Agency delays while shore recedes

There's nothing like failing to respond to a 20-year emergency.

But that's precisely what the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has done with its glaring failure to protect a federal waterfowl production area on the north shore of Flathead Lake.

It's a situation where fingers can surely be pointed this way and that, but the truth is the blame rests with a systemic, bureaucratic neglect on the part of the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Professor Mark Lorang of the University of Montana's Yellow Bay Biological Station identified the threat to the waterfowl production area and proposed a remedy for the problem in 1986, but there was no action taken. Shoreline protection for the area was a declared provision in the relicensing of Kerr Dam in 1998, but since then, the shoreline has receded an average of 20 feet - and in some places as much as 300 feet.

That's a lot of lost wetlands, so much that the loss can be clearly seen by a satellite orbiting the earth or a duck hunter who uses the area in the fall.

Under the relicensing terms, PPL Montana must pay for protecting the shoreline. But the Fish and Wildlife Service is the "owner" or the public's trust manager of those wetlands, and obviously must instigate and approve any plan to actually accomplish shoreline protection.

In short, the service needs to be the leader on this issue. And indisputably, it hasn't been.

The agency instead has taken government waffling to new heights, and we predict it will get worse. Although a shoreline protection plan is being developed by Lorang for submission to PPL Montana and the service this summer, it will surely be analyzed by contracted engineers who will, no doubt, offer conflicting proposals that are bound to cost more than Lorang's proposal.

There are a few reasons we are inclined to believe that Lorang's beach design will be effective.

A similar beach was built in 1993 on a spit east of the Flathead River mouth - perhaps the most difficult place to curb erosion on the entire lake - and it has held up remarkably well.

The Salish-Kootenai tribes used a similar design to protect Blue Bay, another difficult area on the eastern shoreline, and the same approach was used at Yellow Bay, all with effective results.

That's a pretty good track record. But still, sorting out a final solution will take months. Then the analysis paralysis can get under way in earnest through the environmental review process.

The public should not be surprised - and should be thoroughly outraged - to see public wetlands erosion continue unabated for another couple of years, even though the money is there. PPL Montana is ready to take action, but the Fish and Wildlife Service is not.

What's needed is a serious dose of urgency, not more delay, to end this 20-year emergency.