ABSTRACT
Bighole's traditional approach to doing a resource development project was grounded in many years of experience in the politics as well as in the other aspects of coal development. As in most bureaucracies, decisions made in large resource development companies which affect the local community are often made according to the short-term economic criteria of staff accountants in a distant regional office. Companies which fail to incorporate adequate social planning into the design and implementation of their projects pay a number of specific costs. The largely tacit agreement that provides the framework of conflict in natural resource development is occasionally appealed to as a truism or common sense by the representatives of industry. The Rangeland Protective Association affiliated with its state counterpart, the Mountain State Resource Council. The several energy and other natural resource development companies which have undertaken such management have clearly been doing some ground-breaking work in cost-effective community development.
