To pave or not to pave? The question of what to do with the North Fork Road was further debated Tuesday night in Columbia Falls. Residents, local business owners and Flathead County officials gathered at the Glacier Discovery Square to discuss the recently released draft of a $125,000 study on the corridor.

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To pave or not to pave may not be the question.

Due to lack of money, Flathead County Commissioner Jim Dupont said the long-talked-about paving of the North Fork Road will not likely happen anytime soon unless the federal government decides to pay for it.

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Note that public comments are due by August 10. Send e-mail to mdtnffrteam@mt.gov or write to Lani Eggertsen-Goff, PB 488 E. Wincester Street, Suite 400, Murray, UT 84107. The draft corridor study can be viewed online at http://www.mdt.mt.gov/pubinvolve/northfork/. (Warning! Some big files.)

Here’s the lead-in from the HHN write-up . . .

The public was invited to give comment at the North Fork Flathead Road meeting Tuesday, July 27, which will be entered as part of the final Corridor Study Document.

At the meeting, representatives from Parsons Brinckerhoff — the group commissioned to conduct the study — answered questions.

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An open-house-style meeting has been scheduled for the public to review and give comments on the corridor study of a portion of the North Fork Road.

The meeting will start at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, July 27, at the Discovery Center at 540 Nucleus Ave., Columbia Falls. As an open-house style meeting, no formal presentation will be given.

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Ms. Murray said,

The draft corridor study document is now available for your review, please visit the website: http://www.mdt.mt.gov/pubinvolve/northfork/documents.shtml and if the link does not work you can find the document by going to the study webpage at http://www.mdt.mt.gov/pubinvolve/northfork/ From the menu on the left go to “documents” and then clicking section by section on the draft document.

The whole document is available as one file, however it is a very large file (over 20 M) and will probably time out for most people before the download is complete.

Paper copies of the draft corridor study document are also available at these locations:

• The Columbia Falls Library, 130 6th  Street West
• Flathead County Offices, 800 South Main Street, Kalispell
• MDT Office, 85 5th Ave East North, Kalispell

Please review the draft corridor study document.  We also invite you to attend the public meeting on July 27, 2010 at Discovery Square, Sperry Auditorium anytime between 6:30 pm and 8:30 pm…

The purpose of the public meeting is to receive your comments on the draft corridor study document.  If you are unable to attend the meeting next week you can provide us comments on the draft corridor study document using the “comment on this study” link from the study webpage (see above link).

Additional information…

The entire current set of documents discussing the corridor study includes:

• The main draft corridor study (56 pages, 20.2MB) and three appendices –
• Appendix A: Environmental Scan Report (40 pages, 3.7MB),
• Appendix B: Consultation and Coordination, Public Involvement (209 pages, 12.3MB), and
• Appendix C: Improvement Options (7 pages, 82KB).

The following poster includes more information about the meeting on July 27th. Note this little item near the bottom: “For reasonable accommodations to participate in the meeting, please contact Paul Grant at 406/444.9415 at least two days before the meeting.” In other words, if you want to get up and say something, call ahead.

The NFLA road committee has arranged to have Laura Fay, a research scientist from Western Transportation Institute out of MSU, come to talk about Dust Control Options. She will speak on September 8th at 10:00 a.m. at Sondreson Hall.

Her talk will include major dust control options, definitions, materials frequently used, location of informational resources and provide information on how WTI can help.

This should be an excellent and informative presentation for anyone concerned with dust mitigation on the North Fork Road.

Today’s Daily Inter Lake has the story . . .

More than 24 miles of Flathead County roads will get dust abatement this summer through a new cost-sharing program.

It’s a pay-to-play endeavor in which the county and rural residents split the cost of applying magnesium chloride to curb a growing road-dust problem.

Magnesium chloride, which costs about $4,000 per mile, will be applied to 15 miles of road, county Public Works Director Dave Prunty told the county commissioners on Tuesday.

About 9.5 miles will get emulsified asphalt (black oil). Oil is twice as expensive as magnesium chloride, but the county’s match for oil will be the same — $2,000 per mile.

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From the March 4, 2009 online edition of the Daily Inter Lake . . .

Residents who want to tap into Flathead County’s cost-sharing dust abatement program this summer may want to heed an age-old adage: Speak now or forever hold your peace.

The deadline to sign up for the first-time program is March 27, and to date the county has had little response from rural residents, Public Works Director Dave Prunty said Monday.

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County officials briefed the county commissioners Monday on last year’s efforts and this year’s plans to deal with vehicles churning up dust on the Flathead’s gravel roads.

“We’ve demonstrated to the [Montana Department of Environmental Quality] and to the state that we’re serious about our dust problem,” Commissioner Chairman Dale Lauman said. “We can’t solve all the dust problems. We never will. But we can mitigate some of the problem.”

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