The North Fork Compact now has a web site. We've added them in the "Related Links" sidebar.
For those of you not familiar with this organization, here is an excerpt from their "About Us" page:
In the late 1960's a group of landowners in the valley of the North Fork of the Flathead River in Montana found that they had a common concern about subdivision and the beginnings of environmental degradation in the North Fork area. Progressing from informal discussions, they held a formal planning meeting at the cabin of Orville and Helen Foreman, to which all North Fork landowners were invited. In 1971 the final version of the North Fork Compact was completed by Orville foreman, who was an attorney. In 1973 the Compact was signed by those who wished to join and was recorded at the Flathead County courthouse as a land covenant. . .
The purpose of the North Fork compact was and is to deter commercial development and excessive subdivision on the lands of the signatories, in perpetuity.
From the Saturday, April 9, 2005 online edition of the Daily Inter Lake . . .
The Montana Senate has restored funding for a long-term water quality monitoring program on Flathead Lake. . .
The funding approval came on the heels of a Wednesday Senate vote approving a joint resolution that expresses concern over the potential for coal and coalbed methane development in British Columbia at the headwaters of the North Fork Flathead River.
The resolution calls for a "transboundary environmental assessment" of the North Fork watershed prior to any development in British Columbia. And it urges involvement of the International Joint Commission, a panel of American and Canadian officials responsible for preventing and resolving transboundary disputes under the Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909.
"What the Legislature is doing here is telling the State Department that this is a high priority for Montana," said Steve Thompson, Glacier program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association, one of many members of the Flathead Coalition, an organization formed 30 years ago to protect the Flathead's transboundary waters.
The issue must be referred to the International Joint Commission by the Canadian and American federal governments, Thompson said.
Once that happens, the International Joint Commission could pursue an environmental assessment to establish baseline data, basically an inventory of current ecological conditions in the North Fork Flathead.
"It's an important statement and it's significant that it's bipartisan," Thompson said of the joint resolution. . .
Read the entire article . . .
The Fire Information Links page has been updated. The out-of-date stuff was cleaned up and some new material added -- most notably, a link to the Storm Prediction Center's fire weather forecast page.
As in past years, there will likely be additional updates once fire season kicks in.