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Missoula Blog

Several Missoulians, one on her way back to Thailand with her family and the other on his way to India, have found themselves living international news this week.

If you frequent Sa Wad Dee as much as we do, you've been missing Jum Slover too. Jum, who has become a friend after years of witnessing Missoula's collective curry habit, has been in Thailand with her husband and 10-month old baby visiting her mother since November 2 and was scheduled to fly home Monday.

Instead Jum and her family joined the tens of thousands of travelers stranded in Bangkok because of a week-long airport shutdown by antigovernment protests. Jum's cousin, Tao Rohitsathain, said this morning that Jum and her family had stayed the night in Bangkok but that Tao's mother, Jum's aunt, suggested they try to travel back to Jum's mother's to wait out the turmoil.

New reports this morning though, say protestors have agreed to end the blockade after a court ordered the disbandment of Thailand's ruling party. There's no word yet on when flights will resume, but let's hope Jum and her family have safe travels home soon.

Meanwhile, local web designer, yogi and NewWest.Net webmaster Evan Lovely will be en route to India on Wednesday to attend the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute in Mysore, a week after a three-day rash of attacks in Mumbai left 172 people dead and more than 300 injured. Evan says his mother and friends are bit worried, but he won't be anywhere near Mumbai. Yesterday, he was interviewed for an international Associated Press saying, "I don't think the attacks should warrant staying away from the entire half of the country." Safe travels to you too Evan. [more]

News Brief

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments today about whether cost should be a factor for power plants in conforming to the Clean Water Act.

At issue is the use how the billions of gallons of water plants use for cooling effect fish and whether or not 554 older plants should be forced to upgrade their systems to match the mandates for new plants. The Bush administration, the EPA and the power plants are seeking to overturn an earlier ruling in a circuit court that sided with the six states and several environmental groups that challenged the Bush administration's stance, arguing that plants should have to upgrade, despite the cost of those upgrades.

Some, however, were hoping the issue would be cleared up by the incoming Obama administration, which is expected to restore water quality regulations after nearly a decade of weakening.

More on the story:
Associated Press: Court Weighs Power PlantcCosts vs. Protecting Fish
National Public Radio: High Court Case Tests Power Plants' Water Rules [more]

As Myers Reece reports at the Flathead Beacon, Whitefish has joined the ranks of Montana communities allowing a little country in the city with its passage of an ordinance allowing backyard chickens.

Missoula passed a similar ordinance last December (Whitefish will allow five hens, Missoula allows six. Neither allow roosters) and the news from Whitefish gives us the perfect chance to highlight the debate that has surrounded this issue—through the eyes of photography and filmmaker Anne Medley. Here’s the video she did at NewWest.Net last year:

News Brief

The bi-partisan Western Governors' Association has given President-elect Barack Obama a four-page letter detailing its recommendations for the new administration's energy policy, including an "aggressive and achievable national greenhouse gas emissions reduction goal."

The letter, signed by Utah Gov. John Huntsman Jr. and Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer also urges Obama to "promptly" (within the first 100 days of office) to, among other things: Propose a national mandatory system of emissions reductions through "market-based mechanisms;" Pursue a national energy efficiency program; Establish an oil import reduction goal; and spend tens of billions of dollars each year to encourage private investment in clean energy. [more]

A study released Monday shows that while on average, Montanans have about the same access to the Internet and other electronic media as the rest of the nation, there is a large gap when it comes to the state's most rural places.

The study, by Montana State University professor Richard Wolff and the group Montana Common Cause, shows Montana's metro areas may have access to online services and information but rural areas are vastly underserved, particularly when it comes to options for providers and access to local government services via the Web. Also, while metro counties tend to have access to government services -- many have county or municipal Web sites -- they often don't have suite of services that other local sites in the country offer. [more]

New West Blog

Writer Lisa Selin Davis asks on Grist this week: “… if McDonald’s is seeing record profits due to inexpensive food, will green housing be the equivalent of a biodynamic, $8 a pound plum?”

Industry leaders say not so much:

“Certainly green building is not a fad, rather, it’s a trend,” James Brew, an architect with the Rocky Mountain Institute’s Built Environment Team, wrote to me. “And while this current economic situation has stalled some projects and limited the availability of capital, the trend is still there.”

Read Davis’ story here.

Featured Event

Missoula filmmakers Damon and Eric Ristau are finishing up their independent feature film Best Bar in America and you can see in the trailer above that it’s taking shape.

So much shape, in fact, that the Ristau brothers are celebrating with a preview party this weekend.

The film, starring the likes of Andrew Rizzo, David Ackroyd, Gregory Collett and Lee McAfee, showcases some of the West’s best bars and places, through the eyes of two men on a quest. Eric said this summer in an interview with New West Missoula: “One of the epiphanies of the film is that rather than it just being a room full of people drinking alcohol there is actually a deeper culture to it and a wisdom that exists in those places as the modern day campfire. It’s a place to exchange stories and a place to exchange wisdom.”

You can check it out yourself: The preview party is on Saturday, Nov. 22 at the Stensrud Building (314 N. 1st Street) from 7 to 11 p.m.  (See the full listing at MissoulaEvents.Net here.)

News Brief

The United States Department of Agriculture says organic milk cows should be sent to pasture -- at least for 120 days a year.

As Steve Karnowski reports for the Associated Press, the draft USDA rule comes after outcry about big organic milk producers that keep their animals in large feedlots, feeding them organically and producing organically, but not giving them any fresh grass or room to roam. Under the proposed rule, which is up for public comment until December 23, in order to be certified organic, milk cows must be on pasture for half of the year and 30 percent of their dry food must come from grazing.

Boulder-based Aurora Organic Dairy, which produces store brands for the likes of Wal-Mart and Safeway and Broomfield-based Horizon were at the center of the controversy. Aurora spokeswoman Sonja Tuitele tells the AP that the company is looking at the draft rules and will provide comment. As Karnowski reports, Tuitele "said the proposals don't adequately provide for inclement weather. She also said the final rules will need to take geographic differences into consideration." Horizon, on the other hand, is supportive of the proposed rule.
[more]

Ketchum Mayor Randy Hall this week confirmed an earlier report that the 48Straight winter sports and music event is canceled for this season and that Jeep caused the cancellation by pulling its support.

Hall verified the speculation at a meeting Monday.

"It doesn't take a brain surgeon or the mayor of a small town to realize what's going on in the auto industry," Hall said.

Jeep is trying to cut costs wherever it can, Hall said, and that means the festival, a boon for Sun Valley, is out. "Unfortunately, we are also a victim of the national economic downturn."
[more]

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]