We’re fishing around this morning trying to find out when Rep. Jeff Wellborn’s miscreant of a bill (HB 309) is going to the floor for a vote.
No luck so far this morning (as of 1020); it’s once again not on the schedule for the house and we have several emails out looking for new information.
Nick Gevock of The Montana Standard in Butte has a top of the fold article up today about the legislation – Anglers Blast Access Measure.
The article offers a couple of direct quotes from Montana TU’s executive director Bruce Farling:
The measure is a sneaky attempt to undermine Montana’s stream access law that guarantees the public the right to get to streams and rivers, said Bruce Farling, executive director of Montana Trout Unlimited.
“This is going to kick Montanans off of streams they’ve been fishing since Montana was a territory,” he said Monday. “Hundreds of miles of streams would be affected.”
Gevock writes what many a Montana fly fisher has suspected (at least in the chatter we’re hearing) -
The bill was spurred by the Supreme Court’s ruling on property owned by rocker Huey Lewis in the Bitterroot Valley. Lewis contended Mitchell Slough was in fact an irrigation ditch, but the court unanimously found it was a side channel of the Bitterroot River and therefore open to public use.
Sportsmen hailed the decision as upholding Montanans’ right to use their waters. But agriculture and Libertarian groups said it will discourage landowners from making habitat improvements to streams on their land.
Wellborn’s argument that his bill doesn’t potentially restrict river access was apparently blown out of the water by Bob Lane, counsel for the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks -
But in testimony before the House agriculture committee, the attorney for the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks said the bill would obliterate the state’s stream access law. Bob Lane, FWP chief legal counsel, said the provision of the bill that defines any stream that gets the majority of its water from return irrigation flows would privatize virtually every river in the state.
“HB 309 almost completely repeals the public’s right to recreate on rivers and streams,” he said. “The most comprehensive and partially hidden but intended effect of HB 309 is that return flows would count as diverted water when determining whether diverted water is the principle source of water in a stream or river.
“HB 309 as written defines the Bitterroot River as a ditch.”
While it’s no surprise that the measure passed in the Agricultural committee, given Lane’s comments above there’s no question that Wellborn’s attempts to soft peddle the bill’s access restrictions are pure bullshit.
We’ve heard a few comments from folks basically opining that the rich bastards (more than one good fisher referencing Huey Lewis and his failed attempt to kick folks off Mitchell Slough on the Bitterroot) won’t be able to change Montana’s long standing favorable stream and river access laws.
That’s what they thought in Utah and look what happened there.
There’s still time to raise hell. Links for legislative contacts here (feel free to use Bozeman’s 59715 zip).
1135 Update: Via Michael Gibson of Montana TU in Missoula – the bill is on the House schedule for tomorrow 9 February. Call and email today……
Tags: Access
