ANACONDA, Mont. – Officials for NorthWestern Energy said Wednesday night that the company could build a $100 million natural-gas fired power plant at Mill Creek to stabilize the electric grid.

The plant would be located on 60 acres of NorthWestern property next to the Mill Creek substation, south of Anaconda.

“This is not a for-sure project,” Bill Rhoads, NorthWestern’s director of Montana production, said at a meeting of the Anaconda-Deer Lodge Local Development Corp. and county officials. “We’re examining the feasibility of the project.”

After considering several locations, the company chose to pursue the Anaconda site because of its proximity to a natural gas supply, a railroad and water, plus existing environmental issues, spokesman John Fitzpatrick said.

The proposed site is already contaminated from the Anaconda Co.’s historic copper smelting operations.

NorthWestern, which hopes to break ground on the plant next year, plans to hold informational meetings in the coming months. The state Department of Environmental Quality also includes public comment periods in it’s permitting process.

County commissioners have set Jan. 31 as the date when they will decide whether to rezone the proposed site for the Highwood Generating Station coal-fired power plant.

More than 90 residents bombarded county commissioners with testimony on the rezoning during a nearly 12-hour public hearing Jan. 15.

The rezoning would change farmland east of Great Falls owned by the Urquhart family to a heavy industrial designation. If the change is approved, the family plans to sell the land to Southern Montana Electric Generation & Transmission, which hopes to construct the $720 million power plant.

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Power plant opponents Citizens for Clean Energy and the Montana Environmental Information Center on Tuesday argued before the Montana Board of Environmental Review that additional research of tiny particulate emissions, as well as technology to control it, is needed. “Let’s do this right,” said Abigail Dillen, an attorney for CCE and MEIC.The quality of fine particulate emission controls will impact the public’s health for the life of the plant, which will be decades, Dillen told board members.

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