstemon albidus
Penstemon eriantherus
Penstemon glaber
Petalostamon canadidus
Petalostamon pupureum
Phacelia hastata
Phacelia linearis
Phlox canescens
Phlox hoodii
Plantago purshii
Plantago spin'ulosa
Polansia trachysperma
Polygala alba
Polygonum convolvulus
Polygonum douglasii
Potentialla glandulosa
Prairie smoke
Wild licorice
Curlycup gumweed
Drummon false pennyroyal
Common sunflower
Prairie sunflower
Round leaved allumroot
Common hop
Hymenoxys
Hymenoxys
Henbane
Poverty weed
Summer cypress
Blue lettuce
Western sticktight
Alkaline bladderpod
Bladderpod
Star lily
Dotted blazingstar
Blue flax
Stiffstem flax
Gromwell
Biscuit root
Spurred lupine
Pincushion cactus
Black medic
Five petal blazingstar
Brittle prickly pear
Plains prickly pear
Purple point loco
White penstemon
Fuzzytongue penstemon
Saw sepal penstemon
White prairie clover
Purple prairie clover
Silverleaf phacelia
Linear-leaf phacelia
Canada phlox
Hoods phlox
Wooly plantain
Spindle plantain
Clammy weed
White milkwort
Buckwheat bindweed
Douglas knotweed
Gland cinquefoil
A-4
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Psoralea argophylla
Psoralea esculenta
Psoralea tenuiflora
Pteridium aquilinum
Ratibida columnifera
Rumex spp.
Salsola kali
Senecio canus
Solidago missouriensis
Solidago rigida
Sphaeralcea coccinea
Taraxacum officinale
Thermopsis montana
Thalictrum venulosum
Thlaspi arvense
Townsendia spp.
Tragopogon dubius
Urtica dioica
Verbena bracteata
Vicia americana
Viola spp.
Xanthium strumarium
Yucca glauca
Zigadenus venenosus
Shrubs and Trees
Silverleaf scurfpea
Breadroot scurfpea
Slimflower scurfpea
Western bracken
Prairie coneflower
Dock sorrel
Russian thistle
Wooly groundsel
Slender goldenrod
Stiff goldenrod
Scarlet globemallow
Common dandelion
Mountain thermopsis
Veiny meadowrue
Fanweed
Townsendia
Common salsify
Stinging nettle
Bracted verbena
American vetch
Violet
Cocklebur
Soapweed yucca
Death camas
Acer glabrum
Acer negundo
Alnus tenuifolia
Amelanchier alnifolia
Apocynum androsaemifolium
Arctostaphylos uva-ursi
Artemisia cana
Artemisia frigida
Artemisia tridentata
Atriplex nuttallii
Atriplex confertifolia
Betula occidentalis
Chrysothamnus nauseosus
Chrysothamnus viscidiflorus
Clematis ligusticifolia
Cornus stolonifera
Crataegus columbiana
Eleagnus commutata
Rocky Mountain maple
Box elder
Thinleaf alder
Western serviceberry
Spreading dogbone
Kinikinnick
Silver sagebrush
Fringed sagebrush
Big sagebrush
Nuttall saltbush
Shadscale saltbush
Water birch
Rubber rabbitbrush
Green rabbitbrush
Western white clematis
Red dogwood
Black hawthorn
Silverberry
A-5
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Eurotia lanata
Winterfat
FTaxinus pennsylvanica
Green ash
Haplopoppus spinulosus
Spiny goldenweed
Gutierrezia sarathrae
Broom snakeweed
Juniperus horizontalis
Creeping juniper
Juniperus scopulorum
Rocky Mountain juniper
Berberis repens
Oregon grape
Populus angustifolia
Lance-leaf cottonwood
Populus deltoides
Plains cottonwood
Populus tremuloides
Quaking aspen
Potentilla frutcosa
Shrubby cinquefoil
Potentilla glandulosa
Gland cinquefoil
Prunus americana
Wild plum
Prunus virginiana
Chokecherry
Rhus trilobata
Skunkbush sumac
Rhus radicans
Poison ivy
Ribes aureum
Golden currant
Ribes cereura
Squaw currant
Ribes hunsonianum
Hudson currant
Ribes setosum
Redshoot gooseberry
Rosa arkansana
Prairie rose
Rubus parviflorus
ThimbleberTy
Salix spp.
Willow
Sarcobatus vermiculatus
Greasewood
Shepherdia argentea
BuffaloberTy
Spiraea betulifolia
White spiraea
Symphoricarpos albus
Common snowberry
Symphoricarpos occidentalis
Western snowberry
A-6
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APPENDIX B
MAMMALS FOUND WITHIN THE BLM MILES CITY DISTRICT
B-l
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Appendix B. MAMMALS FOUND WITHIN THE
BLM MILES CITY DISTRICT*



Scientific Name
Common Name
Occurrence
Abundance
Sorex cinereus
Masked shrew
Dry woods
Common
Sorex merriami
Merriam shrew
Sagebrush and grasslands
Quite rare
Myotis lucifugus
Little brown bat
Throughout area
Common
Myotis yumanensis
Yuma bat
Throughout area
Less common
Myotis evotis
Little long-eared bat
Throughout area
Fairly common
Eptesicus puscus
Big brown bat
Throughout area
Common
Mustela prenata
Long-tailed weasel (P)
Throughout area
Common
Mustela nivalis
Least weasel (P)
Throughout area
Rare
Mustela vison
Mink (F)
Marsh areas and stream
Common


banks

Mustela nigripes
Black-footed ferret (F)
Prairie dog colonies
Extremely rare
Mephitis mephitis
Striped skunk (P)
Throughout area
Common
Taxidea taxus
Badger
Throughout area
Common
Procyon lotor
Raccoon
Creek and river valleys
Common
Vulpes vulpes
Red Fox
Throughout area
Fairly common
Vulpes velox
Swift fox
Originally throughout area
Probably extinct
Canis latrans
Coyote (P)
Throughout area
Common
Lynx rufus
Bobcat (P)
Throughout area
Common
Spermophillus richardsonii
Richardson ground squirrel
Throughout area
Common
Spermophillus tridecemlineatus
Thirteen-lined ground
Grass lands
Common
squirrel


Cynomys ludovicianus
Black-tailed prairie dog
Grasslands
Less common
Eutamias minimus
Least chipmunk
Sagebrush area
Common
Sciurus niger
Fox squirrel
Yellowstone River bottoms
Fairly common
Thomomys talpoides
Northern pocket gopher
Throughout area
Common
Perognathus fasciatus
Wyoming pocket mouse
Dry areas
Less common
Castor canadensis
Beaver (F)
Along streams and lakes
Common
Dipodoinys ordii
Ord kangaroo rat
Sandy soil and sagebrush
Common
Onychomys leucogaster
Northern grasshopper mouse
Grasslands
Common
Reithrodontomys inegalotis
Western harvest mouse
Grasslands
Common
Peromyscus maniculatus
Western deer mouse
Throughout area
Common
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Peromyscus leucopus
Microtus ochrogaster
Lagurus curtatus
Ondatra zibethicus
Zapus hudsonius
Mus musculus
Erethizon dorsatum
Lepus townsendii
Syluilagus audubonnii
Odocoileus virginianus
Odocoileus hemionus
Antilocapra americana
Felis concolor
Marmota flaviventris
White-footed mouse
Prairie vole
Sagebrush mouse
Muskrat (F)
Meadow jumping mouse
House mouse
Porcupine
White-tailed jackrabbit
Desert cottontail
White-tailed deer (G)
Mule deer (G)
Prongliorn antelope (G)
Cougar (P)
Yellowbellied Marmot
*(G) = game animal; (P) = predatory animal; (F) = furbearer
Game Department, January 1972.
Grasslands
Dry grasslands
Sagebrush areas
Ponds and streams
Meadows
Around human habitations
Throughout area
Open areas throughout
Throughout area
Brushy river bottoms
Throughout area
Sagebrush areas
Rough, mountainous terrain
Rocky, mountainous areas
Common
Common
Rare
Common
Less common
Common
Common
Common
Common
Common
Common
Common
Rare
Common
Source: Montana Mammals, Montana Fish and
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APPENDIX C
MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK PLAN RECOMMENDATIONS
FOR THE DECKER-BIRNEY PLANNING UNIT
C-l
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Appendix C. MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK PLAN RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE DECKER-BIRNEY PLANNING UNIT
Description of Recommendations
Nonspecific
Resource	Activity	Recommendation	Stardard	Enforceable Guideline	Policy	Study
LANDS
Urban and sub-
urban expansion
Encourage, where possible,
residential and eonmercial
expansion within the unit's
already established town-
sites
Where possible, limit
urban growth to exist-
ing townsites
Intensive devel-
opment outside
urban and suburban
expansion areas
Encourage and work with
local planning and zoning
authorities to control and
guide urban and suburban
growth anJ expansion.
Plan for any residential
and commercial expansion
needed in association with
the unit's industrial (min-
ing) or other resource de-
velopment, if any
Complement minerals or
other resource recommenda-
tions to facilitate
industrial growth and de-
velopment
Encourage local planning
and zoning to guide and
control development and
use of outlying areas
Encourage local
planning and zoning
to guide and control
urban development
Plan for secondary
growth resulting from
coal-mining operations
Plan for the orderly
and timely development
of industry
Encourage local
planning and zoning
to guide and control
industrial or urban
development in rural
areas
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Appendix C. (Continued)
Resource	Activity	Recommendation
LANDS
Intensive devel-
opment outside
urban and suburban
expansion areas
Restrict transfer of na-
tional ret urce lands to
private ownership for resi-
dential, commercial, and
industrial development
until adequate planning
and zoning ordinances
have been enacted
Promote further devel-
opment of private agri-
cural lands
Provide, where appro-
priate, public lands to
satisfy bonafide federal,
state, and local public-
purpose needs
Whenever possible, work
toward land tenure adjust-
ments through state and
private exchanges
Plan for adequate signing
to identify public lands
Provide for a continuing
access acquisition program
for national resource
lands
If appropriate, provide
for the disposal of cer-
tain lands to the State
of Montana
Description of Recommendations
Nonspecific
Standard	Enforceable Guideline	Policy	Study
National resource lands
cannot be transferred
to private ownership
in areas that do not
have adequate local
planning and zoning
ordinances
Promote private
agricultural
development
Provide public lands
for bonafide federal,
state, and local public
needs
Consolidate public land
holdings
Identify public lands
with signs
Obtain or maintain
public access to
to all national
resource lands
Assist the State of Montana
in making land selections
from national resource
lands
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Appendix C. (Continued)
Description of Recommendations
Nonspecific
Resource	Activity	Recommendation	Standard	Enforceable Guideline	Policy	Study
LANDS
Intensive devel-
opment outside
urban and sub-
urban expansion
areas
Proposed development on the
areas within the unit under-
lain by strippable coal de-
posits should be carefully
evaluated by the appropriate
management and/or administra-
tive agencies of the area
Any expansion of minerals
or other resource activities
will undoubtedly result in an
increased demand for public
utilities rights-of-way and
special-use areas. This
demand should be satisfied
with a minimum of conflicts
to other resources
Special-use areas and
utility corridors re-
quired for the develop-
ment of a particular re-
source are to be located
in a manner that will
cause the least conflict
with th«. of other
resources
BLM management and/
or other administra-
tive agencies should
evaluate the proposed
coal development re-
commendations for the
Decker-Bimey Plan-
ning Unit
MINERALS
Coal exploration
and extraction
Develop additional guidelines
for the selection of right-of-
way corridors
Consider ••suing leases on
all federal strippable re-
serves within the outlined
strippable coal resource
areas
Lease coal within
designated areas
in the Otter Creek,
Ashland, Moorhead,
Hanging Woman, Decker,
Birney, and Kirby
coal fields
Develop comprehensive
guidelines for the
selection of right-
of-way corridors
-------
Appendix C. (Continued)
Resource
Acti 'ity
Recommendation
Description of Recommendations
Standard
Nonspecific
Enforceable Guideline
Policy
Study
MINERALS
Coal exploration
and extraction
Continue contract
drilling programs with ap-
propriate state and federal
agencies on federal coal
within the outlined coal re-
source areas. Obtain coal
quality and quantity data
(tonnage, thickness, Btu,
ash, sulfur moisture) as
well as subsurfaco soil
and water data
Identify potential
economic lease
blocks where re-
clamation is feas-
ible and environ-
mental damage can be
minimized
n
i
en
Identify specific lease
sites for strip mining
No leasing of federal
coal in flood plains
The siie of poten-
tial coal lease
blocks is to be
based on a projected
national need for coal
from this region
Federal coal located
in flood plains will
not be leased
Offer coal for domestic use
to individuals living in the
area as demand develops. Es-
tablish a community pit if
sufficient interest arises
Offer coal for
local domestic use
Unit-wide devel-
opment of sand,
gravel, and
clinker
Designate material sites
that can feasibly be de-
veloped and establish com-
munity pits where suffi-
cient demand exists
Establish barrow
pits where suffi-
cient demand
exists
Identify economic
deposits of sand,
gravel, and clinker
-------
Appendix C. (Continued)
Resource	Activity	Recommendation
MINERALS	Unit-wic i oil and Encourage unit-wide oil
gas exploration and gas exploration and
and development issue leases to allow
development
0
1
o
TIMBER	Intensive	Manage for sustained pro-
management	duction of timber and re-
lated resources and im-
provement of the vigor
and age distribution
of the stands through
carefully planned harvests
by:
a.	Removing mature over-
story
b.	Thinning younger
overstory
c.	Thinning pole stands
Protection	No cutting on the protec-
tion areas of the national
forests within the study
area
The timber on these areas
should generally be left
undisturbed. Incidental
sales of small quantities
of timber may be made on
demand, provided that it w
not cau:>e permanent damage
to the stands. Such sales
should be located with an
eye toward improving stand
condition where possible
Description of Recommendations
Nonspecific
Standard	Enforceable Guideline	Policy	Study
Encourage oil and
gas exploration
and development
Remove the mature
ponderosa pine over-
story on 12,025 acres
of U.S.F.S. lands and
thin immature ponderosa
pine pole stands on 900
acres of U.S.F.S. lands
No timber harvest is
allowed on 38,523
acres of designated
U.S.F.S. lands
If a market develops,
730 acres within the
timber protection area
of the national forest
should be harvested
it should be made
available to those who
need it
When a resource can
be utilized without
permanent damage
to that resource or to
other related resources
-------
Appendix C. (Continued)
Resource
Activity
Recommendation
RANGE	Livestock	In general, artificial treat-
forage pro-	ment for increased production
duction	on undisturoed range lands
(for example, brush control,
reseeding, waterspreading,
and fertilization should
not be undertaken until in-
tensive grazing management to
increase the natural potential
has been tried
n
Implement grazing systems
on all allotments, including
those areas mined for coal,
in order to obtain the highest
livestock use compatible with
all resource values
As the potential range forage
production becomes available
for use, hay and feed crop
production should also be in-
creased to balance each live-
stock operation
WATERSHED	Unit-wide water
development of
control structures
Encourage investigation of the
possibility of expanding or
modifying existing water devel
opments to achieve applicable
watershed and other resource
goals
Description of Recommendations
Nonspeci fic
Standard	Enforceable Guideline	Policy	Study
Intensive livestock
management is to be
attempted before re-
sorting to mechanical
and/or chemical treatment
of range lands
Intensive grazing
management is to be
used on all grazing
allotments
Agricultural use of
suitable deeded land
should be continued,
acreage increased
where possible, and
agricultural practices
intensified in order
to obtain maximum pro-
duction
Encourage the ex-
pansion or modifica-
tion of existing water
developments
-------
Appendix C. (Continued)
Resource	Activity	Recommendation
WATERSHED	Watershed manage- Modify or eliminate sur-
ment in Restricted face uses l- necessary
Use Area K-4	to maintain or improve
watershed conditions and
promote erosion control
Encourage investigation of
feasibility of limited
control structures on the
lower reaches of some
drainages
Watershed manage- Investigate restneted-
mcnt in restricted use areas of the unit to
use areas	further determine type of
remedial action necessary
Watershed manage-
ment in Restricted
Use Area K-5
(Zone A-3)
Maintain or improve the
generally stable and
intensively utilized
alluvial bottoms and
flood plains. Proper
management is the only
treatment indicated ex-
cept for the following
subrecomraendations:
Description of Recommendations
Nonspecific
Standard	Enforceable Guideline	Policy	Study
Maintain or im-
prove the stable
alluvial bottoms
and flood plains
Modify or eliminate sur-
face uses in order
to maintain or
improve watershed condi-
tions and promote ero-
sion control
Investigate the fea-
sibility of limited
control structures on
the lower reaches of
some drainages
Determine remedial
actions necessary
to maintain or im-
prove watershed con-
ditions and promote
erosion control in
restricted use areas
of the planning unit
-------
Appendix C. (Continued)
Resource
Activity
Recommendation
WATERSHED
n
Watershed manage-
ment in Restricted
Use Area K-5
(Zone A-3),
continued
Watershed manage-
ment in Restricted
Use Area K-5
(Zone A-4)
Watershed manage-
ment in :oal re-
source areas
a.	Limited installation
of water control struc-
tures, taking into ac-
count other resource
values
b.	Limited initiation, in
selected areas, of a
vegetation manipulation
program
Proper management is the
only treatment indicated
to maintain a suitable
vegetative cover and
soil stability
Apply watershed tillage
practices on all strip-
mined areas
All water development
should be in sequence with
mining operations
Description of Recommendations
Nonspecific
Standard	Enforceable Guideline	Policy	Study
Install water con-
trol structures on
actively eroding
stream channels
Initiate vegetation manip-
ulation program in erosion-
prone flood plains
Institute proper watershed
management procedures
Till strip-mined
areas to assist
in water reten-
tion ar.d infil-
tration
Time watershed management
practices to fit in with
mining and reclamation plans
-------
Appendix C. (Continued)
Resource	Activity	Recommendation
WATERSHED	Watershed manage- Coal mining within the
raent in coal re- critical-severe erosion
source areas	areas may be permitted if
carefully planned and
implemented
Investigate coal resource
areas to determine the
best type of remedial
action necessary to re-
store the watershed to
its former stability or
better
Coal mining within the
following ecosystems may
be permitted if carefully
plannod and implemented:
grassland, pine-woodland,
broadlcaf, ponderosa pine,
sage shrub, and agricul-
tural land.. No mining
should be permitted when the
above ecosystems occur in
major stream channels (second
and third order) or alluvial
bottoms
Description of Recommendations
Nonspecific
Standard	Enforceable Guideline	Policy	Study
Coal mining is allowed
in critical-severe ero-
sion areas as long as min-
ing and reclamation plans
provide suitable means
for preventing erosion
and increased stream
sedimentation
Determine best
methods for restor-
ing watersheds to
their former stabil-
ity or better on
stripmined areas
Carefully planned and im-
plemented coal mining is
allowed in grassland, pine-
woodland, broadleaf, ponderosa
pine, sage shrub, and agri-
cultural ecosystems outside
of major stream channels
or alluvial bottoms
-------
Appendix C. (Continued)
Resource	Activity	Recommendation
WATERSHED	Unit-wide water- Investigate cloud seeding,
shed management snow fences, or vegetative
windbreaks to determine the
feasibility of increasing
the amount, seasonal distri-
bution, or quality of water
produced in the planning unit
n
«
WILDLIFE	Unit-wide manage- Manage and control all surface
HABITAT	ment practices, ex- uses to maintain a variety of
cept for areas	native vegetation (grasses,
leased for coal forbs, shrubs, and trees) in
mining	all ecosystems, except for
cultivated lands
Description of Recommendations
Nonspecific
Standard	Enforceable Guideline	Policy	Study
Investigate methods
for increasing the
amount, seasonal
distribution, or qual-
ity of water produced
in the planning unit
Items requiring analy-
sis before initiating
such a broad-scale
program include:
a.	The effect of pos-
sible heavy down-
pours on the cnti-
cal-to-severe eros-
ion class lands
b.	Problems of liabil-
ity in case of
flooding or excess
rainfa11
c.	Total effects on
the area's ecosys-
tems
d.	A cost-benefit or
cost-effectiveness
analysis
e.	Aesthetic and re-
creational consid-
erations
Except for cultivated lands,
manage and control all surface
uses to maintain a variety of
native vegetation
-------
Appendix C. (Continued]
Description of Recommendations
Nonspecific
Resource	Activity	Recommendation	Standard	Enforceable Guideline	Policy	Study
WILDLIFE
HABITAT
Unit-wide man-
agement practices,
except for areas
leased for coal
mining
Maintain present densities of
mule and \ 'lite-tailed deer.
Increase plant vigor of key
browse-plant species and
riparian vegetation on year-
long deer range by manipula-
ting livestock grazing and
regulating deer harvest, as di-
rected by the Montana Depart-
ment of Fish and Game
Regulate livestock graz-
ing and deer harvest
to maintain present
densities and increase
plant vigor of key browse-
plant species and riparian
vegetation on yearlong deer
range
n
Manage for vigorous stands of
shrubs, particularly snowberry,
buffaloberry, and wild rose,
for sharptail grouse ir. coulees
and heads of drainages, and for
native perennial grasses and
forbs on adjacent uplands
Manage for an adequate peren-
nial grass cover for sharp-
tail grouse during the nest-
ing season, usually within a
2-raile radius of tho court-
ship site. Curtail land
disturbance activities
near these courtship areas
during May and June
Manage and/or develop for
waterfowl, aquatic, and shore-
line vegetation in suitable
reservoirs with fairly stable
water levels. Waterfowl habi-
tat could be enhanced through
reclamation plans in develop-
ing reservoirs
Curtail land dis-
turbance activi-
ties within a 2-
milo radius of a
sharptail grouse
courtship site
during May and
June
Maintain vigorous stands of
shrubs, particularly snow-
beTry, buffaloberry, and
wild rose, in coulees and
heads of drainages, and na-
tive perennial grasses and
forbs on adjacent uplands
Maintain dense stand of
perennial grass cover
within a 2-mile radius
of a sharptail grouse
courtship site during
May and June
Develop and/or manage
suitable reservoirs for
waterfowl
-------
Appendix C. (Continued)
Resource
Activity
Recommendation
WILDLIFE
HABITAT
Unit-wide manage-
ment of prairie
dog towns
Maintain present black-
tailed pra'^ie doy towns
until a population survey
has been completed to
determine the presence of
black-footed ferrets
Control measures may be
taken if excessive damage
is detrimental to other
resources, such as live-
stock forage production and
watershed
n
Unit-wide manage-
ment of birds of
prey and predators
Protect raptor nesting
areas from destruction and
avoid disturbance during
the nesting season, es-
pecially from April
through July
Protect potential nest
sites. Eagles and hawks
generally like large, dead
trees and sandstone cliffs
Require design of power
transmission facilities
to prevent electrocution
of large raptorial birds,
particularly eagles
Description of Recommendations
Nonspecific
Standard	Enforceable Guideline	Policy	Study
Protect black-footed
ferret habitat
Control black-tailed
prairie dogs if they
become detrimental to
other resources
Protect raptor
nesting areas and
potential nest sites
from destruction
Avoid disturbing these
areas during the nest-
ing season, especially
from April through
July
Design power transmis-
sion towers to prevent
electrocution of large
raptorial birds. R.E.A.
Bulletin 61-10 describes
transmission designs and
their effects on raptors
-------
Appendix C. (Continued)
Resource
Acti vity
Recommendation
WILDLIFE	Management activ-
liABITAT	lties in the sage-
brush vegetation
type of Area A
Restrict all vegetal con-
trol programs and surface
disturbances witlun a 2-
mile radius of the sage
grouse breeding complex
(strutting grounds and
nesting areas)
n
i
i—¦
Management of
turkey habitat
in Area B
Management activi-
ties in the culti-
vated-broad leaf
types of Area C
Construct and maintain
fences to allow ante-
lope to pass
Maintain farming ad-
jacent to ponderosa-pine
types and deciduous
drainages for "optimum"
turkey habitat
Manage for turkeys a
deciduous, brushy under-
story and adequate grass
cover along drainages
Continue present farming
practices to maintain
pheasant and Hungarian '
partridge habitat. Pro-
tect native vegetation
interspersed with agri-
cultural lands, field bor-
ders, and fence rows
Description of Recommendations
Nonspecific
Standard	Enforceable Guideline	Policy	Study
Vegetation control
and surface dis-
turbances are not
allowed within a
2-mile ladius of
sage grouse breeding
grounds and nesting
areas
Fences are to be designed
and located so that they
allow antelope to pass
Continue grain
farming adjacent
to pondcrosa-pine
stands and deciduous
drainages
Maintain deciduous, brushy
understory and grass cover
along drainages
Continue present
practices in Area
C and protect native
vegetation, inter-
spersed with agri-
cultural lands, field
borders, and fence
rows
-------
Appendix C. (Continued)
Resource	Acti ity	Recommendation
WILDLIFE	Unit-wide manage-
HABITAT	ment of birds of
prey and predators
n
Management activ-
ities in the sage-
brush vegetation
type of Zone A
Manage those resident
wildlife species commonly
known as predators for
the public benefit, to
include: sport hunting,
fur trapping, sight-seeing,
and photography.
Organize control of preda-
tors only when need can be
justified and demonstrated.
All control action should
be approved by the Montana
Fish and Game Department
and the Bureau of Sport
Fisheries and Wildlife
Coordinate intensive live-
stock grazing systems to
maintain present sagebrush
densities and plant vigor
(primarily big and silver
sagebrush) along drain-
age* bottoms and heads of
drainages for quality ante-
lope habitat
Maintain for sage grouse
at least a 20%
canopy cover of sagebrush
in areas where tins
minimum exists. Especially
important on ridges, swells,
and slopes where sagebrush
is from 10-14" high
Description of Recommendations
Nonspecific
Standard	Enforceable Guideline	Policy	Study
All predator con-
trol actions oust
be approved by the
Montana Fish and
Game Department and
the Bureau of Sport
Fisheries and Wild-
life
Predators will be con-
trolled only when a
justifiable need is
demonstrated
Coordinate intensive
livestock grazing sys-
tems to maintain big
and silver sagebrush
densities and plant
vigor along the drainage
bottoms and heads of
drainages
Maintain a minimum
sagebrush canopy
cover of 20% in
areas where at least
this minimum exists.
This practice is
most important on
ridges, swells, and
slopes where sagebrush
is from 10-14" high
-------
Appendix C. (Continued)
Resource
Activ ity
Recommendation
Standard
Description of Recommendations
Nonspecific
Enforceable Guideline
Policy
Study
KILDLIFE
HABITAT
Management of
Area-D aquatic
habitat
Identify reservoirs suitable
for stocking with fish and
coordinate with the Montana
Fish and Game Department and
the Bureau of Sport Fisheries
and Wildlife
Stock suitable reser-
voirs with game fish
Identify potential fishing
access sites and obtain
easement or right-of-way
to these sites
Obtain fishing access
along the Tongue
River and Tongue River
reservoir
Identify potential
fishing-access
sites
n
i
All waters should be
maintained within the
limits recommended
by the Environmental
Protection Agency or
Montana Water Quality
Standards, to satis-
factorily support
good water quality
and .aquatic ecosystems
Dissolved Materials -
In no instance
should the concen-
tration of dissolved
innocuous (not toxic)
materials exceed SO
milliosmoles (the
equivalent of 1500
mg/1 NaCl)
Ph - Maintain at level
no lower than 6.0 or
higher than 9.0. (Most
natural productive
waters full between
6. S and Ii.5.)
Dissolved Oxygen -
Maintain not less
than 5 mg/1 in all
waters
-------
Appendix C. (Continued)
Resource
Activity
Recoinmendat
WILDLIFE	Management of
HABITAT	Area-D aquatic
habitat
Description of Recommendations
Nonspecific
Standard	Enforceable Guideline	Policy	Study
Carbon Dioxide - Free carbon
dioxide should not exceed
25 Dig/1
Turbidity - Should not exceed
50 Jackson units in all streams
and the Tongue River
Temperature - The following maxi-
mum temperatures are recommended
as compatible with the well-
being of various species of
fish and their associated
biota:
48°F. - Tongue River Reser-
voir in spring for spawning
and egg development of wall-
eye and northern pike
68°F. - Tongue River in spring
for spawning of smallmouth and
rock bass
84°F. - Maximum in reservoir
for growth of walleye and
northern pike; and in river
from dam to point 10 miles
below Birney for growth of
smallmouth bass
90°F. - Maximum in all other
waters for growth of large-
mouth bass and crappie
Flows - To be determined
based on water needs of
salmonid and nonsalmonid
fisheries
-------
Appendix C. (Continued)
Resource
Activity
Recommendation
RECREATION
Unit-wide scenic
values, except for
strippable coal
resource areas
No surface disturbances
should be wi.1 owed within
the designated people-
influence zones unless
such developments are
capable of blending in
harmoniously with the
surrounding landscape
Management within the
various scenic categories
is recommended as follows:
Category A (Exceptional", -
Management should provide
protection of these areas
and include appropriate
buffer zones if further
study indicates a need
for additional lands
Category B (Excellent) -
Any development allowed
within this area should
be capable of blending in
harmoniously with the sur-
rounding landscape, to main
tain visual integrity and
associated aesthetic values
If this is not possible,
development should not
be allowed
Description of Recommendations
Nonspecific
Standard	Enforceable Guideline	Policy	Study
No surface disturbance
is allowed in the people-
influence zones that paral-
lel the major thorough-
fares in the planning
unit unless they can be
blended harmoniously
with the surrounding
landscape
Surface disturbance
is not allowed in
Category-A areas
Further studies
should be made to
determine whether
buffer zones are re-
quired around Cate-
gory-A areas
Surface disturbance
must blend harmoniously
with the surrounding
landscape in Category-
B areas. If this is
not possible, devel-
opment is not allowed
-------
Appendix C. (Continued)
Resource	Activity	Recommendation
RECREATION
Unit-wide scenic
values, except
for stnppable
coal resource
areas
Category C (Moderate)
and Category D (Slight) -
Any action affecting
scenic qualities in these
two areas should be al-
lowed only where a con-
scientious effort is made
to minimize visual impacts.
Major impacts should be
located in inconspicuous
areas away from people-
influenco zones
Land-use practices on
national resource lands
must be geared to preserve
open-space values of the
natural landscape
Evaluate public utility
corridors through scenic
categories B, C and D
Management decisions
should insure that existing
airsheds found over the
planning unit will meet
applicable air-quality
standards as set forth
either by the state or
federal government
Description of Recommendations
Nonspecific
Stanc.ard	Enforceable Guideline	Policy	Study
Minimize visual impacts
in Category-C and -D
areas. Locate major
impacts away from peo-
ple-influence zones
Preserve open space
when developing other
resources
Place utility corridors
through the least scenic
areas of the planning
unit
Air qua]ity wi11
meet applicable
state and federal
standards
-------
Appendix C. (Continued)
Resource
RECREATION
Description of Recommendations
Activity
Recommendation
Stancard
Nonspecific
Enforceable Guideline
Policy
Study
Unit-wide wildlife
recreational
values, except for
strippable coal
resource areas
Management decisions should
stress the preservation and
enhancement of raptorial bird
habitats
Management decisions
should stress the pre-
servation and enhancement
of raptorial bird
habitats
n
i
K>
O
Predators should be con-
trolled only when they
threaten the existence of
other resource values.
An example {night be an
increase of coyotes to
such an extent that they
substantially reduce
nujnbers of deer or small
g ar.ie
Implement livestock manage-
ment programs, where applicable,
to maintain and/or improve the
vegetative cover, which, in turn,
will encourage a healthy popu-
lation of native plant and
animal species
Studies are needed to deter-
mine whether additional roads
are required or whether some
existing roads need closing
Predators will be con-
trolled only when they
threaten the existence
of other resource values
Implement livestock man-
aj^raent programs to main-
tain and/or improve the
the vegetative cover
Determine whether
new roads are re-
quired or whether
some existing roads
need to be closed
Prairie dogs should be	Use sport shooting
treated as a recreational to control prairie
resource. If, for some	dogs
reason, control is necessary,
sport shooting is recom-
mended
Prairie dogs are a
recreational resource
-------
Appendix C. (Continued)
Resource
Activity
Recommendation
Description of Recommendations
Standard
Nonspecific
linforceable Guideline
Policy
Study
RECREATION
Unit-wide over-
looks, except for
strippable coal
resource areas
Evaluate present overlooks and
identify potential sites
to establish a system of
overlooks in the unit
Evaluate present
overlooks and iden-
tify potential sites
to establish a sys-
tem of overlooks in
the unit
Unit-wide arch-
eology
An archeological survey of Conduct an archeo-
n
the entire planning unit
should be made, concen-
trating on the outlined
strippable coal resource
areas, prior to leasing
Important archeological
sites have been located
through inventories con-
ducted in 1972-73. If
these sites fall within
leasable areas, salvage
operations conducted by a
professional archeologist
will bo initiated prior to
mining. Coal companies to
whom the lease is issued will
be responsible for this
implementation process
Determine how best to
protect valuable archeo-
logical sites on private land,
especially where threatened
by land disturbance (i.e., the
prehistoric buffalo jump on
the Rosebud Battlefield site)
logical survey of the
entire planning unit,
beginning with strip-
pable coal resource
areas
Coal conpanies will
contract archeological
salvage operations on
leasable coal areas
prior to mining
Determine how best
to protect archeologi-
cal sites on private
land
-------
Appendix C. (Continued)
Description of Recommendations
Resource
Activity
Recommendation
Standard
Nonspecific
Enforceable Guideline
Policy
Study
RECREATION
Unit-wide
archeology
Unit-wide
paleontology
n
K)
Unit-wide access
Development and interpretation
of sites should be done only
when public exposure will not
endanger the values being
preserved
A professional paleontologist
should be consulted to deter-
mine whether a unit-wide sur-
vey is warranted. If a survey
is needed on lands leased for
mineral development, the involved
coal company should be responsible
for implementing this survey
ORV use should be restricted
or closed on BLM forest ser-
vice lands where known damage
is occurring or where key
resource values are in danger
Development and interpreta-
tation of sites should be
done only when public expo-
sure will not endanger the
values being preserved
Restrict ORV use or
close BLM forest ser-
vice lands 'here damage
is occurring or where
key resource values are
endangered
A professional paleontolo-
gist should be consulted to
determine whether a unit-
wide survey is warranted.
If a survey is needed on
lands leased for mineral
development, the involved
coal company should be re-
sponsible for implementing
this survey
Access is needed for those
areas of national resource
lands shown on MFP,
Step 2, Overlay for Lands
and Recreation
Any access acquisition or
construction should be done
only after there is assur-
ance that important resource
values (including recreation)
will not be destroyed or
excessively marred
Obtain ticcess to
the NRL shown on
MFP, Step 2, Overlay
for Lands and Re-
creation
Construction of ac-
cess roads should not
take place at the ex-
pense of other values
-------
Appendix C. (Continued)
Resource
Activity
Recommendation
Standard
Description of Recommendations
Nonspecific
Enforceable Guideline
Policy
Study
RECREATION
Unit-wide visitor-
use analysis
R-l historical
values
0
1
Nj
Visitor-use information on
all forms of recreational
activity should be obtained
as soon as possible
No actions should be taken
that will jeopardize the
integrity of Battle
Butte and Rosebud Battle-
field; lands adjacent to
these sites should be pro-
tected until a survey de-
termines whether or not
they will be needed to
help preserve the actual
site. Battle Butte should
be submitted to the Na-
tional Park Service for
consideration as a national
historic site
Urge the National Park Ser-
vice to buy the Rosebud
battle sit", and any adjacent
lands deemed important to
the site
Stag Rock and Needle Rock
should be evaluated to de-
termine whether they warrant
submission to the NPS as
national historic sites. An
additional study should
be made on Hanging
Woman Creek
Battle Butte will
be nominated for
inclusion in the
National Register
of Historic Places
Management activities
will not jeopardize
the integrity of the
Battle Butte and Rose-
bud Battlefield sites
Visitor-use infor-
mation on all forms
of recreational ac-
tivity should be
obtained as soon as
possible
Lands adjacent to
Battle Butte
and Rosebud Battle-
field should be
protected until a
survey determines
whether or oot
they will be needed
to preserve the ac-
tual sites
Urge the NPS to buy the
Rosebud battle.site and
any adjacent lands deemed
important to the site
Determine whether
Stag Rock, Needle Rock,
and Hanging Woman
Creek should be nomi-
nated for inclusion in
the National Register
of Historic Places
-------
Appendix C. (Continued)
Resource
Activity
Recommendation
Description of Recommendations
Standard
Nonspecific
Enforceable Guideline
Policy
Study
RECREATION
R-l historical
Values
n
i
N)
-P*
R-l geological
features
An inventory and evaluation
of the old, metal water wheel
on the Tongue River, plus as-
sorted old homestead build-
ings scattered throughout
the unit, should be conducted
to determine whether they war-
rant some type of federal or
other protection (see Step
3, Overlay No. 4).
A commemorative plaque or
memorial should be placed
along the county road
(near where the Tongue
River and Hanging Woman
Creek roads join) mark-
ing the routes taken
during the Miles Expedi-
tion of 1S77 and the Rey-
nolds Expedition of 1876.
Until the quality and/or
importance of erosional
features are evaluated,
management should assure
proper protection of
sandstone caves and
buttes, petrified wood
areas, etc., identified
on Step 3, Overlay No. 5
Place a commemorative
plaque or memorial near
the junciion of Tongue
River and Hanging
Woman Creek roads to
mark the routes of
the 1877 Miles Ex-
pedition and the
1876 Reynolds Exped-
ition.
Determine whether
the metal water
wheel on the Tongue
River and old home-
stead buildings
throughout the Plan-
ing Unit warrant
protect ion
Protect the geological
formations identified on
Step 3, Overlay No. 5
until their quality
and/or importance can
be evaluated
-------
Appendix C. (Continued)
Resource
Activity
Recommendation
Description of Recommendations
Standard
Nonspecific
Enforceable Guideline
Policy
Study
RECREATION R-l geological
features
Geological featuers should
be evaluated by Forest Ser-
vice personnel (these fea-
tures are located primarily
within the confines of Cus-
ter National Forest).
Unique geological features
should either be submitted
to the NPS for consideration
under the natural landmark
program or designated as
a natural area
Geological features
in Custer National
Forest should be
evaluated by the
Forest Service for
possible inclusion
in the National
Registry of Natural
Landmarks
n
i
to
tn
R-l snow and
ice features
Management of
water bodies
The Forest,Service should
identify a trail system on
the Ashland Division of the
Custer National Forest for
snowmobiles
Investigate further
to ascertain whether
appropriated waters previously
acquired for industry or
agricultui- can be used
for recreation and wildlife
after mined areas have been
rehabilitated
The Forest Service
should identify a
trail system on the
Ashland Division of
the Custer National
Forest for snowmobiles
Determine whether
waters appropriated
for industrial and
agricultural uses
can be used for re-
creation and wildlife
after mining
-------
Appendix C. (Continued)
Resource
Activity
Recommendation
Standard
Description of Recommendations
Nonspecific
Enforceable Guideline
Policy
Study
RECREATION R-l» Tongue River State agencies should as-
Reservoir	sist the BLM in developing
an activity plan for the
Tongue River Reservoir.
If coal leases are issued
near this reservoir, subse-
quent mining plans should
include appropriate measures
that will mitigate impacts
to existing recreational
values
R-l, Tongue River Additional public access to Obtain lands along
n
i
K>
national resource lands
along the Tongue River
should be obtained. These
tracts of land should pro-
vide boat launching and
fishing sites as well as
enhance other recreational
opportunities. Specific
lands are shown on MFP,
Step 2, overlay for Re-
creation
If coal leases are is-
sued near the Tongue
River Reservoir, mining
plans must include pro-
visions that will miti-
gate impacts to existing
recreational values
the Tongue River
shown on MFP, Step 2,
overlay for Recreation
Develop a comprehensive
study of the Tongue River
to ascertain what recrea-
tional pursuits are of
primary importance. These
studies should be coordinated
with the appropriato state
agencies
Determine recrea-
tional uses of the
Tongue River
-------
Appendix C. (Continued)
Description of Recommendations
Nonspeci fic
Resource	Activity	Recommendation	Standard	Enforceable Guideline	Policy	Study
RECREATION
R-l, Tongue River
The stretch of river be-
tween the Tongue River Dam
and the bridge at Prairie
Dog Creek should remain
free-flowing and be consid-
ered as a possible scenic
corridor
The Tongue River
between the Tongue
River Dim and the
Prairie Dog Creek
bridge is to remain
free-flowing
Determine whether
the Tongue River be-
tween the Tongue
River Dam and Prairie
Dog Creek should be
classified as a scenic
corridor
R-2 fire
protection
All historic bites and
natural areas, identified
on the MFP, Step 1, Re-
creation overlay should be
protected from wildfires
All historic sites
and natural areas
identified on MFP,
Step 1, Recreation over-
lay will be protected
from wi Idfires
n
K>
The use of
to control
gical area
fossil fea
on MFP, Ov
should not
If neccssa
or other f
techniques
be utiliz
fire
heavy equipment
fires in geolo-
(erosional and
cures identified
erlay No. 7
be allowed.
ry, hand lines
ire-fighting
will have to
to control the
Heavy equipment such
as tank trucks and
bulldozors will not
be used to fight
fires in the ero-
sional and fossil-
features areas
identified in MFP,
Overlay No. 7
ENVIRONMENT Environmental
enhancement and
protection of
lands
Soil pollution recommendations:
Restrict and/or control the
following uses or practices:
-------
Appendix C. (Continued)
Description of Recommendations
Nonspecific
Resource	Activity	Recommendation	Standard	Enforceable Guideline	Policy	Study
ENVIRONMENT
Environmental
enhancement and
protection of
lands
a. Sagebrush, weed, or brush Chemical herbicides
n
i
NJ
00
control involving chemi-
cal herbicides not'meet-
ing federal, state, or
public health standards
b.	Chemical treatment and
practices used on lands
to foster their use for
agricultural purposes
not meeting federal,
state, or public health
standards
c.	Private and public sewage
systems not meeting state
or public health stan-
dards
d.	Concentrated industrial
operations adjacent to
water courses or that
would significantly
affect groundwater aquifers
where soil and water con-
tamination can occur
that do not meet
federal, state, or
public health stan-
dards ccnnot be used
for sagebrush, weed,
or brush control
Agricultural chemi-
cals that do not moet
federal, state, or
public health stan-
dards ccnnot be used
Sewage systems must
meet state or public
health standards
Industrial operations
cannot contaminate sur-
face or subsurface waters
-------
Appendix C. (Continued)
Resource	Activity	Recommendation
ENVIRONMENT
Environmental
enhancement and
protection of
lands
The continued operation
of any untcndeJ refuse-
disposal sites v.here
proper methods of han-
dling d3-;«erous or pol-
lutable substances are
nonexistent or limited
in nature. The operation
of the area's refuse dis-
posal sites on a sanitary
landfill basin would
greatly alleviate any
problems associated with
potential soil and water
pollution hazards
The possibility of util-
izing land impacted by srr-
face mining for sanitary
landfill sites should be
considered and investigated
as a possible alternative
Compatabi11ty of land use:
a. All industrial and extrac-
tion operations bordering
water courses in the unit
should be monitored so that
their operations will not
adversely affect the aqua-
tic life or water quality
for recreational or
other life-sustaining pur-
poses. Noise and air-qual-
ity control should also be
monitored and controlled
when necessary
Description of Recommendations
Nonspecific
Standard	Enforceable Guideline	Policy	Study
The refuse generated
in the Planning Unit
should be disposed of
in a single, sanitary,
landfill basin
Determine if land
impacted by surface
mining can be used
for sanitary land-
fill sites
Compatibility of land use:
All industrial and extrac-
tion operations bordering
water courses in the unit
should be monitored so that
their operations will not
adversely affect the aqua-
tic life or water quality
for recreational or
other life-sustaining pur-
poses. Noise and air-qual-
ity control should also be
monitored and controlled
when necessary
-------
Appendix C. (Continued)
Description of Recommendations
Nonspecifxc
Resource	Activity	Recommondation	Stand.lrd	Enforceable Guideline	Policy	Study
ENVIRONMENT
Environmental
enhancement and
protection of
lands
0
1
CaJ
o
Sale of timber to proces-
sors will not exceed al-
lowable cut limits. (An
exception would be disease
treatment or sanitation cuts,
if undertaken.)
Poorly placed and designed
fences should be appropriately
modified and new fences
carefully planned und designed
before installation
Acquire legal access for the
general public to all parcels
of federal and state lands
that possess significant pub-
lic value. Valuable activities
include hunting, outdoor recrea-
tion, geological and environ-
mental studies, and archeologi-
cal, paleontological, and his-
torical sites
the Docker Coal Company's
operations may adversely affect the
aesthetic and recreational use
of the Tongue River Reservoir.
Vegetative or topographic screen-
ings should be considered and
evaluated
Except for salvage or
sanitation cuts, timber
sales will not exceed
allowable cut limits
Poorly placed and designed
fences should be appropriately
modified and new fences
carefully planned and designed
before installation
Legal access shall be	' -
acquired for the general
public to all parcels of
federal and state lands
that have significant pub-
lic value
Evaluate the possi-
bility of screening
the Decker coal mine
from the Tongue River
Reservoir for altera-
tions in vegetation
topography
-------
Appendix C. (Continued)
Resource	Act'vity	Recommendat ion
ENVIRONMENT
Environmental pro-
tection and en-
hancement of
waters
n
In order to ascertain the
present situation properly
and to make meaningful re-
commendations for the capa-
bilities of and opportuni-
ties for development, both
the surface and groundwater
sources of the unit should
be analyzed as they pertain
to federal and public health
standards. From this base
information, future plans
and developments may be more
ful^y considered and evaluated
as they pertain to the pre-
sent situation
Areas meriting special study
are those tracts of land de-
signated for the strip mining
of coal in the minerals por-
tion of this report. An anal-
ysis of the groundwater re-
sources and the local and
regional impacts of mining
on these resources is needed
before implementing any
large-scale development
alternatives
Description of Recommendations
Nonspecific
Standard	Enforceable Guideline	Policy	Study
Conduct an analysis
of surface and
groundwater quality
in the planning
unit
Conduct a detailed
analysis of ground-
water resources in
the areas designated
for coal surface min-
ing. Determine the
local and regional
impacts of coal mining
on groundwater
-------
Appendix C. (Continued)
Resource
Activity
Recommendation
ENVIRONMENT
Environmental
protection and
enhancement of
waters
Surface and groundwater
supplies should be managed
and maintained within the
limits set by the State of
Montana
n
\
Lri
K>
Description of Recommendations
Nonspecific
Standard	Enforceable Guideline	Policy	Study
a.	Drinking, culinary, and
food-processing purposes,
which must also adhere to
Public Health Service
standards
Due to their length and
complexity, the stan-
dards are not inclu-
ded here, but are noted
in the body of the
Decker-Birney report
b.	Bathing, swimming, and
recreation
c.	Growth and marginal prop-
agation of salmcnoid and
nonsalmonoid fishes and
associated aquatic life,
waterfowl, and furbearers
d.	Agricultural water supply,
including irrigation, stock
watering, and truck farming
e.	Industrial water supply
-------
Appendix C. (Continued)
Resource
Activity
Recommendation
Description of Recommendations
Standard
Nonspecific
enforceable Guideline
Policy
Study
ENVIRONMENT Environmental
protection and
enhancement of
air
In order to ascertain
the present situation
properly and to make mean-
ingful recommendations for
the capabilities of and op-
portunities for development,
Montana air quality should
be controlled by continuously
sampling air and comparing it
to State standards and climato-
logical information. From
this base information, future
recommendations may be eval-
uated
Encourage the es-
tablishment of a
continuous air-qual-
ity sampling program
in Montana
n
t
Osl
Crl
Manage and control all land All lan>l and water
and water uses to maintain
the quality of the air as
established by applicable
state and federal air qual-
ity standards
uses roust meet appli-
cable state and fed-
eral air quality
standards
Areas meriting special at-
tention are those tracts of
land designated as being
suitable tor the strip mining
of coal in the minerals por-
tion of this analysis
Lands suitable for
the strip mining of
coal should receive
special attention
Particulate matter recommen-
dations :
a. Paving or oiling all
major public roads
Pave or oil all
major public roads
-------
Appendix C. (Continued)
Description of Recommendations
Nonspeci fic
Resource	Activity	Recommendation	Standard	Enforceable Guideline	Policy	Study
ENVIRONMENT
Environmental
protection and
enhancement of air
b.	Elimination and vegeta-
tive reclamation of un-
needed roads that are
subject to wind and
water erosion
c.	Encourage the conversion
of all open-burning or
untendud dump sites to
sanitary landfills.
The coordination of
this activity, if
undertuken, should be with
local units of government
d.	Encourage state and
federal monitoring
and emission control
measure*, where necessary,
on those land-use activities
that may degrade the area's
air quality
Living components
for humans
e. Increase the rxre protection
measures serving the region
±>uch a' manpower and equipment
More detailed studies are
needed to ascertain the present
situation of the people who
live and/or work in the
region before implementing
detailed activity plans that
would significantly alter
the environment
Reclaim unneeded roads
that are subject to
wind and water erosion
Encourage local
governments to
convert open-
burning or untended
dump sites to sani-
tary landfills
Encourage state and
federal monitoring of
land-use activities
that may affect air
quality and the devel-
opment of emission
control measures for
these activities
Increase the fire
protection capabilities
in the region
Prepare a detailed
socioeconomic study
of the planning unit
Some of the data
needed for this
study are:
-------
Appendix C. (Continued)
Resource	Activity	Recommendation
ENVIRONMENT Living components
for hunans
n
i
Ol
Description of Recommendations
Nonspecific
Standard	Enforceable Guideline	Policy	Study
Population -
Amount, age, mix, growth
Employment -
Unemployment
Housing -
Abundance, quality, price
Affluence and poverty -
Distribution of wealth
Significant institutions -
Education, safety, security
Professional services -
Medical, legal, scientific
Public health -
Quantity, quality
Energy services -
Adequacy, rate, future
needs, pollution
Transportat ion services
Sewage treatment and disposal
Public recreation
Public administration -
Goals, representation, fi-
nances, services, planning
Local'amenities
Well being of local inhabitants-
Goals, attitudes, wants
Sector economics
-------
Appendix C. (Continued)
Activity	Recommendation
ENVIRONMENT Protection and	Detailed soil surveys arc
enhancement of	needed in the Rosebud County
ecological pro- portion of the planning unit,
cesses	Such surveys have already
been completed in Big Horn
and Powder River Counties
that outline the chemical,
physical, and engineering
properties of each major
soil type
Additional wildlife data
are needed for both
terrestrial and aquatic
ecosystems
Manage and control all land
uses in order to maintain the
vegetative and aquatic habi-
tats and their associated
ecosystems in a vigorous
and healthy condition and
compositional structure.
The follow^-.g ecosystems
are found in the Decker-
Birney area:
Description of Recommendations
Nonspecific
Standard	Enforceable Guideline	Policy	Study
Conduct detailed
surveys to determine
the chemical, physical
and engineering prop-
erties of major soil
types in the Rosebud
County portion of the
planning unit
Manage and control land
uses in order to Maintain
terrestrial and aquatic
ecosystems in a vigorous
and healthy condition
Conduct studies to de-
termine on-site inter-
relationships and
habitat conditions of
in the planning unit
-------
Appendix C. (Continued)
Resource
Activity
Recommendation
Standard
Description of Recommendations
Nonspecific
Enforceable Guideline
Policy
Study
ENVIRONMENT Protection and
enhancement of
ecological
processes
Ecosystem
Aquatic
Grass land
Pine-woodland
Pondcrosa
pine
Big sage-
brush shrub
Broad leaf
Agricultural
land
Acreage
3,803
214,622
217,116
159,668
262,336
10,164
31,000
\ of Area
.42
23.89
24.15
17.76
29.20
1.13
3.45
Broadleaf habitat (streamside):
0
1
a.	Maintain and enhance this
vegetative component of
the environment
b.	Proper management of che
surrounding areas is im-
portant for this vegeta-
tive habitat
c. Road construction should
not be permitted or
should be highly re-
stricted in this envir-
onment
Maintain and enhance
the broadleaf vege-
tation type
Management activities on
lands adjacent to broad-
leaf habitat will not be
detrimental to this habi-
tat
Road construction
is not permitted in
the broadleaf habi-
tat
The Water Resources Board
should ascertain the prac-
tices, if any, that can be
initiated to regulate more
adequately the Tongue River
Reservoir and the downstream
water fluctuations and tem-
peratures of the Tongue River,
especially during early summer
and fall
Determine methods
that can be initiated
to regulate adequately
the Tongue River Re-
servoir and the down-
stream water and tem-
perature fluctuations
of the Tongue River
-------
Appendix C. (Continued)
Resource
Activity
Recommendation
Description of Recommendations
Standard
Nonspecific
Enforceable Guideline
Policy
Study
ENVIRONMENT
Hazards to human
and animal health
and safety
Landslide and snowslide areas
Investigations of the higher
elevations may be in order
Determine necessity
of studying land-
slide and snowslide
areas in the planning
unit
n
00
Earthquake or fault hazards
Several major faults are
depicted on the mineral
resources overlay. The
type and magnitude of de-
velopment should be carefully
evaluated and controlled on
these sites
Unprotected areas, mine shafts or dumps
Mining in the area is currently
limited to one operation and
the elements of hazards and
safety have been taken into
account. Any new or ongoing
commercial or industrial ac-
tivities, however, should be
operated and managed with
safety in mind. The
open-dump sites situated near
Birney, Decker, and Ashland
have been discussed under the
nonliving components section
of this report, which outlines
proposed mitigating measures
Control development in
major fault areas
New mining operations
will take safety into
account
-------
Appendix C. (Continued)
Resource
Activity
Recommendation
Standard
Description of Recommendations
Nonspecific
Enforceable Guideline
Policy
Study
ENVIRONMENT
Hazards to human
and animal health
and safety
Toxic water
Groundwater supplies vary
drasticalW in their quality.
Surface or subsurface dis-
turbances should not be
permitted that mix the con-
tents of underground aqui-
fers unless the water quality
meats state and federal
water standards
Surface or subsurface
disturbances cannot mix
the contents of under-
ground aquifers unless
the water quality
meets state and federal
standards
Aesthetics
Visual
n
i
04
a.	Burning at community
dump sites should not
be permitted. It should
be managed on a sanitary
landfill basis and
fenced to help keep
any blowing trash within
the area
b.	The scoria and gravel
pits in the unit should
be located out of view
of the traveled roadways
c.	The Decker Coal Company
mine adjacent to the
Tongue River Reservoir
should be screened by
plantings or other ap-
proved reclamation prac-
tices. An exception,
however, is that area
between the road and
Burning at community
dump sites should not
be periritte^. Solid
waste should be dis-
posed cf at fenced
sanitaTy landfilis
Locate scoria and
gravel pits outside
of the view of
roadways
Screen the Decker
Coal Company mine
adjacent to the
Tongue River Reser-
voir with trees, ex-
cept for the area
between the road
and the railroad
-------
Appendix C. (Continued)
Description of Recommendations
Nonspecific
Resource	Activity	Recommendation	Standard	Enforceable Guideline	Policy	Stud/
ENVIROWIENT Aesthetics	railroad tract in the fill
(contined)	area. The Highway Department
has stated that no trees should
be planted here since they will
produce a snow-fence effect
and enable snow to drift onto
the road and railroad tracks
Sound
This is not known to be
a problem at this time
in the unit. Land-use
controls may be a partial
answer to prevent noise
encroachment into people-
use areas or vice versa.
Areas meriting consideration
and study would be around
airports, mining operations,
timber, and sawmill opera-
tions, etc.
Odors
Prevent the encroachment	Study methods of
of noise into or from	controlling noise
people-use areas	from airports, min-
ing operations, tim-
ber and sawmill
operations, etc.
Outside of ..he three gener-
ally open and burning sites
situated in Ashland, Decker,
and Birney, no source of
undesirable odors is known.
The conversion of these
sites to sanitary landfills
will greatly alleviate
the problem
Convert open dis-
posal sites in
Ashland, Decker,
and Birnoy to
sanitary landfills
-------
Appendix C. (Continued)
Resource	Activity	Recommendation
ENVIRONMENT Aesthetics	Land-use controls should also
be established to prevent
offensive land uses from
being established within
or near population centers
or in geographical areas
of high recreational use
or enjoyment
Cultural
Much inventory, research,
and 'data must be
compiled to determine
present cultural resources
and to evaluate the poten-
tial for their protection
and/or enhancement
Human interest
value
O
Description of Recommendations
Nonspeci fic
Standard	Enforceable Guideline	Policy	Study
Prevent the establishment
of land uses that create
offensive odors near pop-
ulation centers and areas
of high recreational use
Conduct a study
to determine the
potential for pro-
tecting or enhanc-
ing cultural re-
sources
-------
APPENDIX D
DECISION ANALYSIS FOR THE SITING OF NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS -
THE RELEVANCE OF MULTIATTRIBUTE UTILITY THEORY
(by Ralph L. Keeney and Keshavan Nair, Proceedings
of the IEEE, Vol. 63, No. 3, March 1975)
D-l
-------
494
PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE, VOL. 63, NO. 3, MARCH 1975
Decision Analysis for the Siting of Nuclear
Power Plants—The Relevance of
Multiattribute Utility Theory
RALPH L. KEENEY and KESHAVAN NAIR
Abstract-The necessity for improved decision making concerning the
siting and licensing of major power facilities has been accelerated in the
past decade by the increased environmental consciousness of the public
and by the energy crisis. These problems are exceedingly complex due
to their multiple objective nature, the many interest groups, the long-
range time horizons, and the inherent uncertainties of the potential
impacts of any decision. Along with the relatively objective economic
and engineering concerns, clearly the more subjective factors involving
safety, environmental, and social issues are crucial to the problem.
Hence, the professional judgments and knowledge of experts in these
areas should be utilized in analyses of siting decisions. Likewise, the
preferences of the general public, as consumers, the utility companies,
as builders and operators of power plant facilities, and environmentalists
and the government must be accounted for in analyzing power plant
siting and licensing issues. We advocate an approach for formally artic-
ulating the experts' judgments and the decision makers' preferences,
both of which are clearly subjective, and processing these along with
the more objective considerations in a logical maimer to acquire the
implications for decision making. The appropriateness and application
of decision analysis for power plant location decisions is discussed and
illustrated in this paper. Emphasis is placed on the assessment of the
decision maker's preferences and tradeoffs concerning multiple
objectives.
I. Introduction
A LMOST ALL proposed strategies for meeting the projected
/j\ energy demands of the next two decades include build-
J- jX. ing a substantial number of power plant facilities. Un-
fortunately, long delays are often experienced between the
initial planning by the utility company and the date of opera-
tion. President Nixon recognized this in April 1973 when he
stated that as part of his program to alleviate the energy short-
age, he proposed legislation and procedures to reduce unnec-
essary delays in the siting and licensing of nuclear power
facilities.
The long delays result in part from the conflicting demands
of an adequate energy supply and an acceptable level of en-
vironmental impact. It has been argued [4] that the shortage
of electricity in New York City is due "in large measure to an
inability to build plants as needed" and that "to reestablish the
reliability of the electricity system we must find the tradeoff
point between power plant siting and the environment." This
issue is formally addressed in this paper. More generally, we
are concerned with describing a systematic approach for ra-
Manuscript received June 10, 1974; revised October 8, 1974. This
paper was presented at the ASCE Specialty Conference on Probabilistic
Methods in Engineering. This work was supported in part by funds for
Professional Development from Woodward-Clyde Consultants, Wood-
ward-Envicon, Inc., and Woodward-Lundgren and Associates, and in
part by the Office of Naval Research under Contract N00014-67-0204-
0056 for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
R. L. Keeney was with the Operations Research Center, Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass. He is now with the Interna-
tional Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Vienna, Austria.
K. Nair is with Woodward-Clyde Consultants, San Francisco, Calif.
tionally balancing achievement on the many conflicting objec-
tives of siting power plants. The procedures and methodology
offer a significant contribution to improved decision making.
A. Problem Statement
In the existing institutional framework, the utility companies
make the initial decision on a suitable site for power genera-
tion facilities, and then attempt to justify this decision to the
regulatory agencies. The regulatory agencies review the utility
companies' position and approve, suggest modifications, or re-
ject the utility companies' recommendations. Both the utility
company and the regulatory agencies have to consider the
views of interested groups from the general public.
The major issues in the selection of a site for a power plant
are as follows.
1)	Difficulty in Defining the Problem: What alternatives are
available to the decision makers? Who are these decision
makers? What are the objectives and how are they going to be
measured? What is the time scale of the problem? The identi-
fication of all significant impacts of potential decisions is often
extremely difficult. There are several points of view to be
considered (e.g., environmentalists, consumer groups, utility
compames, regulatory agencies), each of which needs to be
identified and articulated.
2)	Multiple Objectives: There are a number of conflicting
objectives on the basis of which the decision should be made
and evaluated. These objectives which can be considered as
components of the "quality of life" include environmental,
social, economic, and safety Considerations. Some of these
have direct measures of effectiveness; e.g., cost (dollars), and
others are intangibles; e.g., aesthetics. For the intangible ob-
jectives it will be necessary to develop subjective indices of
measurement. The decision maker will be faced with the in-
evitable tradeoffs between achievement on one objective and
achievement on others.
3)	Impact Over Time: The decisions made today have an
impact in the future. In economic studies this has usually been
accounted for by discounting to net present worth. However,
when considering radioactive waste, for example, it does not
appear that discounting would be appropriate because at most
moderate (3-7 percent) discount rates, society should effec-
tively neglect all waste generated after 50 years. Such an im-
plication of discounting does not appear to be intuitively
justifiable. More appropriate procedures for addressing impact
over time must be developed and used.
4)	Uncertainty: There is always a degree of uncertainty as-
sociated with the possible impacts of an action. For example,
the future effects in terms of environmental, safety, and social
considerations cannot be predicted with certainty at the time
the siting decision has to be made. Lack of knowledge and in-
Copyright 1975, by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc
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KEENEY AND NAIR: SITING OF NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS
complete information contribute to this uncertainty. It is this
uncertainty that often forms the basis of many of the objec-
tions to the location of nuclear power plants.
5)	Several Impacted Groups: There are several identifiable
groups who are impacted by a siting decision. The preferences
of these groups are different. There is a desire on the part of
the decision maker to attempt to achieve a degree of equity
among the impacted groups.
6)	Several Decision Groups: Often State and Federal agen-
cies interact in making decisions. Not only can there be several
groups involved in making the decision but there may also be
some ambiguity and overlap concerning their responsibilities.
If the problem is examined from the utility company's view-
point, the utility company executives are the decision makers
and the Federal and State agencies can be considered as im-
pacted groups.
An analysis which claims to address the total problem must
account for the aforementioned issues.
B.	Need for Formal A nalysis
The complexity of the problem in terms of conflicting mul-
tiple objectives, many interest groups, and the uncertainties as-
sociated with the potential impacts of a decision make it im-
possible to process the information satisfactorily through an
informal and intuitive analysis. Recognizing this, the National
Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which forms the basis for
judging the adequacy of the decision making process, requires
that agencies of the Federal Government "utilize a systematic,
interdisciplinary approach which will insure the integrated use
of the natural and social sciences and the environmental design
arts in planning and in decision making which may have an im-
pact on man's environment." Furthermore, NEPA requires
that the decision making process be available for public scru-
tiny. A formal analysis is necessary to meet the NEPA
requirements.
C.	Organization of Paper
The advantages of a formal analysis in the selection of a
power plant site are discussed in Section II. In Section III,
current approaches to this problem are briefly reviewed and
appraised. Section IV suggests the applicability of decision
analysis for analyzing the siting problem and discusses how the
issues raised in Section II are treated in decision analysis. A
critical part of the analysis, the structuring and assessment of a
multiattribute utility function, is discussed in Section V. Con-
clusions are presented in Section VI.
II. Advantages of a Formal Analysis
A formal analysis, designed to improve decision making, has
several major advantages.
1)	It develops a good definition of the problem in terms of
explicitly stating the alternatives and future contingencies, and
identifying potential impacts.
2)	It permits sensitivity analysis on alternative courses of
action to study the impact of variations in estimates of uncer-
tainty and of changes in the preferences of the decision makers
and those affected by the decision.
3)	It focuses discussion on substantive issues and provides a
framework for resolving different points of view.
4)	It permits an explicit treatment of uncertainty and pref-
erences over both objective and subjective aspects of the
problem.
49 S
5)	It provides documentation for advocacy processes which
need to be conducted in power plant siting and licensing
decisions.
6)	It provides the basis for developing a generic model for
the evaluation of the aspects of nuclear siting problems com-
mon to many separate cases.
III. Current Approaches to the Siting Problem
The initial decision on selecting a site for locating a power
plant is made by the utility company based on studies which it
undertakes. This decision with appropriate justification is pre-
sented to the regulatory agencies. These agencies review the
work of the utility company and hold public hearings prior to
reaching a decision whether to approve or disapprove the
utility company's position. Other special interest groups; e.g.,
environmentalists, local communities, etc., can challenge the
regulatory agencies' decisions in the public media and in the
courts. The regulatory agencies and the special interest groups
have to rely heavily on the work conducted by the utility
company.
Prior to the enactment of NEPA, the major factors in the
selection, in addition to essential functional requirements, were
safety and economics. Designs were developed to ensure safe
performance under prescribed loadings. Criteria established by
the regulatory agencies excluded certain areas as sites because
of the potential risk of damage from an accident.
NEPA requires that broader environmental and social issues
be addressed and that the alternatives considered be explicitly
discussed. Since site selection is a long process, many of the
initial studies after the enactment of NEPA consisted of ex-
amining a decision already made to demonstrate that environ-
mental and social impacts were acceptable.
However, the trend now is towards regional studies where
many candidate sites are selected and a comparative evaluation
conducted to select the 'best' site. There is no generally ac-
cepted methodology for conducting such studies. However,
the following steps contain the essential features of approaches
currently in use.
1)	Establishing Exclusionary Criteria: Criteria which are
utilized to exclude areas as potential sites are established.
These are based on regulatory agency requirements and essen-
tial functional requirements. Examples of such criteria are pop-
ulation centers in excess of 2500, Federal reserves, earthquake
faults, areas where air pollutant concentrations are already in
violation of Federal standards, and water availability.
2)	Selecting Candidate Sites: On the basis of these exclu-
sionary criteria a number of candidate sites are selected.
3)	Establishing Evaluation Criteria: A list of criteria is es-
tablished for comparative evaluation of the candidate sites.
Currently these criteria, in most cases, do not reflect the ob-
jectives to be attained in a siting decision. They represent the
sensitivity of the site to impact, but do not measure what the
impact might be. These criteria cover the broad range of cost,
safety, social, and environmental factors. However, specific
measures are generally not developed for all these criteria, spe-
cifically in the social and environmental areas.
4)	Application of Criteria: In most cases the effort is con-
centrated on those criteria which can be easily quantified;
these are primarily cost and safety. Recently attempts have
been made at subjectively quantifying environmental factors.
However, in most cases the techniques for quantification have
been inadequate. Very little attention is paid to social issues.
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE, MARCH 1975
5) Siting Decisions: In making decisions over multiple cri-
teria, tradeoffs are not currently explicitly considered. Gen-
erally those criteria which can be relatively easily quantified
(e.g., cost, safety) dominate the decision. Recent attempts at
weighting the several criteria are not done in an appropriate
manner and can lead to erroneous conclusions. Sensitivity
studies excluding various criteria have been conducted to assist
the decision maker.
Many factors that were not being considered prior to NEPA
are now being considered and the approaches now in use rep-
resent significant improvements over past practice. Neverthe-
less, the shortcomings in the current approaches, which are
very significant, include the following.
1)	The criteria are not formulated in terms of impacts.
Under the existing procedures it is generally advantageous to
select a site which has already suffered substantial environ-
mental damage or is in a low-income area.
2)	Uncertainties are not considered. This is one of the most
important issues in the arguments on siting. What is the likeli-
hood of a particular impact occurring?
3)	The tradeoffs between various conflicting objectives are
not explicitly treated and the relative preferences of the de-
cision maker are not determined.
4)	Impacted and other special interest groups who have dif-
ferent tradeoffs and preferences as compared to the decision
maker are not considered directly in the analysis.
5)	The 'no build' alternative is not formally analyzed. The
intrinsic value of preservation is therefore not considered.
6)	Where quantitative work has been done in order to con-
sider multiple objectives, it has not been on a sound theoretical
basis.
IV. Modeling the Problem
In this section, we will briefly describe the decision analysis
approach and then structure the nuclear power plant siting
problem in this context. Specifically, we indicate how the
issues raised in Section II are addressed within the decision
analysis framework.
A. The Decision Analysis Approach
How can one "make sense out of all the considerations"
which are important to selecting the best alternative concern-
ing a siting problem? The difficulty in doing this informally in
one's mind is that there are just too many factors and interac-
tions to think through and balance competing effects, along
with the many considerations of equity, long-range conse-
quences, etc. It would be very nice if the decision makers
could systematically analyze all this relevant information in
the manner they would like to, using their own common sense
and preferences. Decision analysis, the approach we advocate
for analyzing these complex problems, does exactly this.
For discussion purposes, it is convenient to divide decision
analysis into four steps. In practice the distinction is not so
clear as there is a great deal of interaction among the steps.
These steps are as follows.
1)	Structuring the decision problem includes identification
of the decision maker, impacted groups, generation of alterna-
tives and an appropriate set of objectives and measures of ef-
fectiveness to indicate the degree to which these objectives
might be achieved by various alternatives.
2)	Describing the possible consequences over time of each
alternative in terms of the measures of effectiveness. With this
step, the uncertainty associated with possible alternatives is
identified.
3)	Prescribing the relative preferences of the decision maker
or makers for the possible consequences. Here the tradeoffs
among the conflicting objectives which one is willing to accept
are identified.
4)	Rationally synthesizing the information from the first
three steps and performing sensitivity analyses to decide which
of the proposed alternatives is preferred.
The decision analysis approach attempts to consider system-
atically all the available relevant information and to utilize
explicitly the preferences of the decision maker. It does this
by breaking the problem into parts, which are easier to analyze
than the whole, and then putting the parts back together in a
"logical fashion." The crucial difference between decision
analysis and other approaches which claim to help the decision
maker, is that the 'logical fashion' for integrating the parts de-
pends on the individual decision maker doing the integrating.
It is essential, as well as desirable, to exploit the experience,
professional judgment, and knowledge of the individual in
making the siting decisions. Decision analysis provides proce-
dures for formalizing the judgments and preferences of such
decision makers and integrating this using their logic to evalu-
ate alternative courses of action in complex decision problems.
To illustrate this, let us consider a siting problem in the de-
cision analysis framework.
B. The Siting Problem in a Decision Analysis Framework
We will state a general hypothetical problem and then fol-
low the four steps outlined in the preceding to illustrate the
procedure for analyzing it.
To keep the discussion simple and to the point, consider the
decision of whether or not to build a nuclear power facility at
any of three alternative sites. Only one site will be chosen if,
in fact, any is. There is the possibility that the 'no build' al-
ternative is better than building at any of the three sites.
Hence, this must be included in any analysis which purports to
assist the decision maker.
Structuring the Problem: For our hypothetical problem the
alternatives are already specified. We take the position that the
decision maker is the utility company; furthermore, we assume
that for purposes of discussion the decision maker is an
individual.
An appropriate set of objectives for the utility company and
measures of effectiveness for each of these to indicate the de-
gree to which they are achieved need to be developed. The
choice of objectives and measures of effectiveness should be
made by the decision makers with the assistance of experts in
the various disciplines. Clearly in all nuclear siting decisions,
the utility company's overall objective is "to select the best
site." However, this objective is too broad to be operationally
useful in analyzing the alternatives. It must be divided into a
number of lower-level more specific objectives. A possible set
of objectives, which could be specified is as follows:
a)	minimize environmental damage;
b)	maximize human health and safety;
c)	provide quality service for consumers; and
d)	maximize desirable economic impact on the company.
This set of objectives is oversimplified but may be still too
general to be of practical use. Subobjectives are developed,
and associated with each of these is a measure of effectiveness.
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KEENEY AND NAIR: SITING OF NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS
497
TABLE I
Concepts on Developing Objectives, Subobjectives,
and Measures of Effectiveness
u (x*)
OBJECTIVE
SUB-OBJECTIVg
MAsum or imcrmtitss11'


(Attributes)


Pish population

Aquatic Ecology
Change m ambient temper-
ature of water
Subjective indices in terms
of other sites

Terrestrial Ecology

Minimize Environ-
mental Damage *
Mater Quality
Air Quality
Objective measures available

Aesthetic and
Scenic Values
Subjective indices

Impact of Transmission
Lines
Length of line

Bistoric 6 Cultural
Features
Subjective indices
Maximize Human
Health 6 Safety
Radiation Exposure
Level of radiation per
person
Provide Quality
Service for <
Consumer*
Service Interruptions
Cost to Consumer
Delays in Initial
Operation
Days
Annual cost in dollars
Days
fexlnlze Oe»irable
Economic Impact
on Company
Profit Co Caapany
CCase (initial)
Operating ravenu«f
\ Operating expenses
Coat of Dei.iy« in
I Llcmsing
For each sub-objective there can be more tA»n one nuurt of effective-
ness. Wtien no objective rnaesure is apparent, by appropriate techniques
a subjective index can be developed within Che experience of Che
decision maker.
Table I, although not intended to be complete for any specific
problem, illustrates this concept. In practice it is always ex-
tremely important to attempt to include all the relevant ob-
jectives in one's analysis.
For example, under minimizing environmental damage we
would have to consider aquatic ecology, terrestrial ecology,
and water quality, etc. An important point is that none of the
options (including the 'no build' alternative) is likely to have
no detrimental environmental impacts. We now face the ques-
tion of what is a useful measure of aquatic ecology. The possi-
bilities are to develop a subjective index based partially on the
professional judgments and experience of aquatic ecologists or
to utilize an established objective indicator of aquatic ecology.
It is often not obvious what objective measure should be used.
For aquatic ecology, possible measures include fish population
or other elements in the food chain or causes of change in the
aquatic ecology like the number of Btu added to the water by
the plant. It may be possible to integrate several such objec-
tive measures into one overall measure of aquatic ecology
(see [9]). By formally analyzing a problem with alternative
measures of effectiveness for a specific objective, it is possible
to conduct a sensitivity analysis to determine if the choice of
the measure influences the decision.
For purposes of discussion, let us assume that there are n
measures of effectiveness, labeled X\, • • • , Xn. We will also
refer to Xi, • • • , Xn as attributes, and small letters x,- will rep-
resent a specific amount of attribute X,.
The consequence x = (jrt, x2, • • •, xn) of implementing a
particular alternative can be described in terms of the levels x,¦
of the attributes X(. However, there is always a degree of un-
u(x«)
Fig. 1. Simple decision analysis model of a nuclear siting decision.
certainty associated with predicting the consequences of any
course of action at the time the decision is made. These uncer-
tainties are always treated explicitly in decision analysis. To
describe the possible consequences of each alternative, we want
a probability distribution function which indicates which con-
sequences (xlt • • ¦ ,xn) might occur and their likelihoods of
occurrence. Thus, for each alternative, the utility company
should quantify its judgment, based on expert opinion, data,
experiments it may have conducted, energy demand forecasts,
etc., to specify p/(x), the probability distribution for conse-
quences given alternative / is chosen. Many disciplines besides
decision analysis, including operations research, management
science, systems analysis, and computer science address such
issues as constructing appropriate models to generate probabil-
ity distributions. These models include both analytic and
simulation models. We will not dwell on this important con-
sideration here as our main consideration in this paper con-
cerns the next step.
Prescribing the Relative Preferences: The tradeoff issue is
addressed by assessing the decision maker's relative preferences
for the consequences. We want to quantify the decision
maker's subjective preferences so we. can clearly see for instance
if x = (jc'i , • • • , x'n), is preferred to x" = (x", ¦ ¦ • , .xJJ), if they
are indifferent, or if the latter is preferred. Then if {x\,X2,
*?.¦¦¦, *S) indifferent to (x", x2, x°, ¦ • • , jc°);one can say
that given =x®, ¦ • • ,xn =x„, the decision maker is willing
to change to x'[ if x'2 is changed to x\.
To quantify preferences, we need to assess the decision
maker's preference function which assigns a number u to each
of the possible consequences {xt, x2, ¦ ¦ • , xn). This function1
has two desirable properties: 1) u(x\, ¦ ¦ ¦ ,x'n)>u(x",
1 The term utility function is more common for what we refer to as a
preference function. The terminology here avoids misunderstandings
due to assessing a utility company's utility function.
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE, MARCH .1975
x'^) if and only if (x\, • ¦ • , x'n) is preferred to (x'{, • ¦ • , x'^)\
and 2) in situations with uncertainty, the expected value of u is
the appropriate guide to make decisions. For each alternative
1, the probability distribution Pj and the preference function
u are necessary and sufficient to calculate the expected value
of u. Then the alternative with the highest expected value is
chosen. This last result follows from some fundamental be-
havioral assumptions specified in von Neumann and Morgen-
stern [13]. Raiffa [11] has a discussion of their appropriate-
ness in decision making. This brings up the crucial issue which
we address in Section V: "How is u assessed?"
Rationally Synthesizing the Information: Thisstep is mainly
computational given the information of the previous three
steps. It consists of calculating expected values of u for the
alternatives and choosing the alternative associated with the
highest value. The sensitivity analysis involves varying the
basic parameters of the probability distributions and the pref-
erence function to see how this affects the best alternative and
also changing the structure of the problem slightly by adding
measures of effectiveness which were initially left off because
they were felt to be not significant enough to influence the
best strategy.
A picture of the decision analysis model in simple form is il-
lustrated in Fig. 1, The four alternatives are clear. The nota-
tion p/(x) is the probability distribution if alternative j is taken,
where j = A, B, C, D, and D indicates do not build. The pos-
sible consequences range from a worst, labeled x°, and a best,
labeled x*, and the utility firm's preference function is u.
V. Structuring and Assessing the
Preference Function
The most unique aspect of a decision analysis is the degree to
which subjective factors—judgments about possible conse-
quences and preferences—are formally incorporated into the
analysis of the alternatives. We believe that it is these subjec-
tive factors that cause most of the disputes on siting decisions
and that formalizing them provides a basis for constructive
discussion and a basis from which to reach agreement. Our
position is that these subjective factors are essential in any
analysis to prescribe a best alternative for the situation. In this
section, the focus is on the preference aspect of the problem.
First, the general approach in structuring the preference func-
tion is discussed, and then procedures for assessment are illus-
trated in the context of a hypothetical example.
A. Structuring the Preference Function
We would like to break the preference assessment into a
number of smaller tasks. In particular, it would be convenient
if a simple function form for u could be found such that
u(xi,x2, • • • ,x„) = f[ul(xl),u2(.x2), • • ¦ , u„(x„)] (1)
where *,¦ represents a specific amount of attribute Xh i =
1,2,n, and u,- is a preference function over X(. For in-
stance, u might be additive so that
n
w (¦*"i, ' * * , xn) — ktUj(xf)	(2)
i=i
or multiplicative so
1 +fcu(x1,--- ,*„)=[] [1 +kk,u,(x,)l	(3)
i=i
where in both cases the £,'s are positive scaling constants.
D-l
The basic manner used to structure simple forms of u con-
sistent with (1) is to verify sets of assumptions about the de-
cision maker's preferences which imply certain reasonable
forms of u. Two basic assumptions are referred to as preferen-
tial independence and utility independence. Let us define
these.
Preferential Independence: The pair of attributes {Xi,X2}
is preferentially independent of the attributes [X3, • • • , Xn}
if preferences among {Xi, A"2} pairs given that {X3, • • • , X„}
are held fixed do not depend on the level where {X$, • • • , Xn}
are fixed.
Preferential independence implies that the tradeoffs between
attributes Xt and X2 do not depend on X3, • • • ,Xn.
Utility Independence: The attribute Xi is utility indepen-
dent of the other attributes {ATj, • • • , Xn} if preferences
among lotteries over X\, specifying various amounts of and
the probabilities of receiving them, given X2,~'',Xn are
fixed, do not depend on the levels where these attributes are
fixed.
Rather than present theorems following from various inde-
pendence assumptions which can be found elsewhere (see, for
example, Fishburn [1], [2], Keeney [5], [7], and Raiffa
[10]), let us just say that a number of forms consistent with
(1), such as (2) and (3) can be derived. We want to concentrate
on two other matters: i) indicating how the various complexi-
ties of the nuclear siting problem discussed in Section II are
formally addressed within our preference structure, and ii) dis-
cussing the assessment of u.
B. Addressing Complexities in the Preference Structure
By their very structure the consequences (jcj, • • ¦ ,xn) do
incorporate the multiple objective nature of the nuclear siting
problem, and we have already indicated how the tradeoff issue
and uncertainties can be explicitly addressed in this framework.
One of the complexities we did not yet consider is impacts over
time. Suppose our fourth attribute X4 is cost measured in
dollars. Likely the dollar flow due to a particular nuclear plant
would exist for many years. Here we include construction and
maintenance costs, power generation costs, revenues received
from the power generated, etc. Rather than lumping this into
one number x4 initially, it may be better to view it as a se-
quence of numbers (x%,xi, • • • ,*4), where x\ represents the
net flow in dollars in year t from now. It may then be appro-
priate to aggregate these x4's using the net present value, label
it xA, of the monetary stream, where
x4 = £ X'xi	(4)
t=0
and X is the discount factor. One must be aware of the as-
sumptions implied by (4) before blindly using this discounting.
Other more sophisticated means of aggregating time considera-
tions are available (see Meyer [8]).
The intangible and less quantifiable aspects of a problem
represent a challenge to all who work on it. For instance,
suppose that the environmental damage could not be measured
simply by fish killed, but that it was desirable to measure how
the overall environmental loss due to the construction of a
nuclear facility on what was previously wilderness. There may
be no objective manner to count up the impact due to lost
solitude for campers, the lost sanctuary for animals, the eco-
logical balance among small species in the area which may be
lost forever, etc. In these situations one is forced to structure
a subjective index of environmental damage which attempts to
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KEENEY AND NAIR: SITING OF NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS
499
account for all these factors. A scale of environmental impacts
can be set up from zero to ten where zero represents no
damage—the site is not built here—and ten may be complete
devastation of a few square miles area. A five on such a scale
may be defined as the solitude and privacy of the area are gone,
but larger animals and foliage are not particularly disturbed.
Then one must consider relative preferences for the various
amounts of environmental damage as represented on the sub-
jective scale.
A utility company is often concerned about the impact of its
decisions on various groups such as local groups of individuals
living near prospective sites, environmentalists, consumers,
State and Federal agencies, etc. In order to explicitly consider
this, rather than treat it under one general term like "public
acceptance," it might be possible to quantify the preferences
of each of the groups of interest with preference functions in
the same manner in which the utility company's preferences
were structured.2 Suppose this is completed and we just have
preference functions uL for local groups, ug for environmental-
ists, and uc for consumers. Then issues of tradeoffs between
the groups can be formally addressed. The analysis should
answer questions such as if we built a big plant at Site A versus
a moderate-sized plant at Site B, what will the attitudes of
these groups be. Who benefits and who does not and by how
much? Also, is this package of benefits and disbenefits justi-
fiable? This is the equity issue raised in Section II. If by in-
creasing a plant's size the utility company can provide better
service to consumers and slightly improve their profits, is this
justifiable, given that the environmentalists will be slightly dis-
pleased and the local groups living near the site very upset?
Another question facing the utility company is, will the State
and Federal agencies allow such an expansion in light of the
impacted groups' feelings. Such an analysis may shed some
light on this issue and in the process help suggest better
courses of action for the utility company to pursue.
C. Assessing the Preference Function
Now let us concentrate on the implementation of the ideas.
We want to answer three questions in this section. 1) Whose
preferences should be assessed? 2; What information is needed
to specify the preferences? 3^ How does one obtain this
information?
Whose Preferences Should Be Assessed: The decision maker
upon whom we have focused to illustrate the concepts is the
utility company. The methodology discussed could be utilized
to assess the preferences of any of the impacted groups dis-
cussed above. Thus, it is the utility company's preferences that
are of interest. These may in practice come directly from the
president of the company, persons whom he designates, or a
combination of both. For example, the president may desig-
nate certain nuclear engineers and safety engineers to assess
preferences over attributes concerning radiation hazards of
particular designs. Environmental experts in the employment
of the utility company may specify preferences for degrees of
environmental impact. The tradeoffs between these two factors
may be concluded jointly by both groups of people as well as
the president and other executives of the utility company.
Issues concerning profits and service may be considered only
by the executives of the firm. After all the assessments, the
president of the board must "ratify" the preference function
3Gros [ 31 has some initial results on quantifying the preferences of
various interest groups.
D-
as representing the professional judgments and overall interests
of the utility company.
What Information Is Needed to Specify Preferences and
How Is It Assessed: The information needed to specify pref-
erences can be adequately illustrated in terms of a four attri-
bute example with an additive preference function
4
"(Xl,*2,*3.*4) = £ k,U,(Xi)	(5)
r = i
where u and the Uj are all to be scaled from zero to one and
£*, = i.
*=i
The idea is that if the fc,'s and u,'s are specified, these can be
plugged into (5) to give us the complete u. Procedures for as-
sessing the Uj's are discussed in a number of places (see, for
example, Schlaifer [12]). Let us briefly illustrate the basic
ideas.
Step I -Assessing the preference functions over the indi-
vidual attributes: Assume we wish to assess preferences over
the net present value of profits generated by the facility and
the possibilities range from zero to 500 million dollars. In
notation, 0 <500, where XA is measured in millions of
dollars and «4(x4) is a preference function for profits. First
one can arbitrarily set
u4(0) = 0 and u4(500) = l	(6)
since the best consequence-i.e., the 500-must have the
highest possible u4 value and the worst consequence must have
the lowest. The decision maker must then consider two op-
tions: one, a lottery where profits will either be 500 or 0, each
of which has a chance of 0.5, and the other where profits will
surely be 200 million. The question the decision maker must
consider is which is preferred. One could think of the lottery
as formalizing a situation where an AEC decision was in ques-
tion at the time a site is selected by the utility company. There
may be a 50-50 chance the AEC would go along with the
utility company's recommendation. Suppose that due to in-
vestors' interests, etc., the 200 was preferred to the lottery
even though the expected payoff of the lottery is 250. The
fact is that there was one-half chance with the lottery that the
result would be zero. Well, if 200 is preferred, then by nature
of assessing u4, it must be that u4(200) is greater than the ex-
pected value of k4 for the lottery. This (0.5)«4(500) +
(0.5)u4(0) = 0.5, so it follows that u4(200)>0.5. Now the
lottery is compared with 150 million for sure, and suppose the
lottery is preferred. Then it follows that u4 assigned to 150;
that is, u4(150) must be less than the 0.5 value calculated for
the lottery. Finally, suppose the decision maker, says 175 for
sure is indifferent to the lottery. Then the preference value as-
signed to 175 must be equal to that of the lottery so u4( 175) =
0.5. This gives us a third point on a u4 preference function as
illustrated in Fig. 2.
The process now repeats itself. A lottery yielding a 50-50
chance of 175 or 0 is compared to a sure amount of say 50. If
the lottery is preferred, the 50 is incrementally increased until
indifference is reached. Suppose this occurs at 75. Then
u4(75) must be assigned to equal the expected value of u4 for
the lottery, (0.5)u4(175) + (0.5)u4(0) = 0.25. Thus,u„(75) =
0.25 as illustrated in Fig. 2. Finally, assume we have ascer-
tained that 300 for sure is indifferent to the lottery yielding
either 175 or 500, each with probability 0.5. Then, of course,
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500
PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE, MARCH 1975
1.00
0.75
0.50
0.2S
«i(*i) = 0
M*") = 0
U3U3) = 0
u4(0) = 0
"1 (*f) = 1
"2 (**) = 1
U3U3) = 1
u4(500)=1
move X2 from x2 to x*. Next he would prefer to move X4
from 0 to 500. Then X3 from *3 to x*, and lastly Xt from
*1 to x*. This implies that the kfs of (5) are such that
k2 ~> k4 > k 3 > kl
(9)
100 200 300 400
X4 (Net Present Value)
•	Assigned Points
•	Assessed Points
Fig. 2. Preference function for profits.
u4(300) = 0.75 which is also indicated in the figure. The
curve smoothed through the points of u4 in Fig. 2 represents
the preference function for net present value of profits.
There are more sophisticated procedures for assessing u4 than
illustrated here which explicitly account for attitudes toward
risk in the assessment. These were not discussed here because
the fundamental questions concerning the decision maker's
preferences for different amounts of a single attribute could be
simply illustrated with our example. The other preference
functions ut,u2, and u3 could be assessed in the same manner.
Step 2—Assessing the tradeoffs among attributes: The im-
portant issue of tradeoffs among the attributes is addressed by
assessing the kf s in (5). For illustrative purposes we will use a
four-attribute problem where the following limits are
appropriate:
X2 
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE, VOL. 63, NO. 3, MARCH 197S
competing objectives are addressed in developing a preference
function.
An example of constructing a multiattribute utility function
utilizing the preferences of the decision maker is provided in
Keeney [6], Work by Gros [3] and the experience of the
authors indicate that utility company executives and knowl-
edgeable professionals in the environmental and social sciences
are willing to address the question of tradeoffs between com-
peting objectives and can provide the necessary information to
quantify preferences over multiple objectives.
Because decision analysis incorporates the preferences of the
decision maker, it is essential that those conducting the analy-
sis and the decision maker work closely together in contribut-
ing to improved decision making.
References
[ 1 ] P. C. Fishburn, "Independence in utility theory with whole prod-
uct sets," Oper. Res., vol. 13, pp. 28, 4S, 1965.
[2 | 	, "Additive representations of real-valued functions on subsets
of product sets "J. Math. Psych., vol. 8, pp. 382-388, 1971.
SOI
(3) J. Gros, "A Paretian environmental approach to power plant siting
in New England," doctoral dissertation, Harvard Univ., Cam-
bridge, Mass., 1974.
[41 A. Kaufman, "Beauty and the beast: The siting dilemma in New
York state," Energy Policy, vol. 1, p. 3, 1973.
15 ) R. L. Keeney, "Quasi-separable utility functions," Naval Res. Log.
Quart., vol. 15, pp. 55 1-565, 1968.
[6]		, "A decision analysis with multiple objectives: The Mexico
airport," Bell J. Econ. Management Sci., vol. 4, pp. 101-117,
1973.
[7]		, "Multiplicative utility functions," Oper. Res., vol. 22, pp.
22-24, 1974.
1S ] R. F. Meyer, "On the relationship among the utility of assets, the
utility of consumption, and investment strategy in an uncertain,
but time invariant world," in Proc. 5th IFORS Conf., 1969.
[9] M. F. O'Connor, "The application of multiattribute scaling pro-
cedures to the development of indices for water quality," Cent.
Math. Studies in Business Economics, Univ. Chicago, Chicago, 1U.,
Rep. 7339, Aug. 1973.
[10] H. Raiffa, "Preferences for multiattributed alternatives," Rand
Corporation,Santa Monica, Calif., RM-S868-DOT/RC, Apr. 1969.
(Ill 	.Decision Analysis. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1968.
112] R. O. Schlaifer, Analysis of Decisions Under Uncertainty. New
York: McGraw-Hill, 1969.
[131 J. Von Neumann and O. Morgenstern, Theory of Games and
Economic Behavior, 2nd ed. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ.
Press, 1947.
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