Montana Wind Energy - Business and Politics

Peggy Beltrone | President, Exergy Integrated Systems

One of my pet sayings is that, “If you know one community, you know one community. If you know one tribal nation, you know one tribal nation. If you know one thing, you know one thing. You don’t know everything.”

That being said I’m going to share a few of those things—lessons I have learned over my years in Montana.

I spent thirty years in Montana working in television news, in my own business, in non-profits, in elected office, and now I’m back to working in private enterprise. When I was in college I had decided I wanted to be a television reporter. I had an interest in politics, in speech and debate, and in reporting. Frankly I couldn’t spell. This was before spell checkers. There was just no way I was going to be a print journalist and have to carry around a dictionary. I was just a bad speller. So TV was my home.

Right after college I got the dream job. I was offered a job at a television station in Great Falls, Montana. I had not been to Montana. But they were willing to take a chance on me, and I was willing to take a chance on Montana. My first day on the job I was 22 years old and I was thinking, “Great Falls here I come. Next stop Barbara Walters watch out! I’m going to be the next thing on TV!” I was pretty excited. I got to the station early. I stayed late. Everyone was wondering why I was still hanging around until finally the news director said, “You know Peggy, the governor is in town. He is giving a speech to the Montana Grain Elevator Association. Why don’t you run over there and cover it for us?”

I couldn’t believe it: the governor of Montana. I had never seen nor met a governor before. I thought this was great. So I went to the Heritage Inn, sat through the chicken dinner, sat next to the governor’s aide, who said there was going to be a big announcement. I thought this was too good, a big announcement from the governor on my first day!

Sure enough, Governor Tom Judge announced to the Montana Grain Elevator Association that he was going to buy the Milwaukee Railroad. You know, I’ve played monopoly; I know that is a pretty good card. I knew this doesn’t happen every day. I’d only been in Montana a week, but I don’t think that governors were used to buying railroads, so I knew I had better call the office. I dug in my purse, got my dime, and ran to the bank of phone booths at the Inn. I called the news director, and of course, I had to introduce myself again because he had forgotten who I was. I told him about the governor’s plan. “Sure,” said the news director, “I’m not going to put my career on someone whose name I can’t remember and announce to the world that the governor is buying a railroad.”

So I had to get a quote. I had to introduce myself to the governor. I stopped him on his way out to the car. It was eight below zero. It was colder than I have ever been in my life. I flipped out my reporter’s notebook that had not had a thing written in it and took down a quote. Then I raced across town. It was 9:50 or something and news time is 10 o’clock, and I had to get there in time. I got to the station, and of course I didn’t have a key. I had to wait for someone to come let me in and when they do, I race inside to the recording studio.

When I flipped open the reporter’s notebook, sure enough, there is not a thing written!

It had been so cold that the pen didn’t write. The ink was frozen. But Rick, the sports reporter at the time, told me not to worry. He ran and grabbed a pencil and shaded over the writing and out popped the governor’s quote. The news director believed me at that point, and he went on the air with the breaking story.

That was my first day, and that was my biggest story.

But, the lesson, to me, is politics is very different in Montana, because politics is very close to the people in Montana.

Another lesson, this one about energy, is that I’ve come to believe in its tie to community economic development. All energy can be local. All communities have a right to develop that local energy source.

I worked a lot with wind energy. I’m from Great Falls, and it’s a very windy place. Sometimes when you work for one thing, you want to say other things are bad. Well you shouldn’t do that. Wind is good for Cascade County because it is Class 4 and 5 winds all over the county. Yet wind doesn’t work farther south. But they do have an awful lot of biomass. Those communities should be able to use those sources to create energy and jobs for the citizens. Just because you are supporting wind energy, doesn’t mean you have to be against biomass or vice versa.

I’m a very big proponent of local power, of security, and of the sustainability that goes with allowing communities to have the ability to use those resources that are rooted in their geography. Because of this work, we’ve seen thousands of acres come under lease by wind farms. We have several wind companies located here in Great Falls. We have a lot going on, and I’m really pleased that I had a part in that. However it isn’t always easy.

We’ve worked very hard in the last several years on the Montana Alberta Tie-Line. I personally decided to help because for a while I wasn’t getting anywhere promoting the heck out of wind. There was no way of getting the energy out of Cascade County due to our transmission problems. So I went from being a wind advocate to being a transmission advocate. I saw the benefits for communities. I saw the ability to raise funds from taxes and for landowners. I couldn’t see this as anything but a wonderful opportunity.

That is where I learned another lesson.

I had always thought that if I liked it, it had to be good. I didn’t really think too much about what people were really hearing when I was advocating. I think that, when we work on community projects, we have to figure out a way to allow people to change. We have to find a pathway. It is not just telling or directing people this way or that. Part of it is about saving face and part of it is compromise, of giving a little bit. But rather than believing in only you being right and them being wrong, either you are on my side of the fence or not, the approach has to be how to allow people to change. How are you going to create a pathway? That is what a leader has to do for creating change.

When we were working on the Montana Alberta Tie-Line we had public hearings. We had the Chambers of Commerce from communities all along where the transmission line would be located. We brought out teachers and businessmen and community leaders and had hearings. They all talked about how much of a great project this would be, how much revenue it would bring. We did not realize, I did not realize at the time, that we weren’t listening to the real objections the farmers and ranchers had. They were saying they were for wind energy. But they said this was disrupting their farming operations. They were hearing they weren’t valued. They were hearing that after a hundred years of being the families in these communities who maybe secretly sent coats to the schools for kids, or stocked the food bank, or set up the scholarships, or were there openly serving on the school boards and paying taxes that you pay as a rancher, and doing what you do in a small community in Montana to keep it going, they were hearing me say that they weren’t valuable. They were hearing me say that this company that was coming in and going across their land was more important than they were. It was really a moment for me when I figured out that, on the one side, this was as good as sliced bread and that it had so much benefit for our lands, but I didn’t realize that those farmers who were in the room who had legitimate concerns were saying, “What have I been doing for 100 years? What about what my dad, grandfather, and great-grandfather have been doing?”

That was when it hit me. You have to remember that politics in Montana can be very easy if you remember that you are talking to your neighbor. It is that smallness.

We have to communicate in a different way in Montana. We don’t have to shout to be heard. It is a big state, but there aren’t a lot of us. Sometimes our ideas may not be the best. Maybe our neighbors, who have been here, sharing this great state with us, know a few things, too. So we have to listen.

If I tell my kids one thing about living in Montana, a word to the wise even if they don’t start a career in Montana, is Montana is small. We’re neighbors. We’ve got to treat each other as neighbors. If we remember that, then we’ll have success.