Serving Southern Jefferson County in the Great State of Montana
Serving Southern Jefferson County in the Great State of Montana
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The number of acres enrolled in Block Management, a hunting access program managed by Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, has continued its gradual decline despite efforts to bolster landowner interest in the program. Hunters have been tracking revisions to Block Management, hopeful that changes to the landowner reimbursement payment structure authorized by the last two Montana Legislatures can reverse flagging participation in the program and help alleviate concerns about crowding as sales of hunting licenses climb. As the last week of the...
The typical NorthWestern Energy residential customer will see a $7.96 decrease in their monthly electricity bill following the Montana Public Service Commission’s (PSC) decision to adopt a temporary rate structure. On Tuesday, November 26th, commissioners authorized the 7.2% rate decrease at the recommendation of PSC staff, who determined that falling natural gas prices and a shifting regional energy market are working in electricity consumers’ favor. The PSC is the elected utility board tasked with balancing the financial health of monopoly ut...
With some studies finding that home insurance rates have ballooned 44% in Montana over the past five years, the affordability and availability of insurance have become cornerstone issues in the state auditor election. James Brown, a Republican currently serving as president of Montana’s utility board, is squaring off against John Repke, a Democrat and retired businessman, for the open seat to become Montana’s top consumer watchdog. Whoever wins the election on Nov. 5 will assume the helm of an agency with a $10 million budget and a 72-employee...
If you struggle to understand the charges and formulas incorporated into power companies’ electricity and natural gas rates, you’re not alone. Utility ratemaking is a notoriously technical undertaking that even professionals working in related fields can find difficult to decipher. It’s also an important component of the “pocketbook economics” that influence Montanans’ finances, whether they’re paying their monthly power bills or budgeting for goods and services affected by swelling energy costs. For example, when NorthWestern Energy, the s...
A Chicago-to-Seattle passenger rail route that passes through some of Montana's most populous counties has been included in a list of 15 long-distance routes tapped for restoration by the federal government. The development marks the second time federal regulators have spotlighted the Big Sky Passenger Rail Authority's efforts to bring additional passenger train service to Montana. During a meeting on Feb. 8, the Federal Railroad Administration also provided a bit more detail on where the North...
Have you ever looked at your power bill and struggled to understand the various rates and charges that dictate how much you owe your utility company? If yes, you're not alone - even energy professionals can find their bills befuddling. To bridge that knowledge gap, we dug into the nearly 20 rates and charges that are factored into monthly residential bills for the state's largest utility company, NorthWestern Energy. NorthWestern supplies electricity or natural gas to approximately two-thirds...
Montanans are increasingly tolerant of wolves, according to newly released research from the University of Montana's Human Dimensions Lab and Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. The study, first conducted in 2012 and repeated in 2017 and 2023, was designed to gauge Montana residents' attitudes toward wolves and various aspects of wolf management. To conduct it, researchers sent a survey to 10,000 Montana residents who were separated into four categories: the general population, landowners with mor...
Yellowstone National Park announced this week that a mule deer buck inside the park's borders has tested positive for chronic wasting disease. The detection is a first for the park, which has previously managed to dodge the always-fatal disease despite its presence in the three states that neighbor Yellowstone. In a Tuesday press release, the park said that the Wyoming Game and Fish Department tested the carcass of a radio-collared mule deer that died in the southeastern section of the park near Yellowstone Lake. The release notes that there's...
On a late-June bikepacking trip from Superior, Montana, to Hailey, Idaho, fire ecologist Philip Higuera studied wildfire's impact on the landscape, as is his habit when he's in the woods. He started his trip in a rugged and thickly forested area along the Montana-Idaho border that burned in 1910 and continued south through fire scars new and old before arriving in an open, high-elevation area studded with sagebrush 630 miles later. Along the way, Higuera noted the abundance of standing dead...
