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Yes on ‘17-01’

I am writing to encourage Flathead County residents to vote FOR Initiative 17-01 on June 5.

This initiative will protect Flathead Valley residents from the impacts of large-scale development of a water-bottling plant near the north shore of Flathead Lake. If the bottling plant utilizes the full water allotment, it will require a facility the size of two Walmart superstores. Truck traffic will include a fully loaded semitruck every four minutes, 24/7, on our public roads in the area.

Experienced hydrologists predict significant harm to groundwater level and quality. The harmful impacts will extend well beyond the property in question. The question is not whether we have a responsibility to protect one landowner’s rights. lt is whether one landowner has a right to harm OUR property.

Vote YES on Initiative 17-01. —Charles W. Davis II, Columbia Falls

Vote ‘no’ on 17-01 to protect property rights

As the current chairman of the Flathead County Planning Board, please join me in voting against the Egan Slough zoning proposal. It is “flat wrong” when neighborhood activists target a business or property owner for zoning with dubious or false propaganda. Keep in mind, the individual who is targeted in this Egan Slough zoning scheme has followed all rules, laws and regulatory requirements currently in place.

This after-the-fact zoning gimmick will set a dangerous precedent for Flathead County property owners. If this zoning sham passes, your property may be next. This type of zoning flim-flam is what I have always referred to as “attack zoning.” I have seen this ploy unfold many times in my past experience with zoning. A group of activists distorts or downright lies about a particular legal use going on in their neighborhood and then uses their false propaganda to force zoning on their neighbors.

I am not opposed to zoning if it is applied in the proper manner with true and accurate data. The proper application of zoning is to guide growth in an area and to protect the health and safety of residents in the area. Zoning should be supported by a clear majority of property owners and should be based on true facts, not false propaganda. Zoning should not be applied to try to destroy an owners’ property value or rights in an “after the fact” swindle. For these reasons, please join me in voting against the Egan Slough zoning proposal. —Jeff Larsen, Lakeside, Flathead County Planning Board chairman

Protect our water from bottling plant

I’m writing to urge Flathead County residents to vote FOR the Egan Slough zoning initiative 17-01, to protect our water from the proposed industrial-scale bottling plant near Creston. The Kalispell Chamber’s recent letter against the zoning initiative notes that “the necessary government approvals have been given” for permitting the plant. I find their reasoning problematic because Montana’s water statutes did not anticipate large-scale bottling plants, and furthermore, the state Department of Natural Resources and Conservation did not follow required procedures in issuing the permit.

Montana’s water law was codified in the 1972 Constitution, a time when agriculture dominated and few people could imagine that bottled water might someday become commonplace. When farmers use their agricultural water right to irrigate, 15-65 percent is returned to the soil and aquifers. Irrigation typically draws water only during dry months, leaving time for aquifers to refill. Bottling plants, in contrast, return zero water to the aquifer, and the proposed plant would use an agricultural water right to pump around the clock, 365 days a year, not allowing the aquifer to recover.

The Department of Natural Resources is the governing body for water rights permitting. The department is required to follow the Administrative Rules of Montana in considering permit applications. Those rules set forth specific procedures to ensure accurate data collection. The Department of Natural Resources, however, followed none of these requirements in considering the plant’s permit application.

Farmers and other property owners in the Creston area relied on the the Department of Natural Resources to follow state law in issuing permits, thereby protecting their property investments, and the public’s water. The department failed these property owners, and the Flathead County commissioners failed to carefully consider their constituents’ objections. Objectors to the proposed bottling plant are thus attempting to PROTECT private property rights through citizen-initiated zoning — a right granted to them by Montana law.

I’m grateful that here in the U.S.A. citizens have been granted a means to overcome faulty decision-making by government agencies. Citizens of totalitarian nations have no such recourse. Please join me in voting FOR Initiative 17-01, to protect our water. —Carol Bibler, Kalispell

Vote for 17-01

Vote FOR the Egan Slough Initiative on June 5. It is unconscionable to sell off our water at the expense of polluting our rivers and drawing down people’s wells. Let’s keep our peaceful pastures and our sanity. —Astaras Drolkar, Kalispell

Commissioners and state failed the people

The Montana Department of Natural Resource has made an egregious error by approving Lew Weaver’s water bottling plant. What appears to be benign at face value is, in reality, the beginning of a disaster for Flathead residents and taxpayers. First of all, the Flathead County commissioners have approved Lew’s water-bottling plant against thousands of constituents’ wishes, and are purposefully working with Lew to get his water theft fiasco up and running. I say theft because even though I must pay the state of Montana $20 for being allowed to fetch two cords of firewood on state land, Lew doesn’t have to pay a single penny for potentially hundreds of millions of gallons of OUR water. How does that work? Also, the Commissioners did not even consider all of the facts regarding the detrimental effects of Lew’s business venture to the following:

1. The water table changes will affect hundreds of surrounding property owners’ wells, and their property rights. These facts were presented by the best scientists and hydrologists in the country. There is no agreement or requirement for Lew to mitigate future costs incurred by affected property owners to drill new wells after Lew bottoms out the water table.

2. Water pollution that will go directly into the Flathead River, into Flathead Lake, and beyond. The motto is “the solution to pollution is dilution.” Is that what is best for Montana’s pristine waters?

3. The future cost for infrastructure changes and upgrades needed to facilitate the tens of thousands of semi trucks traveling into and out of a poorly placed commercial water-bottling plant over dirt roads.

4. Finally, it has been said that Lew’s business plan is to sell his little “mom and pop” bottling plant to a well known multi-national corporation, which will then be allowed to expand until the water is all gone.

What can we do about it? It is obvious that Lew and the commissioners have a neat little agreement to push this thing through, disregarding all of us citizens; however, if the good people of Flathead County vote FOR the Egan Slough Initiative 17-01, we the people can alter the course of this fiasco in its tracks.

Please support the hundreds of adjacent property owners (and their property rights), against this fraudulent activity. —Keith Blaylock, Kalispell

Protect the local aquifer and our community

The Flathead Valley is encircled by mountain ranges. As residents we are both acutely aware of these mountains and what they mean — recreation, jobs, beauty — but they can also be easy to ignore as they stand over our landscape, apparently unchanging, as we go about our daily lives. The mountains are the water towers for our communities, holding the snowmelt and rain runoff that recharges our aquifers with each storm.

This valley’s population has increased by more than 25 percent in the last decade to about 70,000 people who rely on this groundwater in our deep aquifer. As we experienced the past two years, even a single year of drought can affect us — water levels in Flathead Lake lowered by a foot in early July 2016, affecting farmers, business owners and residents dependent on the flow of water.

As the Western states continue suffering through drought, I can’t help but be concerned about the consequences of allowing a water-bottling plant that could dramatically draw down the aquifer we all depend on under the theory that it should recharge through snowmelt eternally into the future. Other communities with bottling plants have experienced only detrimental results on their water supplies, including needing backup wells for municipal water; all while the bottling plants continue to pump.

Communities are created and sustained through water. It supports not only us, but also the animals and plants that call this ecosystem home. If we don’t protect our resources now, the effects will be felt for generations to come. For that, and many other reasons, I urge my fellow residents to vote FOR the Egan Slough Initiative to protect our community’s recreation opportunities, jobs, and our own well-being. —Amy Dempster, Kalispell

Protect our water resources

I cherish floating the river every summer. ?I love ??rafting, canoeing and kayaking the river during the months of July and August with my ?friends and children. I do not want to see it ruined by greed and pollution.

?Please listen to the people of this valley and stop this onslaught of misguided development.

I encourage all voters? to vote FOR the Egan Slough Initiative 17-01 to make sure that the Flathead River remains clear of industrial pollution. —S?ally Hanger, Bigfork