Just one day after a judge ordered the City of Great Falls to release documents involving the Highwood Generating Station, Southern Montana Electric appealed the ruling.

Judge E Wayne Phillips of Lewistown ruled in favor of the plaintiff, Montana Environmental Information Center, which sued the city of Great Falls, in hopes of getting thousands of pages of documents released to the public. Although the City said it will not appeal, co-defendant Southern Montana Electric will.

The Billings-based company requested the court to either stay its order pending the appeal, or to issue an injunction ordering the city not to release the documents during the appeal.

SME is developing a gas-fired power plant east of Great Falls. Earlier this month $85 million was secured to begin construction on the project.

The city and SME had kept the documents from the public, citing reasons such as attorney-client privilege trade secret protection.

Judge Phillips ruled that the documents could not be construed in any way to be privileged and ordered all but five pages of the thousands to be made public.

This case involves a Lewistown judge, as the area judges here in the 8th District recused themselves. Southern Montana Electric did not respond to NewsChannel 5’s request for an interview. Construction on the Highwood Generating Station is scheduled to begin this summer.