Big Sky Coalition Founder Built Home in Floodway
By Matthew Koehler, New West Unfiltered, 5-12-08
For a group billing themselves as "environmentalists with common sense" the Big Sky Coalition sure has a funny way of being green.
In April, the BS Coalition's executive director - a former Forest Service Supervisor - gave testimony before the House Resources Committee in Washington, D.C. calling for "large, landscape scale" logging of our national forests to be accomplished by suspending the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the congressionally-mandated public appeals process. For those who don't know, NEPA is our nation's bedrock environmental law that basically requires the federal government to analyze the potential environmental impacts of their proposed actions.
A few weeks later, according to the Missoula Independent , "State Sen. Rick Laible (R-Darby) used his position as chair of the state's Fire Suppression Interim Committee to pimp his personal agenda." You see, Senator Laible just happens to be a board member of the Big Sky Coalition, something he apparently didn't plan on disclosing to the public, despite the fact that Senator Laible's hand-picked agenda included two speakers from his very own Big Sky Coalition.
Now,
the Ravalli Republic has a story detailing that, "Ravalli County is alleging that one of the founders of the Big Sky Coalition built his house in the floodway of the West Fork of the Bitterroot River. County officials believe that Tom Robak’s house sits in the actual floodway, not just the floodplain, and that 'significant' amounts of fill have been placed."
Maybe this latest revelation helps explain why the Big Sky Coalition was spending thousands of dollars last fall running large newspaper ads against Ravalli County's proposed streamside setback ordinance.
Regardless, it seems as if Kermit the Frog had it right...it's not easy being green.
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