$16.62 million earmarked for Montana conservation

By LAURA BEHENNA

Bigfork Eagle

Montana Senators Max Baucus and Jon Tester announced June 19 that $16.62 million for Montana conservation projects will be part of the fiscal year 2008 Interior Appropriations Bill. The bill would provide more than $5 million for projects in the Swan Valley and the Flathead Basin.

Nearly $4 million would be used to purchase land in the north Swan Valley to increase access to public recreation along the Flathead National Forest. The $3.92 million, matched with $1.3 million in private funds, would be used to purchase 910 acres of Plum Creek TImber Company property, Aaron Murphy, Tester's press secretary, said. The land would then be annexed into the Swan River State Forest, he added.

"Protecting Montanans' access to our public lands is one of my top priorities," Baucus said. "Jon and I worked hard to secure these funds so we can continue to expand access to public lands."

"The Swan Valley is truly a Montana treasure," Tester said. "Whether it's the folks that make their living in the woods, the families that fish and camp there, or the wildlife that calls the Swan home, these dollars will help preserve that way of life."

Also within the bill, $1.25 million would go to the Flathead Lake/Flathead Basin Environmental Assessment Project, a study that would assess threats posed by proposed coal mining and coal-bed methane activity in British Columbia. The study will be a collaboration between the Flathead Lake Biological Station, the Flathead Basin Commission, the UM College of Forestry and Conservation and the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks.

The Flathead Basin assessment would study the probable impacts of coal mining and coal-bed methane drilling on water quality, aquatic life and wildlife from the North Fork of the Flathead RIver down through Flathead Lake. The Cline Mining Corporation of British Columbia plans to remove a mountain ridge in southeastern British Columbia, about 25 miles north of the U.S.-Canada border, for a mine that would extract two million tons of coal a year for 20 years. The mine would be built above Foisey Creek, a tributary of Canada's Flathead River headwaters, which flow into the North Fork along the western boundary of Glacier National Park and into Flathead Lake.

In addition, BP Canada plans to spend $100 million to explore the potential for extracting coal-bed methane from the East Kootenay coalfields, which would include the North Fork of the Flathead River, Ric Hauer, a scientist at the Flathead Biological Station at Yellow Bay, said. Hauer is a University of Montana professor of limnology — the study of lake, river and wetland ecology — and is the senior author of the proposed environmental assessment.

Hauer said that before any extractive development takes place, a minimum of three to five years of international data collection and analysis must be carried out to get an accurate picture of how mining and drilling would affect the purity of Flathead Lake and the streams that flow into it.

"BP is a really large, international company with incredibly deep pockets," he said. "We're talking about a lot of money for the purpose of getting a full-blown well-field developed. We cannot tolerate having a bunch of mucking around up there before we have done the baseline work."

Senators Baucus and Tester said the appropriations bill passed the Appropriations Committee and will go to the full Senate.

"Hard work goes a long way in Washington and I'm glad to see it paying off," Tester said. "This money is about Montana values. It's about securing and improving public land for future generations, it's about clean water, healthy wildlife and better access to recreation. It's a privilege to bring Montana values back home."

If the House of Representatives passes a similar bill it is considering, the two houses will have to reconcile their respective bills before the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30, Murphy said. The Interior Appropriations bill is still going through committee in the House, Bridger Pierce, Rep. Denny Rehberg's communications director, said.

"Projects for specific states have yet to fully be included in the House bill," Pierce said. "We should know more as the bill passes out of committee and some of these projects are included."