Sorted by date Results 881 - 905 of 1183
SEELEY LAKE - This is my third and last missive on the sewer project. At his point the entire cost to us has not been clearly set out. And something was just told to me that makes it even worse. Apparently the third phase of the project has no water piped in from our system. That means when the sewer goes in there will also be the substantial added cost of a water system that has not even been discussed. Why hasn’t this been brought up? The whole project has been full of half-truths and smoke and mirrors as to the cost. We voted against the s...
SEELEY LAKE - For you sewer residents still deciding whether or not to protest the proposal, here’s some more food for thought. The Board has no current engineering estimates for sub-districts 2, 3 and 4. They will undoubtedly run into the millions of dollars to build the collections systems. The Board is counting on getting the financing for these sub-district projects from the State legislature. But that is a very “iffy” assumption. Here are a couple reasons why: • The State government uses mostly coal tax trust fund dollars for infrast...
SEELEY LAKE - From up and down the valley, folks tell us about the value and virtue of ‘clean water’ and the chemistry of sewage. We’ve funded studies and drilled wells to show what we already knew: Sewage affects water quality and should be regulated. The proposed sewer is a device that will allow folks to improve or profit on property investments and at the same time comply with Missoula County’s restrictive septic regulations. The debate is about cost and methods, not if we want clean water or not. Will this method have best results for mon...
SEELEY LAKE - The Sewer Board letter of Nov. 16 stating its intention to incur debt for a sewer project was incorrectly labeled a “ballot” in my last weeks/letter to the editor. Ballots may not be forwarded to “snow birds” but this letter is not considered a ballot and may be forwarded. I apologize for any confusion this may have created. Now...as to the letter: It, too, is confusing and obscure. We all basically received a form letter which says we can protest. If you received three letters, it means you have three properties in the sewer d...
SEELEY LAKE - This kind of opportunity to improve the community and prepare it for a long future will not come again soon, if ever. We are fortunate to have a generous grant to pay for a sewer system and the dedicated people willing to volunteer their time and skills to the effort. You can read about the benefits of the proposed sewer project in other letters and at www.seeleysewer.org. I am writing this letter as a personal testimony to these benefits. I have lived in two other communities that endured sewer and water controversies like this....
SEELEY LAKE - The Sewer Board has nicely stacked the deck for passage of its atrocious, expensive sewer proposal. Here’s how. By ignoring last December’s vote and opting for a “protest” procedure, the Board has effectively disenfranchised every business and residential renter in the district and made property ownership a condition of participation...that would be about 20 percent of the residents in the district. Further, by scheduling the protest period in November/December it has disenfranchised every “snowbird” who goes south for the win...
SEELEY LAKE - Response to this summer’s fires showed the resilience of people living in Seeley Lake. It is not something any of us want to see repeated. We all know how important Seeley Lake is to the community and local economy. Our forests became at risk due to decades of fire suppression and delays in thinning. The lake could suffer a similar fate. I was fortunate to serve as Director of the Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks during the 1990s. Over my career, I came to appreciate that many of the challenges that nature faced were not t...
SEELEY LAKE - Just some questions I have about the protestors of Gary Lewis’s gravel pit. Who are these protestors? What are their names? Do they even live in Seeley Lake? Are they being paid to protest by some group? What were their jobs before they moved to our town? What industry did they get a paycheck from? Did we try to stop the protestors from having a job, making a living and putting food on the table for their children? Did our town try to stop the development of the Double Arrow? Did we protest their sewers messing up the water? D...
SEELEY LAKE - At this time it looks like sewer rates in the downtown Seeley area will be around $80 a month...that will be just about the highest monthly sewer rate in the state. Landlords will have no recourse but to pass that cost on to their renters. That’s on top of one of the highest water rates in the state. There are easily 100 rental properties in sub-district one, if you count business and residential alike. My questions to sewer supporters, how does that help affordable housing? How will your (service) employee be able to afford to l...
SEELEY LAKE - When we set out from Pyramid trailhead on a 12-day backpacking trip in the Bob on July 23, we were filled with excitement and a bit of trepidation about the challenging and beautiful journey ahead. We had no way of knowing that a night or two later, a forest fire would start on Rice Ridge. On July 30 we learned about the fire - and the resulting closure of Pyramid trailhead. Unsure how we would travel from the suggested re-route Lodgepole Creek trailhead back to Seeley Lake and hopefully our car at Pyramid, we picked up the pace...
Now that the fires have cooled, at least in the woods, here are a few things to contemplate. The “save the world people,” i.e. Friends of This and That, Filers of Lawsuits to Stop Logging, Road building, Access, Save the Animals and Save the Trees- you know what I mean-have done a good job this time. I will stick to the Rice Ridge fire because like others in this area I am on a handshaking basis with it. The timber harvest in this area has been brought to a virtual standstill because of things such as endangered species, wilderness, acc...
SEELEY LAKE - Greg Robinson and the go-along sewer board have revealed intentions to charge very unfairly for sewer Operation and Maintenance. First, they cannot seem to learn or accept that when it comes to using and deriving benefits from a sewer, residences and businesses are fundamentally not the same. Second, within each class, using and deriving benefits will not be the same. Regarding the distorted proposal that residences and businesses should pay the same—NO! Businesses have an extra benefit in that they can deduct utility charges a...
SEELEY LAKE - For the volunteer members of the Seeley Lake Rural Fire Department there is nothing more important than the community we serve. Undoubtedly, the resignation of Chief Bob Vanden Heuvel left a significant amount of uncertainty in the future management of the Department. We wish to thank Chief Bob for his dedication and unselfish support of the Seeley Lake and surrounding communities over the past few years. Members of the Department met Tuesday night, Oct. 24 to discuss operations moving forward. As fellow members of the community,...
SEELEY LAKE - At the Seeley Lake Sewer Board meeting Oct. 19, Greg Robertson announced that he was changing the assessment methodology to using equal assessments for residences and businesses. The Pathfinder article also said that this would level the playing field for the notice and protest and ALL lots in each phase would have EQUAL WEIGHT to their protest instead of commercial lots having a greater say. Besides that, the board and general manager completely missed the point of what the complaining about their original plan for charges was....
SEELEY LAKE - I’ve been trying to work up a sheet of information, that anyone might understand, regarding the actual costs for constructing the proposed sewer. I obtained the only currently available project budget. That document consists of 2.5 pages and has two headings, “Collection System Phase 1” and “SBR (that’s the treatment mechanism that has a designed life of 20 years), Groundwater Discharge Phase 1”. There seems to be a problem stemming from the organization, or rather disorganization, of the materials that is keeping me from being...
SEELEY LAKE – I don’t believe that the current proposal by the Seeley Lake Sewer Board makes any sense. However, I realize that there’s been a tremendous amount of effort for many years by members to find a solution. Now, let’s assume that there is a current or future water quality issue. I don’t feel that there’s been nearly enough nor appropriate test data collected, e.g. well and lake water integrity. There’s certainly enough money that has been collected from residents to do a more diligent investigation. The facts as I know them: • No one...
SEELEY LAKE - As some of you may know after an extended period of time off, our chief resigned at our district board meeting held Oct. 17 which was effective immediately. We want to thank Bob for his last three years of service to the community and wish him well and success in his future endeavors. Moving ahead, I want to assure everyone that operationally nothing has changed and business and emergency response will go on as usual. We have more than 20 members on the department that are firefighters and most of them are also cross-trained as...
SEELEY LAKE – Due to the recent resigning of the Chief and the constant turmoil that this fire district seems to be in, it is with great regret that I will be resigning from the Rural Fire District maintenance position, effective two weeks from Oct. 24....
SEELEY LAKE – Losing Bob as our fire chief is an unfortunate occurrence and losing our fire chief is sad. Best of luck to Bob in his future endeavors. However, just because a few of the members walked out, that does not mean they resigned from the unit. The fact that they volunteered to begin with means they care about the community they live in and they would not intentionally leave the community short-handed. Keep in mind though that we do not know all the details and to jump to conclusions and get worked up is not going to help matters. I...
SEELEY LAKE - Greg Robertson revised his proposed sewer rate schedule at the board meeting Thursday, Oct. 19. The problem is that he moved from one tremendously warped method (that had over 100 residences labeled as “businesses”) to another equally unfair approach. Under his newest scheme, ALL – be they high or low users, business or resident, year-round or seasonal, prosperous or low-income residents, owners of occupied or vacant parcels—will now pay the same for both debt service and operations and maintenance (O&M). Robertson seems to look...
Regarding the letters to the editor concerning the sewer project during the past four months, Don Larson states that, “All the 20 against the project were by residents who live and vote in the Sewer District.” I guess Don needs to look more closely at the Sewer District map, as the primary residences of two of the most vocal individuals opposed to the sewer are in southern Montana and Arizona. Referencing those who wrote in support of the project, Larson writes, “Only seven live and vote in the District.” Wrong again, Don. I personally know ma...
SEELEY LAKE - Rumor has it that critical engineering documents, revealing the design, actual plan components and budget for the proposed sewer, are finally in the hands of the sewer board. Can that group demonstrate the integrity, maturity and confidence needed to provide constituents the time to access, review and develop questions regarding their proposed project now that “full” engineering information has been delivered to them? While each property owner (and interested renter) may not feel fully qualified to analyze the entire set of doc...
SEELEY LAKE – A group of approximately 110 well-owner, landowners in the airport area east of Seeley Lake are concerned about the location of the proposed sewer system. We all take our water from private, individual wells and we are concerned about the possible pollution from the treatment plant which is proposed upstream and upflow from our properties. As we understand it, medical wastes will not be removed from the millions of gallons of treated water released from the plant, once fully operational. If true, these wastes will inevitably f...
SEELEY LAKE - Over the past year, since the Seeley Lake Sewer Project was defeated in the election last fall, I have read several articles about how much the lake is polluted and how the proposed sewer project is going to miraculously fix that. The two letters to the Editor last week point out the fallacy of that and what the real truth is…. SEELEY LAKE IS NOT POLLUTED. Furthermore, the claims that water quality in the lake has diminished in the last few years are unsubstantiated by the data and there is no historical baseline data to c...
SEELEY LAKE - Many of my friends and neighbors along Boy Scout Road and C Street are under the impression that the lake is severely polluted. They have all written letters regarding this theory. I took the time this summer to go to the Seeley Lake Water District and printed out all the information about all the water testing that has been done regarding the sewer. The tests for nitrates in the lake, which the Board paid for, are very low. The average being .06 mg/l. A full 10 represents the standard for issues with drinking water. The...
