Plum Creek, State of Montana Negotiating Road Easements

By Robert Struckman, 5-21-08

	Caption: Plum Creek also wants all-use access for the Forest Service's Gold Creek Road in Missoula County. The company owns 58 percent of the private land in the county. Photo by Emily Haas.

As the ruckus over Plum Creek Timber Co. and its quest for all-purpose easements across U.S. Forest Service land continues to simmer, the Montana state government has begun quietly talking with the timber-giant-turned-land-developer.

Mary Sexton, the director of the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, downplayed the discussions with Plum Creek, saying talks involve Montana’s new easement policies, which grew out of laws passed in the 2005 Legislative session. Those policies allow the state to upgrade easements in certain circumstances. The new rules could pave the way for the largest private landowner in the United States to develop otherwise isolated parcels of its Montana land.

A test case involves land north of Whitefish Lake—about 27 sections of Plum Creek property. It’s a huge piece of land, but there’s just one hitch: Plum Creek lacks all-purpose easements across a strip of state trust land to U.S. Highway 93. Officials at DNRC have been talking for about 18 months with Plum Creek representatives about this and other easements, Sexton said. As of May 21, Plum Creek had not submitted an application for the easement upgrades for the Whitefish land.

Seattle-based Plum Creek spokeswoman Kathy Budinick confirmed the talks but insisted that no actual plans have been made. “We’ve explored the idea of seeking access but haven’t formally done so,” she said. “We’re not formally proceeding with that at this time. We’re evaluating a range of options for this land.”

(State Sen. Mike Jopek, D-Whitefish, offered a contradictory report. He said he and another legislator had lunch recently with three top Plum Creek officials, who told him about company plans to develop a private community there. He also said he wants to keep discussions with Plum Creek open. “We’re interested in meeting these large landowners at the table,” he said.)

All told, Plum Creek owns some 8 million acres in 18 states and has said it plans to sell as much as one quarter of it. As with the Whitefish land, year-round access is a huge issue.

Plum Creek has longstanding reciprocal road easements with the state. For the most part, the roads are narrow, rough and seasonal, and the rights-of-way basically allow farming, agriculture, mining and logging, Sexton said.

Here are the basic terms of the new policy as it would apply to Plum Creek or any other landowner seeking an easement upgrade: Plum Creek can request “deeded access” for “all lawful purposes,” Sexton said. If that request is OK’d, in return, Plum Creek would grant the same easement to the state for state roads across its land. Also, the roads must be widened and otherwise approved in accordance with the Montana Environmental Policy Act. Plus, Plum Creek would form a “road users association” for the upkeep of the roads, and the state would get 1 percent of any revenues from land sales there. The DNRC’s mission, in part, is to manage state land in trust for public schools and is mandated to get the highest possible return from those lands. The state has not made any money yet on transactions like this.

The state’s policies are a counterpoint to negotiations between Plum Creek and the U.S. Forest Service. In that instance, Plum Creek has lobbied the top of the federal agency for a blanket overhaul of old timber-hauling easements across federal land to include any and all uses. Missoula County Commissioners and others have been up in arms about the issue.

Unlike the Forest Service, which essentially all but concluded its negotiations with Plum Creek without a formal public process, any similar state decision would be made by the Montana Land Board, which is made up of the state’s top five elected officials. The Land Board’s meetings are public; its agenda is published on the Internet. Also, the easement upgrades will be made on a case-by-case basis.

“It will be a public process, scrutinized by neighbors,” Sexton said of any easement changes. “This is a particularly sensitive area. We’ll proceed carefully.”