A century-old mistake has kept the Northern Cheyenne Tribe from access to 117 million tons of coal laying beneath the tribe's southeastern Montana reservation.
Montana has the largest coal reserves in the world, and much of that coal may be shipped to Asia. However, the state of Washington is threatening environmental restrictions on a coal export terminal.
Coal is big in Montana. There are vast coal beds in eastern Montana and the northeast corner of Wyoming. Much of that coal moves through Missoula on a regular basis bound for shipping ports on the West Coast. A large share of that coal is bound for China...