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Citizens for a Better Flathead works to foster informed and active citizen participation in the decisions shaping the Flathead's future, and to champion the democratic principles, sustainable solutions, and shared vision necessary to keep the Flathead Special Forever. Since 1992 we have been working to secure policies that will keep the Flathead the place we love as it changes and grows.
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Hello Mayre,,
A new year brings new possibilities. We want to share with you some of the ways we can together work for positive change that respects and honors this incredible place we collectively call home in 2024. There is a lot we are already working on! Skim the links below to learn about our work, and bookmark this long email as a resource for issues you want to learn more about.
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#1 Climate Change is a factor that touches so many of the choices we face as the Flathead grows. Here is a great opportunity to learn more about this issue. On Wednesday, January 10th at 1 pm in the auditorium at Buffalo Hill Terrace, 40 Claremont Street, in Kalispell, Attorney Roger Sullivan is speaking about the lawsuit Held vs. the State of Montana. He is one of the lawyers in this precedent setting case. He will be speaking about the importance of this case to all Montanans and has put together a video along with stories about the amazing young plaintiffs. If you have questions about this presentation, please contact B.J. Carlson 406-871-4436.
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#2 Coalition for a Clean CFAC (Columbia Falls Aluminum Company) We are proud to be part of the organizing committee coming together to form the Coalition for a Clean CFAC. Our mission is to secure the comprehensive cleanup of the Columbia Falls Aluminum Company (CFAC) Superfund site for the health, enjoyment, and economic benefit of the local community and the protection of the Flathead watershed. We are opposed to the EPA’s “Preferred Alternative” Plan to
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#3 Local Compost made from Biosolids (sewage solids), and septic waste can be a water quality and human health risk in the Flathead. Click here to watch a new Montana PBS short film, Dangerous Chemicals in Compost that chronicles toxic chemicals found in locally made compost, as well as most compost that includes human sewage or biosolids. A growing number of scientist argue that such compost is not being adequately regulated under current state and federal laws. You will likely be very surprised by what you don't know about compost sold at local stores in the Flathead and across the state. Citizens for a Better Flathead has been working for the past year and will continue in the new year to oppose the county's proposal to build a composting plant for sewage and septic waste. We believe that the county needs to find an energy use for the growing volume of biosolids that are currently getting buried in the landfill or spread on farm fields around the valley. This is not an easy problem to solve and we applaud the Flathead County Commissioners' openness to working with us and the public to find a better solution, but we are now concerned that the commissioners are poised to "wash their hands" of this problem and responsibility as costs to do it right have spiraled far beyond what they had budgeted. As we discuss below, we are deeply concerned that the county is now considering entering into a new contract to let the Lakeside County Sewer and Water District take over this project fully. Read more about our efforts to date here.
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#4 So many of our choices impact our local water quality. Do you know where to safely dispose of unused and unwanted medicines here in the Flathead? Click here to learn more and find easy drop off locations at our WasteNot Web site. Click here to watch a recent presentation, Our Rivers and Streams are on Drugs, at Flathead Lake Biological Station by one of the lead scientist in the US, Dr. Emma Rosi. She has been studying for a number of decades why chemical compounds found in pharmaceutical and personal care products [and in sewage] are showing up ubiquitously in the nation’s rivers, lakes, groundwater, and drinking water—even remote regions of national parks. Read more about her research by clicking here.
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#5 Lakeside County Sewer and Water District (LCSWD), in a recent turn of events proposes to take over the processing and handling of all septic waste from the County and locating the new septic collection facility on property owned by LCSWD at the head of Flathead Lake. But LCSWD has yet to prove they can handel their own growing sewage collected from properties along Flathead Lake .LCSWD is currently seeking a groundwater discharge permit from the state to dispose of their current waste as their storage ponds are full and growth in the Lakeside area has over run their future processing capacity. They are now saying, however, that they want to add to this new ground water discharge permit capacity for processing and discharging of all of the county's septic waste with the support of $12-20 million in funding from the county.
The major issue here, that we continue to raise, is can LCSWD take more septic and sewage waste and change to a new groundwater injection system, moving away from a system that relied on spraying this waste on large fields of alfalfa, without harming the Flathead's water quality in this area of shallow ground water, shallow soils, and numerous wetlands, sloughs and ponds, which is just one mile north of Flathead Lake.
We are working with a coalition of neighbors and groups, including the North Shore Water Alliance, and Water for Flathead's Future, to hire experts to review this proposal when it is submitted to the state. We continue to urge the county to work with the City of Kalipell for a solution that is more protective of water quality by building a spetage treatment facilitgy on land the county recently bought that is served by the City of Kalispell sewer.
We still believe that a system that converts biosolids and septic waste to energy is the best long-term solution, but this will take the county investing in research and grants to persue this option.
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#6 Again in an ongoing effort to ensure that decisions are made to protect the Flathead Valley's world-class water quality, Citizens for a Better Flathead has joined with twenty-five (25) local landowners and 3 local non-profits to file formal objections to a proposed high capacity well on property proposed for a 700 unit subdivision boardering the Lakeside County Sewer and Water District (LCSWD).
As we noted in our press release when filing theses protests, this is a case resembling the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. The LCSWD is proposing to expand and change their existing sewage facility operating facilities, which shares a northern property boundary with the proposed Cooper Farms subdivision. LCSWD is seeking the permits required to change to a system allowing it to inject wastewater from semitreated human effluent into the ground on its property, at the very same time that the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation (DNRC) is proposing to grant a water rights permit for the developer of Cooper Farms to extract large quanties of water, just down gradient from LCSWD's sewage waste injection sites, for ihe drinking water of Cooper Farms residents. There has clearly been a major failure to fully analyze how these two projects would interact! Filing these water right protests while costly should require this analysis and a court ruling on the findings.
Once again, Citizens for a Better Flathead is pleased to work with and stand with residents and other organizations in the Flathead Valley to call out and demand that careful and science based analyis is done when agencies and local governments consider decisions that can have major impacts on our water quality. Your support makes our work possible.
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#7 Citizens for a Better Flathead Supports a New Law Suit brought by a coalition of citizens across the state, which challenges 4 Housing and Land Use Planning Bills, passed by the 2023 Montana Legislature. The suit argues that these bills are bogus and unconstitutional attempts by legislators to mandate affordable housing solutions that will not provide the affordable housing they claimed to provide and that violate the public's right to participate and to be afforded due process in such land use decisions. The Court recently also granted a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction barring the cities targeted by this legislation from having to comply with a January 1st deadline to implement two of these bills. Read more about this suit here.
This likely means that the cities of Whitefish, Columbia Falls, and Kalispell will also put the brakes on for now on updating their city growth policies as called for in one of these bills being challenged in this suit, and wait for more direction from the courts on if these mandated planning changes will be found legal.
Meanwhile, this creates an important opportunity for city and county residents to explore better ways to increase affordable housing now and to shape new growth policies to support this needed housing. Citizens for a Better Flathead will be working over the next year to create some forums to do just that. As reported in a recent article in the Montana Free Press, "...Affordable housing advocates hope to soon see more support for subsidized and deed-restricted units, which mandate resale conditions to keep prices affordable. They want to see inclusionary zoning, a practice that requires developers to devote some units to low- and middle-income families or else pay a fee — and which was implemented in Bozeman and Whitefish before the Legislature banned it in 2021. (State lawmakers banned rent control, too, in 2023.) Advocates also want heavily touristed cities to pass regulations, as Bozeman recently did, that ensure more homes are occupied by locals, rather than vacationers or second-home owners." The article also notes that, "The Republican-controlled Legislature voted down several affordable housing proposals, including a housing tax credit, which would have incentivized affordable rental development, and a housing trust fund, which could have subsidized the construction of roughly 500 additional low-income apartments every year. (Gianforte’s office declined to answer questions about the importance of affordability.)"
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#8 A Developer brings law suit against Flathead County Commissioners for denial of a controversial Bigfork subdivision.
We think the county commissioners made the right decision to deny this subdivision, known as North Shore Woods, given major safety issues and inadequate road and fire infrastructure. We feel the courts have good reason to and support the commissioners decision. We worked with over 800 residents of Bigfork to encourage the commissioners to deny this subdivision for these reasons and presented detailed comments and an independent traffic study to support extenstive public comments. The planning board also recommended denial. Over the next year Citizens for a Better Flathead will continue to work closely with neighborhood groups to raise concerns at public hearings over poorly planned developments.
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As we prepare to celebrate the arrival of 2024 we want to extend a huge THANK YOU to those of you who have already so generously given this year. And remember that every day is a good day to give to support our ongoing work. Click here to make a gift today. Thank You for making our work possible!
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