Montana Photojournalist Colstrip Rural Life 07
“I build drag lines,” states 72-year-old Bill MacFarlane at his Colstrip home. MacFarlane says he worked at the mine 30 years, assembling the giant drag lines that can weigh 6 million pounds or more, but his roots are in Havre, where his grandparents were farmers. “The land meant a lot to us,” he says. A trained engineer, MacFarlane isn’t convinced that burning coal is as bad for the environment as some are saying and he hopes Colstrip can continue to produce electricity for years to come. “When the power plant goes away,” he says, “this becomes a ghost town.”