Managing growth in Montana
How the West was Subdivided
By Dana Green, 3-17-06
Spread across the dry hills west of Missoula, the Goodan-Keil neighborhood perches on a dusty ridge. With over 70 lots just outside of the city's limits, nestled around two winding streets, it looks like a typical aging subdivision in the West.
But Goodan-Keil, as residents and county officials have unofficially dubbed it over the years, never went through the subdivision review process, which includes a host of public meetings and scrutiny by county planning staff.
It's not a planned development, but a piecemeal division of the landscape.
With no zoning in rural Montana counties, that's how a majority of the state was subdivided – with little planning, one exemption and loophole at a time.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, when developers bought the prime piece of Missoula real estate outside of town, the only requirement under state law was to have the land surveyed, and to file that certificate of survey – a single sheet of paper – with the county.
On the old maps, housed in the county surveyor's office, there is only an anonymous number to indicate a new lot had sprung up. Otherwise, the county and its residents had little to say over how the land was divided.
Just off U.S. 93, due north of the Wye, is another crazy quilt of development: 100-odd lots that come under the fanciful name of Meadows of Baron O'Keefe.
Like Goodan-Keil, the lots came into existence two decades ago, not as a subdivision, but haphazardly divided over time, carved into 10-acre lots and then even smaller ones.
For surveyor Dick Ainsworth, Goodan-Keil and Meadows are both glaring examples of how land got divided in Missoula County, and across the state, over the last two decades of growth.
From Potomac to Frenchtown, with no land use planning and little input from county residents, landowners and developers pretty much divided their land as they pleased.
"We thought no one would create 10-acre tracts, but that's exactly what they did," Ainsworth wryly said. "They did thousands of them across the state of Montana."
Ainsworth, who now works with PCI Consultants, has worked as a land surveyor and land use planner in Missoula County for well over three decades. A former president of the state association of surveyors, he helped craft the state's original Subdivision and Platting Act in 1973 ¬– the first real attempt to create oversight over the rapidly increasing division of land in Montana.
At that time, lawmakers thought that anything down to 10 acres really didn't have to go through subdivision review.
Landowners could legally divide property – no matter where it was located or how far from city infrastructure – into small residential lots.
Eager to maximize the value of their land, Montana landowners didn't stop at 10 acres.
Once the land was divided into 10-acre parcels, developers used a variety of subdivision exemptions on the books, primarily exemptions allowing owners to create new lots for family members, to divide into even smaller parcels.
Legislators quickly learned their lesson. In the next legislative go-round, state lawmakers bumped the minimum lot size to 20-acre tracts. But developers continued to carve up large, rural ranch lands, often prime agricultural property, into small lots.
Twenty years later, Montana subdivision law has changed dramatically.
Today, anything under 160 acres has to go through subdivision review – a big improvement, in Ainsworth's view.
"In retrospect, basing (subdivision review) on lot size was not a very good idea," Ainsworth said. "You shouldn't base land use planning on that. Now you have 20-acre tracts all over the place."
Subdivision exemptions, long used by some landowners to skirt review, have also come under closer scrutiny from lawmakers.
When the subdivision act was first passed, eastern Montana ranchers strongly lobbied for a special exemption from subdivision review. The exemption would allow them to sell off an acre or two if money was tight. Dubbed the "occasional sale," the legal exemption was quickly used as a tool to develop land without oversight.
Landowners could do one sale a year – with no minimum lot size, Ainsworth said.
"They were subdividing and not going through review – one- to five-acre tracts sprung up pretty quickly," he said.
Montana lawmakers also created the family transfer exemption – allowing parents to divide their land among their children without review. Thousands of legitimate family transfers allowed parents to create homes for their children at minimal cost. But with no limits on the number of family transfers possible, the exemption was quickly abused.
"We did thousands of them – people would divide a ranch into 20-acre tracts – do (several) family transfers to divide into 5-acre tracts, all without review," he said. "The day they did the transfer, the sale sign would go up."
In the last 20 years, the Wild West era of development in Montana has largely faded. Over a decade ago, lawmakers sacked the occasional sale exemption. With minimum lot sizes raised to 160 acres, far more land divisions came under the purview of county planners.
Through subdivision review, the public has been given more of a chance to weigh in over how land gets divided.
Denise Alexander, a senior planner with the Missoula City/County Office of Planning and Grants, has seen those laws change up close – creating more work for her staff, but also creating more public oversight.
Up until just last year, "minor" subdivisions in Missoula County – defined by state code as five or fewer lots – didn't have to go through any public process at all.
A major subdivision, larger than five lots, has to go through a lengthy public process in Missoula: Developers must post notices, mail letters to neighbors within 300 feet and hold a neighborhood meeting, and go through a public hearing before the City Council or county commission board.
But on many smaller subdivisions, county planning staff would voluntarily drive out to the building site and post a small sign – the only chance for neighbors to learn about the planned construction before the hammers started flying.
The 2005 Legislature changed the laws – now, all smaller subdivisions involving a previously divided tract of land go through full public review.
Although the change has created more work for county planners, it also gives the public a greater role in the process, Alexander believes.
"People will be notified more of development in their neighborhood – people who live nearby will know a subdivision is going to take place," Alexander said. "There will be a (more thorough) public process."
The family transfer exemption still remains, and some still use it to evade subdivision review.
But state and county officials are now taking a closer look at family transfers: In Kalispell, local officials have suggested a three-year moratorium after a family transfer before a parcel can be put on the market.
Flathead landowners, however, are up in arms over the proposed moratorium. To many Montana citizens, the pendulum of public oversight has swung too far in the other direction – creating an expensive and time-consuming process for Montana citizens who want to do a simple division of their land.
That is the viewpoint of Ainsworth, who believes the process has become completely unwieldy. In Missoula County, he said, it can take up to eight months or more to complete subdivision review.
In the Bitterroot, with a smaller planning staff and a tight county budget, the situation has become even more difficult for small-time development, with waits of two years or more to split off a lot.
"The process has become so onerous, it forces people to try to avoid subdivision review," Ainsworth said. "If you had to spend two years and $20,000, or do a family transfer, what would you do? Are you trying to get something done, or evade the law?"
Ainsworth offered an example of one client, living just went of Missoula's city limits, who hoped to create two lots on his 10-acre parcel for his son and daughter.
Under subdivision review, his client would be required to install a sewer main – in anticipation of future connection to the city's sewer system – and pave a separate driveway to the back lots. The cost: $50,000.
Ainsworth is currently working to find out if a family transfer exemption is legal for his client, and he is unapologetic about using the loophole.
"He's not trying to evade the law," he said bluntly. "He's just trying to avoid spending the money."
Part of the answer, in Ainsworth's view, is that rural areas in Montana desperately need some form of zoning.
In his experience, without some type of land-use planning, Montana citizens are left trying to manage growth – or stop it altogether, if they could – through the subdivision process.
This hurts small developers and costs the taxpayers, he believes.
"We ought to do (land use) planning and zoning on every county in Montana," Ainsworth said. "Then subdivisions would be almost automatic. The public would have already decided where growth belonged and where it didn't."
But state and local officials in the growing West will continue to have to juggle the public need to weigh in on growth with a landowner's ability to maximize the value of his or her land.
"There is good in requiring people to lay sewer and prepare for (annexation)," Ainsworth said. "But somehow you have to balance that with people's ability to pay the costs."
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The consequent population influx creates demand for housing development and, of course, the land sales needed for locating the new housing.
The resulting construction boom whittles the forests, and homes aplenty are put where forest remains. Meanwhile, longtime Montanans find it increasingly difficult to keep up with an increasing cost of living, and agencies fiddle with process and strategy while the state keeps inviting more immigration in the name of economic advances.
Rube Goldberg would love it. I wish he were around to illustrate it, so that a few more Montanans might at least know what's hit them.
Lance Olsen
I suppose we can't really pursue the question you raise, which is a good, until we sort out some understanding of what you mean by "realistic."
For example, would it be unrealistic to cut the state's budget for spending that attracts growing numbers of people to the state?
Leaving that aside for the moment, my current hunch is that people will keep coming. Up to some point. And that that point is the achievement of the first thousand waterless houses.
Water questions are already looming over the future of some Montana plains communities. The western, mountain counties will feel a similar pinch somewhere down the road.
Water will be a limiting factor for continued popultion growth in Montana, among other places.p
Here's an overview of the unfolding saga of water.
Lance Olsen
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QUOTE: "Mountains are a barometer of global climate change," says Douglas McGuire, head of the International Year of Mountains coordination unit at FAO. "... many climatologists believe they are an early indication of what may come to pass around the world."
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NEWS RELEASE:
FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION/UNITED NATIONS
http://www.fao.org/english/newsroom/news/2002/9881-en.html
Besieged mountain ecosystems start to turn off the tap
Reduced water flow threatens agriculture and food security around the globe
ROME, 14 October 2002 -- The supply of freshwater, recognized on this World Food Day as the source of food security, is threatened by the increasing degradation of mountain ecosystems.
Mountains are often called nature's water towers. They intercept air circulating around the globe and force it upwards where it condenses into clouds, which provide rain and snow. All the major rivers in the world - from the Rio Grande to the Nile - have their headwaters in mountains.
As a consequence, one of every two people drinks water that originates in mountains. One billion Chinese, Indians and Bangladeshis, 250 million people in Africa, and the entire population of California, United States, are among the 3 billion people who rely on the continuous flow of mountain water. Each day, water from mountains turns hydro-electric turbines, aids industrial processes, irrigates farmers' fields and quenches thirst.
Yet, despite all who depend on it, the future of mountain water has never been more uncertain. The magnitude of this threat is one of the reasons the United Nations declared 2002 the International Year of Mountains.
Glaciers shrinking at alarming rate
Some of the freshwater obtained from mountains is stored in glaciers. Now, because of the effects of global warming, many mountain glaciers are melting at unprecedented rates. Runoff from the Quelcaya Ice Cap, for example, has been the traditional water source for residents of Lima, Peru. Over the past decade, melting of the ice cap has increased from 3 to 30 metres a year, putting freshwater at risk for 10 million people. In many other parts of the world, glaciers have also been shrinking. In the European Alps and the Caucasus Mountains, for example, glaciers have shrunk to half their size, while in Africa an ice cap on Mount Kenya has shrunk by 40 percent since 1963. If current trends continue, by the end of this century many of the world's mountain glaciers, including all those in Glacier National Park in the United States, will have vanished entirely.
Threats from mining, forestry
"Mountains are a barometer of global climate change," says Douglas McGuire, head of the International Year of Mountains coordination unit at FAO. "These fragile ecosystems are highly sensitive to changes in temperature and because they are found on every continent, many climatologists believe they are an early indication of what may come to pass around the world."
Global climate change is just one of many threats to mountain water. Other human activities, such as exploitative mining and unsustainable forestry and agriculture practices, are also taking a toll.
For many countries, as water flow slows, growing sufficient quantities of food will become increasingly difficult. In India, for example, an estimated 500 million people already plagued by water shortages depend on tributaries of the glacier-fed Indus and Ganges Rivers. Scientists believe that as Himalaya ice caps melt these rivers will swell -- before falling to dangerously low levels and drastically reducing local farmers' capacity to grow food.
"Mountain people are often the first to feel the effects of environmental degradation," says McGuire. "It is a sobering fact that many of the world's 800 million chronically undernourished people live in mountains."
Fighting over water
Water is a shared resource. What begins in mountain watersheds trickles down into streams and rivers, meanders across borders, flows into lakes, fills aquifers and, eventually, empties into oceans. Worldwide, 214 river basins - host to 40 percent of the world's population - are shared by two or more countries. Too often, where there is need for cooperation there is potential for conflict. In 1995, the distribution of water from mountains was the cause of 14 international disputes.
Many water-use disagreements arise locally between highlands and lowlands or regions within a country. Mount Kenya, for example,is the source of water for more than 2 million people in Africa. But in recent years, farmers living in the mountain's highlands have been using increasing amounts of water to irrigate crops. As a consequence, downstream water flow has been severely reduced, fuelling hostility from those whose survival depends on lowland pastures, cattle ranching and tourism in wildlife parks.
As populations increase and demand for clean water grows, the potential for conflict will only get worse.
United response is needed
"The challenges facing the world's mountain ranges and mountain communities are as big as mountains themselves," FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf said at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, in September. "The way forward, I believe, is to break the challenges down into smaller pieces, smaller issues, and for each of us to contribute what we have and what we do best. This requires collaboration of all of us -- governments, UN agencies, major groups and the private sector."
With those sentiments in mind, a number of countries, United Nations agencies and international organizations joined FAO in launching the International Partnership for Sustainable Development in Mountain Regions. Although the partnership is still taking shape, it is conceived as an evolving alliance between groups and individuals around the world with the flexibility to address the complexity, diversity and magnitude of mountain issues.
© FAO, 2002
Not every developer will be as local and conscientious as Ainsworth. Out-of-state developers (and their lawyers) have arrived, and they will use all the tricks in the book (including intimidation) to maximize their investment. The City Council and the County Commissioners can expect the threat of more lawsuits.
And the only way to win lawsuits is to have the law on your side. I suggest that this means changing state law.
For instance, do you want Growth Management Plans (developed with abundant citizen-involvement in an open, fair, neighborhood context) to be followed? Then, we need to work to change State law. Likewise, if you want water quality to be taken into account by local decision makers when development is proposed. That will need a change in State law.
Ask candidates for the State legislature where they stand on these issues, as well as community design standards, impact fees, and boundary line re-adjustments.
Our State is going to be developed. Now is the time that we set the ground-rules under which that will happen.
Even if Missoula succeeds in arriving at unanimous decision about development within its borders, the rest of Montana would still be left exposed. If all we do is save Missoula, we've lost.•
Ah, yes. Diamond's COLLAPSE is a great choice, and a fine preparation for Kunstler's arguably more important THE LONG EMERGENCY.
When we take a step back for an even wider perspective, it also gets pretty clear that the overall human population is setting itself up for a peak and fall that will put a decisive limit on the sprawl that has already taken so much of Montana under the umbrella of asphalt roof and street.
That doesn't mean we won't see more damage done in a meantime that could last a couple decades more, or arguably longer. But the mechanism of change is summarized pretty nicely in Dick Manning's thoughtful article on "The Oil We Eat."
Lance c
There are approximately 21,000rancher, who have about 30,000 grazing leases. They own approximately 107 million acres of private land. Chase them off the land and watch the subdivisions grow! Get over the idea they are going to give all or even most of the land to the do-gooders who managed to get them off leased land. Do-gooders by the way that want that land restricted to just their fun, no one else allowed.