After a week at home in California where the news has been almost exclusively political-Terminator axes state budget; Dean suffers minor meltdown in Iowa-I’m back in Montana. Here, the news is still focused on mad cow disease and brucellosis threatening that state’s livestock industry, delisting wolves as an endangered species, phasing out snowmobiles from Yellowstone (itself listed as one of the nation’s top 10 endangered parks) and, alas, some thorny development issues.
The Bozeman City Commission reversed a decision by a previous commission protecting Bozeman Creek from development. Landowners, divided over the issue, packed a two-hour hearing, arguing that too much development would ruin the watershed and drive down property values. The Bozeman Creek Neighborhood Association endorsed a plan to leave large parts of the creek corridor undeveloped. Sticking points were a proposed sewer line and cross streets bisecting the area’s green space. The developer had twice offered his land for sale as a park but received no acceptable offers. The real issue seems to be whether neighbors in the surrounding area can dictate what 13 landowners who own property in the corridor can do on their land.
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
A more ominous debate is building over a cement company’s proposal to burn old tires to fuel its plant. Editorials and letters to the editor crowd the Bozeman Daily Chronicle opinion page, virtually all demanding a halt to the project. A public hearing to determine if the company must file a full environmental impact statement instead of the environmental assessment, which showed no meaningful impact on air quality.
A letter in Friday’s paper from a resident who claims years of experience building and using laser systems to study wind patterns, demands even more. “Our community and its surrounding area lie at high altitude in magnificently complex terrain. This leads to strong temperature inversions that prevent the vertical escape of pollutants released into the low atmosphere . . . Any plume dispersion prediction based on average wind patterns will be misleading. If such data are used to justify the burning of tires in this area, the people of our community will have been lied to.”
In nearby Livingston, where garbage had been incinerated, old tires were often used to keep the fires going, my daughter tells me. After much public outcry, the incinerator was shut down and refuse is now hauled to a landfill.
Residents of this state apparently have not yet been worn out and discouraged by development issues. They debate and resist, usually without rancor.
And the debate over vehicle fuel efficiency and emissions rages in Montana almost as much as California, where the new governor clings to his Hummer, sending heaven only knows what message to pollution-chocked cities. SUVs are as reviled here as they are defended. A recent diatribe blasted Hummers and other heavy SUVs, stating they are “exempt from government fuel and emissions standards” and are “icons of greedy Americans who have no comprehension of how lucky they are to be American.” The writer was taken to task in a letter clarifying that vehicles over 6,000 pounds are simply not required by law to list their fuel economy rating on window stickers. “If the ethical measure of your car comes down to ‘how clean is your exhaust,’ then you need to direct your pessimism and shame at the 5 percent of our old, poorly maintained portion of the national fleet that produce 50 percent of the greenhouse gases.”
Isn’t this taking it out on poor immigrant gardeners who drive ancient pickups?
After defending the right to drive a high-octane addicted behemoth, the writer steps up the rhetoric: The free enterprise system will ensure that the internal combustion engine joins the Betamax on the technology scrap heap. But until then, he writes, “the utopian, eco-worrywart, anti-mobility, anti-choice, anti-freedom, anti-fun, excuse me, I meant ‘progressive smart-growth’ village, will have to wait.”
The exchange of opinions in Montana is at least colorful and rarely dull. How much this mimics the political discourse of Californians may only be decided by how soon California’s problems show up in Montana. With one third of my family already in Bozeman and the rest poised to join the migration, I’m hoping with all my heart that’s a long way off.