Judge demands $300K to remove Flathead Lake’s ‘bridge to nowhere’

A Flathead County district judge has ordered that $300,000 be paid by early April to demo the tempestuous bridge to vacant Dockstader Island on the northern shore of Flathead Lake.

District Judge Robert Allison ordered also that a previously appointed “special master” carry out the best method and route to destroy the more than 500-foot-long structure.

Flathead Lake’s own “bridge to nowhere” has floundered in district and state supreme court for nearly a decade.

The saga now continues among nonprofit plaintiff Community Association for North Shore Conservation, defendant Flathead County and Washington state-based Flathead Properties intervenor Roger Sortino.

Allison has ordered Sortino to deposit the $300,000.

Sortino, however, still maintains that a previous $150,000 plan — calling for a new road built in to demo the bridge — remains the best possible option moving forward.

“It’s ruining my life,” he said Monday of the illegally permitted bridge.

In a March 3 filing, Allison ordered him to deposit the $300,000 with the Flathead Clerk of Court or into an agreed upon account by April 2, a Saturday.

State and federal law, however, maintain provisions for weekend deadlines that would allow the money paid the following Monday, April 4, according to Flathead Clerk of Court Peg Allison.

Peg Allison wrote in an email Monday that payment has not yet been received. The March order is an attempt at forcing plans to remove the bridge without input from Sortino.

“The court has come to the realization that the tail is wagging the dog,” Judge Allison wrote in his order allowing 30 days for the funds to be deposited.

“The intervenor had the opportunity to determine the means and method of removal of the bridge but failed to comply with the court’s order,” he wrote.

CANSC attorney Don Murray said he had recommended the island be sold to cover bridge demolition if Sortino failed to muster the funds, a measure not explicit in the March 3 order.

Rather, Allison further orders only that the $300,000, once secured, be dispersed upon receipt of itemized bills from the special master, Great Falls-based professional engineer Mitch Stelling.

Atop fixing a method for bridge removal, Stelling has been charged with determining whether an existing road — used to build the bridge — should be used now in demoing the structure.

The existing road lies just east of the bridge, extending to the shoreline on what court records refer to as “Parcel 3” of Flathead Properties’ lakeshore lands there.

In the alternative, Shortino said his preferred $150,000 plan instead builds a new road south from Holt Drive on a lot encompassing the island, referred to as “Parcel 1” in court records.

He said the new road would better allow access to remove the bridge and only county approval of permitting is needed yet to complete the venture.

Although not available in cash, he said, project funding would be secured by more than $3 million from the net equity of his home.

The existing road, Sortino said, is “hundreds of feet” away from the bridge and would require demolition efforts to cross some 1,000 feet of lakebed, spurring need for additional federal permitting.

“The judge, what he’s doing is crazy,” he said. “The problem is we need to have access to the bridge to tear it down.”

“It’s crazy,” Sortino said. “I want to get it corrected. I followed all of the rules. You know, I didn’t get sued on this thing. The county’s the one getting sued, and the whole thing is stupid.”

The $300,000 sum equates to the average of low and high estimates so far to complete bridge demolition, according to the court order.

It allows any surplus funds to be repaid to Sortino once demolition is completed.

Allison rebuffed the $150,000 option as “irrelevant,” being that of Sortino’s “personal agenda.”

“The intervenor has managed to derail the monetary issue and attempt to dictate the method of removal,” he noted in the March 3 order.

“The special master shall determine whether the existing road on Parcel 3 or a new road on Parcel 1 would best suit the goals of the project to expeditiously remove the bridge and restore the area to its natural state,” he wrote.

Either option would have to be completed during the winter, when lake levels drop to their lowest annually and allow work on the structure.

In July 2021 affidavit, Sortino told the court he would by Dec. 15 last year “put up the necessary funds through a deposit or escrow in an amount that matches the fees and work to be done,” initially planning for bridge demo “as soon as the early winter of 2022.”

Too late for demolition work this year, Murray said, a plan hopefully will come to fruition next winter — granted the deposit comes through as now ordered.

“We’ve got to get the plan and the money,” he said, also cautioning of the timeline for formal plan approval. “So it isn’t going to happen until the water’s low next winter; hopefully, it’ll happen then, but we’ve been saying that for a couple years.”

CANSC filed a lawsuit against the county and its commissioners soon after the bridge was completed in 2016, centered on the permit allowing the structure despite Montana's Lakeshore Protection Act preventing it.

The district court held in September 2016 that the county-issued permit ultimately proved invalid, according to court records.

The court then ordered the structure removed and the area restored to preexisting wetland conditions, according to the court records.

In July 2019, the Montana Supreme Court affirmed the lower court’s decision, soon also making the district rulings final and restoring its jurisdiction to the case, according to the records.

The district court called in December 2020 for CANSC to recruit an engineer as special master of the demolition process. Stellar ultimately was chosen and formally appointed in April 2021.

Sortino's daughter, Jolene Dugan, had the bridge built and was initially named intervenor through district and high court rulings on the dispute.

Dugan died last September, deeding the lakefront parcels to Sortino, who lives out of state.

His western Washington-state based Flathead Properties LLC now owns the three adjoining parcels surrounding the bridge, as well as a fourth nearby, according to Flathead County property records.

Business records show the company is registered by Sortino with a Woodinville, Washington, address northeast of Seattle.

In July 2021, Sortino filed a lawsuit against the county for inverse condemnation of the bridge, although Murphy said the lawsuit remains standing without further legal action.

Reporter John McLaughlin may be reached at 758-4439 or jmclaughlin@dailyinterlake.com