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Guest Commentary

The Montana Supreme Court finally handed down its long awaited ruling on the so-called “Mitchell Slough case.” Brought by the Bitterroot River Protective Association (BRPA), the appeal challenged the right of “rich out-of-state landowners” to limit public access to the Mitchell Slough. The plaintiffs argued that the Mitchell is a “natural, perennial-flowing stream” and as such is open to access by the public under Montana’s Stream Access Law (SAL). The state supreme court bought BRPA’s argument and reversed a lower court ruling denying public access.

The fact that the lower court found the Mitchell to be man-made while the supreme court found the opposite illustrates the slippery nature of the definition. Like so many legal battles, however, the technical legal sparring in the Mitchell case missed two truly important implications of the decision. [more]

Special Report

The story behind the new $100-million GE-Wyoming coal gasification project goes back to the early 1980s when a then-California-based energy company, Tosco, was trying to extract fuel from massive oil shale deposits outside Grand Junction, Colorado.

The challenge at the time, former Tosco CEO Morton Winston recalled in an interview with WyoFile.com, was to build a device that could introduce precisely measured amounts of crushed oil shale into a mildly pressurized chamber. Winston turned to a brilliant British mechanical engineer named Donald Firth for help. [more]

Missoula's Future

The master plan that's in the works for downtown Missoula will take many years to implement, but if you want to do your part today to push it along, the consultants have a suggestion for you: shop local, and, especially, shop downtown.

And while Macy's may not be locally owned, shop there too.

At the fourth and final public forum on the master plan project Wednesday night, consultants Crandall Arambula identified four top-priority projects for getting the plan rolling, and two of them indirectly involved Macy's: a new parking garage at the corner of Front and Pattee, which would allow Macy's to expand onto its existing parking lot, and a new mixed-use commercial development, including a hotel, that's envisioned for East Main just north of the store.
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Update

For more than 20 years, the Mitchell Slough in Montana's Bitterroot Valley has become a showcase of the battle between public access and private property rights and Monday the Montana Supreme Court ruled in favor of the former.

With a 54-page ruling, the Supreme Court deemed the waterway a natural stream, which means access to it is protected by Montana's stream access law, which is among the strongest in the country. The ruling has been coming for more than two years and overturns two lower-court decisions that had defined the stream the way the Bitterroot Conservation District and several high-profile landowners had advocated it be: Just a ditch.

The case, which has been watched closely across the West as a crucial test of stream access law, has been a long-running extravaganza of protests, celebrity, and political maneuvering but more than that, it has been a spur for complex and often heated discussions on water rights, landownership, what's natural and what's not and most of all, how to square the values of the Old West with the demands of the New.

The Ravalli Republic's Perry Backus has a detailed story on yesterday's ruling here and to catch up on the case and it's implications, Greg Lemon wrote a very good primer for NewWest.Net when the case first went to the high court. [more]

Guest Column

As newly elected legislators prepare to join returning Westerns in the halls of Congress they have an opportunity to help build a new economy in the rural West. By supporting programs that unlock the entrepreneurial spirit of rural America, Western legislators can deliver on their promise to create opportunity for rural communities in their states. [more]

Real Estate Woes

It's not a big surprise that Sandpoint, Coeur d'Alene and other parts of North Idaho would be suffering from the real estate bust and the souring global economy; the area had been among the fastest-growing in the country, and was increasingly reliant on expensive resort development and second homes. But Associated Press writer Nicholas K. Geranios today details just how tough it has become: the "preferred builder" at the Idaho Club, a new luxury golf community near Sandpoint, is going out of business after failing to sell a single home in the past year.

The region, a classic story of conomic transformation from a mining and logging base, could be in for a double-whammy because the global downturn is also taking the shine off metal prices (just six months ago there was talk of a mining revival) and hurting the wood-products industry badly.

Tales From Bankruptcy Court

A Montana bankruptcy judge reluctantly breathed three weeks of life into the Yellowstone Club in a Missoula courtroom Thursday when he OK'd a three-week loan to keep the club operating during the next stage of bankruptcy hearings.

"Why am I doing this?" asked U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Ralph B. Kirscher, who called it "troubling" and "overkill" that his order included the terms and conditions of a $4.4 million temporary bailout loan from lender Credit Suisse to the luxurious-but-broke private club.

"What happens if I don't sign this order?" Kirscher said. "If you would have asked me at one o'clock last night, I would have said, 'This isn't going to get signed. I'll let things fall where they may.'" [more]

News Analysis

It's an odd twist of fate that the Blixseth who was sitting in the witness chair in a Missoula federal courthouse Wednesday was named Edra. Sure, Edra Blixseth is nominally the owner of the Yellowstone Club, the uber-exclusive resort near Big Sky that's now mired in bankruptcy. She thus bears much of the responsibility for trying to sort out the mess, even though her equity in the club is almost certainly worthless and lender Credit Suisse effectively controls the property. She's been involved with the venture from the beginning, and is certainly no business neophyte.

Yet as everyone familiar with the situation knows all too well, the Blixseth who built the Yellowstone Club, the person who persuaded the likes of Bill Gates to join up, the person whose non-stop, on-the-edge deal-making both made the club possible and created its current predicament, is named Tim. His sudden absence from the scene is strange; dozens of lawyers, thousands of pages of legal filings, a financial fiasco of major proportions -- and hardly a word about Tim. [more]

Poor Little Rich Club

Once touted as the world's pre-eminent leisure community for the mega-rich, with billionaires from Bill Gates on down among its members, the Yellowstone Club near Big Sky, Montana, doesn’t have enough cash in the bank to buy propane, owner Edra Blixseth said in bankruptcy court in Missoula Wednesday.

The four companies that operate collectively as the Yellowstone Club filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Montana on Monday, citing debts of about $360 million, most of it owed to a consortium of lenders led by international bank Credit Suisse. Chapter 11 allows a business to operate while it reorganizes its debt, and in this case the bankruptcy filing comes in the wake of an ugly divorce, allegations of large-scale financial impropriety, and a complete meltdown of the high-end real estate market and the credit markets that funded it.

The club doesn't have enough cash to make its $600,000 monthly payroll for its 521 employees or to buy food for its restaurants, or for the electricity needed to operate the chairlifts at its storied private ski area. Last week, the club's checking account had only about $40,000.

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News Brief

The proposed Bitterroot Resort passed an early hurdle from the Bitterroot National Forest on Monday.

"We passed our first screening," said manager Jim Gill. "This is just one of many steps."

The Bitterroot Resort seeks to develop as part of its four-season resort 3,000 acres of Forest Service land (down from the 12,000 originally requested in 2005) for gladed skiing, Nordic skiing, and mountain biking, none of which would require ski lifts to access. [more]

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