Candidates supporting conservation efforts held strong in last week's election in Montana.

While Republicans captured a supermajority in the state Legislature, candidates promoting access to public lands also won their races.

In northern Montana, one conservation-minded candidate even managed to flip a Republican seat. State Rep-elect Paul Tuss, D-Havre, won his race and said access to the outdoors is a winning issue in Montana.

"As I spent the last nine months talking on the doorsteps and garages and front porches of people in a pretty rural area," said Tuss. "The truth is that it didn't matter what their political leanings are. The vast majority of people that I talked to are strong supporters of public lands in our state."

With its veto-overriding majority, Montana Republicans are looking to possibly make changes to the state's Constitution next session and send those changes to voters for final approval.

Tuss said he'll push back to ensure that Montanans' constitutional right to a "clean and healthful environment" stays intact.

Nearly three dozen Montana Conservation Voter-supported candidates won on election day.

State Sen. Shane Morigeau, D-Missoula, also won his election on a pro-conservation platform.

He said he's concerned lawmakers could move to block access to public lands next session and said it would be a mistake because the outdoors are important to Montanans' self-identity.

"I have always been a staunch advocate for protecting our access and our public lands because I think it really is our birthright in Montana," said Morigeau. "I think that's why people come here, that's why we've seen such an influx of people coming to Montana - because the secret's out. You know, it's a beautiful place to live."

Denise Hayman - D-Bozeman - who spent four terms in the House of Representatives, won a seat in the Senate last week.

She too said it will be important to protect Montanans' constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment in 2023.

Hayman also said climate change is here and effecting Montana's landscape, so it's important to promote renewable energy sources in the state.

"We need to be looking at other ways of producing energy," said Hayman, "and I am passionate about exploring ways of producing energy without using fossil fuels."

The arrival of fall has farmers transitioning to the harvest season, but what if some gathered their crops with rows of solar panels right alongside them?

Minnesota is part of such emerging projects. The agrivoltaics scene is carving out pathways for utilities and developers to reduce carbon emissions by adding more solar farms, while allowing emerging farmers, who face land-access issues, to grow fruits and vegetables on the same property.

Brian Ross, vice president of renewable energy for the Great Plains Institute, said it is a great example of two worlds working to benefit each other.

"We're all working together to kind of take that example of local food production and try to expand it out. How can we actually put this at scale?" Ross asked. "How can we do it within the context of existing solar-development parameters?"

As they track the effectiveness of smaller projects, Ross noted they need to figure out certain logistics, such as the ideal height of the solar panels. Other partners say irrigation is another puzzle to solve. The Minnesota project involves Connexus Energy, U.S. Solar and Big River Farms. On a solar site just outside the Twin Cities, aspiring farmers are testing adding horticultural vegetation.

Sophia Lenarz-Coy, executive director of The Food Group and Big River Farms, said the pilot initiative can especially help historically disadvantaged farmers.

"Farmers of color, women farmers, folks who have a harder time accessing capital," Lenarz-Coy pointed out. "This is one of the biggest barriers that we see is wanting long-term land access but maybe not having the capital to purchase land."

She added farmers often end up signing leases for property but it makes it harder to grow their operations under short-term contracts. The solar site provides hope in establishing more certainty for producers and the vision they have for their food-growing venture.

Project leaders say another thing they hope to learn is the difference between crops grown underneath and around solar arrays versus crops grown in the open.


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A new report finds more than half of the sewage facilities in Idaho had pollution violations in 2022.

The sixth annual analysis by the Idaho Conservation League says 57% of the state's wastewater treatment plants discharged harmful substances last year.

Will Tiedemann, conservation associate with the Idaho Conservation League, said the report focuses on facilities that had the potential to cause the most harm - such as those releasing wastewater in sensitive habitats.

He said size has had an impact on those violations in recent years.

"There's quite a few facilities that are a little smaller and they do deal with outdated equipment," said Tiedemann, "either failed, you know, or were built 20, 30, 40 years ago."

Collectively, there were 520 violations of the Clean Water Act by Idaho wastewater treatment plants in 2022. The report focuses on three facilities that accounted for a quarter of the violations in Driggs, Jerome and Kuna.

Tiedemann noted that there are some positives in this report. Facilities in 51 cities and towns reported no discharge violations.

Others made significant improvements from 2021 to 2022 - including those in Blackfoot, Marsing and Wilder.

"This isn't an insurmountable issue," said Tiedemann, "that numerous examples of facilities who have dealt with issues and have made the investments and put in the resources and the time and the hard work to address this issue. So we definitely commend those facilities."

Tiedemann said having the means to curtail violations can be a major issue, especially for smaller towns. But he said federal resources are available, including through COVID-19 relief funds.

Amid the United Auto Workers strike, some advocates argued it is time to implement clean car standards.

Gary Schlack, a city council member in Allen Park, supports the UAW workers in their quest for contracts aligning with their skills, dedication, and loyalty. He said the state's automakers are committed to increasing the production of zero-emission vehicles in the next decade, and intend to leverage the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to do so.

"It's time for Ford, GM, and Chrysler's parent company Stellantis to come to the table," Schlack asserted. "EV vehicles and with these EPA standards put in place these workers are concerned that these jobs if they go nonunion competitive wages will fall."

The energy department predicts EV battery manufacturing will support 10 to 13 million fully electric vehicles annually by 2030. Michigan, Georgia, Kentucky, Kansas, North Carolina, Ohio, and Tennessee are key players in the growth, fueling job opportunities across the sector.

Alex Cornell du Houx, president and co-founder of Elected Officials to Protect America, stressed addressing pollution in the transportation sector is crucial to enhancing national security, and mitigating the climate crisis.

"We need to export our oil and import actually dirty oil for use in the United States," du Houx pointed out. "We are still dependent on OPEC, which is a(n) association of dictators. They're not democratic nations. So it puts us at a vulnerability."

Transportation generates more greenhouse gasses than any other sector of the U.S. economy, making up 27% of total emissions and 45% of all U.S. oil consumption.