Flathead Lake Protection Association donates $20,000 to station

By JACOB DORAN / Bigfork Eagle

Members of the Flathead Lake Protection Association gathered at the lakeshore, near the Somers fish hatchery, last week, to turn over a check for $20,000 to Professors Ric Hauer and Bonnie Ellis for the Flathead Lake Biological Station's water monitoring programs.

The money represented the amount generated to date by a special Flathead Lake "Keep It Blue" license plate, which the association made available last fall as part of a joint effort between the biological station and FLPA to raise both awareness and needed funds, which both organizations hope will help to keep the monitoring of water quality in Flathead Lake going for years to come.

The FLPA has long supported the biological station's monitoring program and wasted no time implementing the license plate idea when it was first suggested by Hauer and Ellis. FLPA board member and spokesperson Bruce Young coordinated the project and made the necessary arrangements, even securing the right to use Whitefish artist Glen Prestegaard's famous painting of Poslon Bay and the narrows.

In exactly one year, the Flathead Lake "Keep It Blue" license plate has garnered more than $20,000, which Young said was just the beginning of what he and other members of the association anticipate once more people become aware of the license plate and those who already have them continue to renew them year after year.

"We've been very pleased with the initial response," Young said. "It takes a while for people to become aware of this plate, but we certainly hope that other people will appreciate both the beauty and purpose of it. Certainly, those who have seen it do seem to like it, and it really is a beautiful painting.

"It really is making a difference and helping to bring about an awareness of what a treasure that Flathead Lake is," he said. "It's like a moving sign that espouses the desires of the general public and that is to keep Flathead Lake blue."

The license plate is just one of the ways in which the FLPA has endeavored to protect the water quality in Flathead Lake. The association has numerous projects and major planning victories to its credit.

The association began in 1980, when a group of concerned citizens went to bat against a real estate developer who had proposed a condo project on Caroline Point, about a mile north of Lakeside. The preliminary plat called for 84 condos, which would have been served by what many believed to be an inadequate septic system.

Several Lakeside neighborhoods contributed money to help fight the development, but the fight went all the way to the district court and meant filing suit against the Flathead County Commissioners, whom the FLPA claimed had violated their own regulations no less than 14 times to push the development through and render their approval.

In the process of the lawsuit, Young's own home suffered $1,200 in damages from an explosion and the developers even sued him for damages—$1.8 million, to be exact. In fact, the developer threatened each of the FLPA members with a million dollar lawsuit for trying to stop the project. A few even backed down, fearing that they may lose everything they had.

However, the association was not deterred, and the lawsuit against Young was thrown out as being without grounds. Those who were committed to seeing it through stuck to their guns and eventually won their lawsuit against the county. The project was then scaled back to 52 units, and the county required the developer to tie into sewer when it came online.

The lawsuit was the first of four, in which the FLPA would go nose to nose with Flathead County in an effort to hold officials accountable to enforce existing regulations and preserve the water quality of Flathead Lake. A few years later, the association filed another suit against the commissioners to stop illegal dredging in Peaceful Bay, winning yet again.

"It doesn't do much good to have regulations if you don't enforce them," FLPA president Howard Ruby said.

The FLPA filed and won two additional lawsuits against the county, pertaining to the Eagle's Crest Marina. In that case, the developer, Montana Eagle Development, proposed a renovation of the Lakeside Marina that would have taken it from 56 existing boats slips to 196 boat slips—86 for residents of the Eagle's Crest subdivision and 110 for use by non-Eagle's Crest residents—and from a length of 365' into the lake to 650'.

The FLPA pointed out that the lakeshore protection regulations limited dock length to 100', which was much smaller than the existing marina that had been grandfathered in because it was built before the regulations went into effect. However, the county still approved a 200' extension of the docks, permitting 174 boats slips that would have extended 558' into the lake. In his decision, District Court Justice Stewart E. Stadler ruled that the county commissioners failed to apply mandatory legal standards when they approved the PUD.

"This is not how we like to use public resource money," Young said. "But sometimes there's no choice if we're to maintain our water quality. Someone has to hold our government accountable to enforce it's own regulations. Those regulations are there for a reason. That's why we have won all four lawsuits against the commissioners."

However, there is a lot more to the FLPA than lawsuits. The association also led the charge, along with the Flathead Lakers, in the ban on phosphates, which was a major victory in improving water quality in the lake. The association followed the example set by an individual in Michigan, who made a successful push to get a phosphates ban there.

"We did our campaign to get phosphates banned right after that, knowing how important it was to the future of the Lake," Young said.

By providing 30 percent matching funds, the FLPA was also able to secure a $57,000 Technical Assistant Grant from the EPA for monitoring the Burlington Northern Super Fund clean-up site at Somers, to remove creosote contamination from groundwater near the former tie plant, as well as traces of chromated copper arsenate (CCA)—often referred to as acid copper chromate—which were used in the treatment of railroad ties.

The association has even taken a hard stand against inadequate sewage treatment policies, thwarting plans for a drainfield south of Evergreen and pushing for appropriate sewage treatment measures in densely populated areas around the lake.

In addition to the myriad other issues with which the FLPA has been involved including such subjects as the Kerr Dam and Hungry Horse Dam mitigations, the association even funded the production of six half-hour videos for PBS on water and water-quality issues. The videos, which were both distributed to local libraries and shown in local schools, focus on helping others understand how we get our water, from the initial precipitation to its journey into our aquifers and beyond, stressing uses and abuses, ownership and solutions to existing threats to our water's integrity.

"That's over a span of almost 30 years," Young said. "We mostly get involved in larger issue things—things that, if they weren't corrected, would without a doubt have caused degradation to our watershed.

"We're just average citizens. We've never beaten our drum about all these things. We're just trying to do what's right and protect the most precious resource that we have, as well as raise awareness about the major issues that affect our water quality. We understand the value of clean water and how important it is to our quality of life in the Valley. If it is not maintained, we lose our quality of life, here."

"Our grandchildren use this lake," FLPA secretary Fran Ruby said. "The quality of our water in Flathead Lake is so important, and we'll do whatever we have to do to protect it. You have to have convictions and you have to stand by those convictions, and to us water quality is an awfully big conviction."