http://www.newwest.net/topic/main/C57/L/ New West Network: The Voice of the Rocky Mountains en info@newwest.net Copyright 2008 Mon, 01 Dec 2008 15:42:20 MDT Mon, 01 Dec 2008 15:42:20 MDT http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/peaceful_enjoyment_of_your_property_except_in_montana/C57/C57/ http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/peaceful_enjoyment_of_your_property_except_in_montana/C57/C57/ Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:40:18 MDT 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. http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/inside_the_100_million_ge_wyoming_coal_project/C57/C57/ http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/inside_the_100_million_ge_wyoming_coal_project/C57/C57/ Thu, 20 Nov 2008 08:12:08 MDT 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. http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/court_opens_mitchell_slough_to_public_in_landmark_stream_access_case/C57/C57/ http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/court_opens_mitchell_slough_to_public_in_landmark_stream_access_case/C57/C57/ Tue, 18 Nov 2008 13:33:46 MDT 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. http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/north_idaho_hit_hard_by_slump/C57/C57/ http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/north_idaho_hit_hard_by_slump/C57/C57/ Sun, 16 Nov 2008 11:33:29 MDT 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. http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/tim_blixseth_absent_from_yellowstone_club_debacle_for_now/C57/C57/ http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/tim_blixseth_absent_from_yellowstone_club_debacle_for_now/C57/C57/ Thu, 13 Nov 2008 09:36:24 MDT 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. http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/bitterroot_resort_gets_initial_ok_from_forest_service/C57/C57/ http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/bitterroot_resort_gets_initial_ok_from_forest_service/C57/C57/ Tue, 11 Nov 2008 16:49:15 MDT 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. http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/yellowstone_club_files_for_bankruptcy/C57/C57/ http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/yellowstone_club_files_for_bankruptcy/C57/C57/ Tue, 11 Nov 2008 11:35:30 MDT Late Monday the uber-exclusive Yellowstone Club near Bozeman filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after negotiations broke down with lender Credit Suisse, from whom it borrowed some $300 million several years ago. The first court filings, which bear the signature of club manager and co-owner Edra Blixseth, cite a combined debt of $344 million and assets of about $1.1 billion. The bankrupt companies include Yellowstone Mountain Club, Yellowstone Development, Big Sky Ridge, and Yellowstone Club Construction Co, according to court documents. "I think we had a perfect storm. We're in a tough liquidity position," said club spokesman Bill Keegan. "We were seeking new long-term financing as part of our long-term capital needs, and then the lending markets froze. We felt it was best to protect the club, the members, and our future by seeking Chapter 11 protection." http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/missoula_city_council_theres_ufda_to_consider/C57/C57/ http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/missoula_city_council_theres_ufda_to_consider/C57/C57/ Mon, 10 Nov 2008 16:48:50 MDT Here's Missoula Office of Planning and Grants director Roger Millar's short take on the city's zoning book: It's a 36-year-old update of an 80-year-old original, and most changes made to it over the decades have been preventive measures taken after some tragic or lame occurrence. "Something terrible happens, and the city council directs staff to write codes so it can't happen again," Millar said. "We have all sorts of ways to say, 'No,' rather than an ordinance to facilitate what the community wants." Part of the effort on reworking the zoning involves an amendment to the urban area's growth plan, the Urban Fringe Development Area Project, known as UFDA. On Monday night the city council will hold a public meeting at 7 p.m. on UFDA at its chambers at 140 W. Pine St. http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/panelists_scrap_over_streamside_setbacks/C57/C57/ http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/panelists_scrap_over_streamside_setbacks/C57/C57/ Sat, 25 Oct 2008 10:01:00 MDT When it comes to the muddy waters of streamside setback proposals, this much is clear: Montanans love their rivers, and Montanans love their private property rights. Yet as more people move into the state and new development crowds the river corridors, this raises a dilemma. Protecting one may come at the cost of the other. “People are loving these rivers and streams to death,” said Hal Harper, Chief Policy Advisor to Governor Brian Schweitzer. “They are holding them and hugging them too closely. It’s like a loving relationship where a person smothers a new spouse.” Harper spoke in favor of some form of statewide stream setback standards during a panel discussion during New West’s 3rd annual Real Estate and Development in the Northern Rockies in Missoula, Mont. on Friday. He argued that science-based uniform statewide standards with proper variance procedures to evaluate individual pieces of property are necessary to protect the health of a river, public health and safety, the quality of life that attracts so many people to Montana and personal privacy from river users. http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/preserving_western_agriculture_and_open_space/C57/C57/ http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/preserving_western_agriculture_and_open_space/C57/C57/ Sat, 25 Oct 2008 09:26:33 MDT Perhaps no image is more emblematic of the changing West then an old barn surrounded by field of new houses. The irony in the image, of course, is that as residential development invades the West the agricultural land with its open space and wildlife habitat that draws people here is compromised. “What will happen if you lose us?” asked southwestern Montana rancher Jim Hagenbarth. “The last crop we plant will be a subdivision. It will destroy all the habitat that we’ve worked to preserve.”