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Sealed documents relating the Highwood Generating Station east of Great Falls may not remain sealed much longer, as critics of the HGS say that a court ruling this week will allow them the access they've been seeking for nearly three years.

A decision in Cascade County District Court gives Southern Montana Electric ten days to release all but a selected amount of documents regarding the proposed natural gas plant.

SME argued that, if released, some of the documents would reveal trade secrets or violate attorney-client privilege, but the court disagreed, saying one of the documents was just a photocopy of a newspaper article.

Ann Hedges of the Montana Environmental Information Council said, "We're finally going to gain access to documents. The court said only about five pages of about 10,000 pages are probably really privileged that the public doesn't legally have access to, but everything else is open to the public and it's about time we got this decision and the public can oversee it's government."

Hedges says she hopes the decision will be the first step in the City of Great Falls getting out of the power business.

The entire court document is available here as a PDF.