LETTER: Remember all who allowed bottling plant

I attended the meeting held at Creston School concerning the proposed water-bottling plant. The Inter Lake reported on this meeting, counting more than 300 people present. We were there to protest the establishment of an industrial effort to bottle and transport water from our aquifer for individual profit.

A quote from one of the officials from the DEQ hit me, “Well, this is not a referendum.” Yes, as a matter of fact, it was a referendum. It was a referendum on a system that would allow, on the signature of some clerk, the establishment of a water mining effort in our community without the permission of the total owners, all of us, or even a rudimentary demand for an environmental impact of such an effort.

It was a referendum on the disregard from state practices that ignore the concerns of its citizens, of the environment, with the negative impact such an endeavor would have on the roads, on safety, on the river, on the depletion of the aquifer, on the individual impact on the thousands of wells the aquifer serves, on property values, etc. It was a referendum on the clerk, on the commissioner who visited the site, on the belief that anyone can stick a pipe in his property and begin mining millions of gallons of water that we all own, without our consent.

I wrote and spoke to members of our Legislature (none were present at the meeting, by the way) about the issue. I was told that there was little that could be done, they were out of session — incredible. Montana has a long history of abuses of its resources, by individuals, by corporations, by moneyed people. In many of these abuse situations, state officials and elected officers are willing participants in the abuse.

When the state agency that does not exercise its authority and responsibility to say NO to hare-brained ideas that go against the best interest of the community, it is participating in the abuse.

The establishing of a water-bottling plant in Creston, or anywhere else in the greater Flathead Valley, or anywhere in the Northwest, is a ridiculous idea. Members of the community who attended the meeting gave state clerks a raft of reasons for this effort to be denied. For one, can you imagine what Montana Highway 35 will be like if there are 150 or more trucks carrying the bottles of water up and down it on a daily basis, 12 months a year? I am amazed that someone actually gave approval for such a project in the beginning.

So, Mr. State Clerk, there should be a referendum; on you, on the DEQ, on who owns the water that we can all claim, on state officials who believe they are impotent when not in session. There is one referendum coming up, the one on commissioners who ignore the citizens in the county.

Referendum? Good idea!

—Dan King, Bigfork