From the Thursday, May 1, 2008 online edition of the Daily Inter Lake . . .
A sheriff’s deputy specifically assigned to enforce speed limits on Flathead County’s gravel roads will conduct his first patrol today.
County commissioners authorized the Sheriff’s Office to spend about $60,000 this year to hire and equip the additional deputy
The push to pave the North Fork Road — as far as Camas, at least — opened up more or less on schedule this week, with County Commissioner Gary Hall leading the charge. The following letter to the editor, nominally in response to a question by Joe Franchini, appeared in the Thursday, April 24, 2008 edition of the Hungry Horse News.
(A little background for those of you coming in late: Gary Hall is, of course, the Flathead County Commissioner who has been pushing to pave the North Fork Road at least as far as the Camas Creek entrance to Glacier Park. Joe Franchini is one of the backers of the NFRCHS and an investor in Freedom Bank, the location of the May meeting referenced in Hall’s letter. The dust study being presented at the June meeting was sponsored by the NFRCHS and performed last summer. According to this article, results were due by January of this year.)
To the editor,
This is in response to Joe Franchini’s letter to the editor asking the commissioner candidates what their position was on the North Fork Road. First of all, thank you for asking the question, it deserves an answer.
Interestingly, Rick Hanners, editor of the Whitefish Pilot and previous editor at our hometown Hungry Horse News, sent me a copy of an article he wrote on my last campaign six years ago and I stated in the article that, “I am completely in favor of paving the North Fork as far as Camas Creek despite claims that the grizzly bear would be impacted by pavement.” I still feel strongly about that and I believe that Columbia Falls can benefit as the Gateway to Glacier.
Before my term of office, the previous commissioners redirected the money set aside for paving the North Fork to the Big Mountain Road. Currently, I am working closely with the North Fork Road Coalition for Health and Safety (NFRCHS) to bring all government parties to the table May 21, from 1 to 4 p.m., in the conference room of Freedom Bank. I am hopeful we can come away from that meeting with a solid plan for dust mitigation or paving of the North Fork Road to the Camas Creek entrance to Glacier Park.
Also, on June 9 at 1 p.m. at the Commissioners’ meeting room, 800 South Main, we are having a report from Dr. Holian and Dr. Ward of the University of Montana department of Environmental Health Sciences briefing the commissioners and other county officials on the result of the North Fork Road dust studies conducted last summer.
All this has been said to respond to Mr. Franchini’s questions of the candidates’ position. If there is a way to protect the air quality for Glacier Park and the health safety and welfare of county citizens then I am available to do my part. I look forward to the other two candidates’ response to this important issue.
Gary D. Hall
Flathead County Commissioner
Yes, I know, another darn road story, but this one is pretty interesting. The county is making noises about improving the quality of gravel road maintenance, something the NFPA has been pushing for many years.
From the Friday, April 11, 2008 online edition of the Daily Inter Lake . . .
Flathead County’s short-term solution to dusty roads doesn’t include paving. Instead, the county’s road advisory committee suggests better gravel roads.
“This is something we could start tomorrow,” committee member Dan Siderius said. “Let’s change what we can with the money we have now.”
Read the entire article . . .
Just to lighten things up a bit . . .
Someone associated with the USGS Northern Divide Bear Project posted video of “Grizzly bear vigorously rubbing on a natural marking tree in Glacier NP, Montana.” The bears are having a very good time! The music isn’t bad, either.
Last Friday, University of Montana researcher Shannon Donahue completed a very thorough study on the “Direct and Indirect Effects of Paving Flathead County Road 486, the North Fork Road.” It is well worth reading. We’ve posted it for viewing or downloading here. (The study is in PDF format, which can be displayed using the free Adobe Reader.)
Well, OK, this is not really North Fork news, but it affects lots of folks living there. From the Monday, February 25, 2008 online edition of the Daily Inter Lake . . .
The broker for the proposed sale of the Sykes’ Grocery and Market building in Kalispell expects an offer to be made within a few weeks.
Mike McFarland told an informal citizens group last week that he has three potential buyers interested in the building.
And none is interested in keeping the restaurant-grocery-pharmacy-neighborhood-center features of the place, he said. He declined to identify the potential buyers or divulge the price of the building.
Read the entire article . . .
From the Thursday, March 27, 2008 online edition of the Hungry Horse News . . .
The Flathead Basin Commission has asked Montana Sens. Max Baucus and Jon Tester to find a way to compensate and retire all pending oil and gas leases in the Flathead National Forest.
The Commission passed the resolution late last month.
Both senators said they support such a measure.
And while Forest Service officials here have said there hasn’t been much, if any, interest in completing an environmental impact statement (EIS) on oil and gas leases, the Commission would still like to see the matter put to bed.
Read the entire article . . .
From the Thursday, March 20, 2008 online edition of the Hungry Horse News . . .
The North Fork of the Flathead is blanketed by oil and gas leases and they’re not in Canada — they’re right here in Montana, just north of Columbia Falls on Flathead National Forest lands.
The leases date back to the 1970s and have been held in what amounts to legal limbo since 1985, when James R. Conner of Kalispell, members of the Montana Wildlife Federation and the Madison-Gallatin Alliance sued Robert Burford, director of the Bureau of Land Management.
Read the entire article . . .
Freelance writer Gordon Sullivan wrote an excellent article on the current resource extraction threats to the Transboundary Flathead. It appeared in the Thursday, February 28, 2008 online edition of the Missoula Independent . . .
The three branches of the Flathead River thread like brilliant ribbons through Montana’s rugged northwestern mountains as they make their way to Flathead Lake, the largest freshwater lake in western America. The Flathead system constitutes some of Montana’s purest water, with approximately 80 percent of its total originating from untouched, federally protected lands. The main stem of the river stretches from above Columbia Falls to the northern shore of the lake. Two of the river’s branches, the South Fork and the Middle Fork, begin in the rugged backcountry of the Bob Marshall Wilderness.
Lodgepole Creek as it runs downstream near the proposed site of a massive coal mine in Canada, just north of the Montana border.
The third and most pristine offshoot, the North Fork, starts as a trickle some 40 miles north of the Montana border, in what today remains an unpopulated and remote drainage, a part of the same spectacular mountain range that extends to Waterton Lake and Glacier National Parks. It’s a corner of the world that has everything going for it — a blessing that’s also a curse. Grizzly bears and bull trout call it home. Nature lovers, tourists, environmentalists, and wilderness enthusiasts call it paradise. And energy companies love it, too.
Read the entire article . . .
From the Thursday, February 28, 2008 online edition of the Missoulian . . .
Canadian politicians and industry remain keenly interested in coal-bed methane reserves north of Glacier National Park, despite an announcement last week that such plans were off the table.
“We are still very interested in the potential of the Canadian Flathead,” said Jessica Whiteside, spokesperson for BP Canada. Her company already has begun collecting environmental data there, in anticipation of energy development, “and we do plan to continue those environmental studies.”
The reason BP Canada continues investing in the Flathead, even after British Columbia’s government pulled that drainage out of a broader project, is because the company “will ask for coal-bed methane rights in the Flathead” sometime in the future.
Read the entire article . . .