November 21, 2025
Trump Promised to Bring Back Coal. This Town Listened.
By Nic Wong
Through executive orders, Congress, and a loyalist cabinet, the Trump administration has delivered big for enclaves of coal country like Colstrip, Montana. But how long can it last?
Standing beneath the power lines situated off Power Road in Colstrip, Montana, you can almost feel the current. Energy audibly crackles above as a covered conveyor belt running under Highway 39 transports coal from the local Rosebud Mine to an enormous power plant, supplying thousands of homes with electricity.
In many American towns like this one, the fossil fuel industry has been economically vital—while carrying enormous environmental burdens. A recent study from the Rocky Mountain Institute, a nonpartisan nonprofit working towards a clean energy future, found that “emissions from the Colstrip plant have been linked to $2.1 billion in health costs with 151 premature deaths, 188 emergency room visits, and more than 90,000 cases of asthma symptoms” over the last decade.
In 2020, two of the Colstrip plant’s four units were shut down. The Montana Environmental Information Center, along with the Sierra Club, forced the closure after the settlement of a 2013 Clean Air Act lawsuit. Yet the units were retired more than two years earlier than originally ordered, based on rising fuel costs and a failure to create economic viability for the owners. Another lawsuit filed against the Rosebud Mine concluded that an environmental analysis completed for a region now being permitted by the Trump administration was flawed, and the district court judge ruled that Rosebud’s permit did not adequately consider climate change or hydrological impacts.
Now the approval of an Environmental Impact Study, repeatedly delayed by the Biden administration, has allowed mining in a crucial region of the Rosebud Mine to continue. Mining was initially estimated to stop in October, according to the Department of the Interior, but under President Trump, the mine’s longevity will continue until 2039.
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