Seeley Lake Community Council
SEELEY LAKE - Seeley Lake Community Council heard updates regarding the Bob Marshall Music Festival, the status of the sewer project, Paws Up’s use of two motels for employee housing, and U.S. Forest Service summer projects during their regularly scheduled meeting Monday, May 10.
Bob Marshall Music Festival
Heidi O’Brien, Lewis and Clark Brewing marketing director, provided updates on the Bob Marshall Music Festival. She said they were ready to make any adaptations required should conditions change in the weeks leading up to the festival scheduled for Aug. 6 and 7.
“One thing we’ve learned in the last year of doing music and festivals is that you’ve got to change and you’ve got to change quickly and things don’t always go as planned,” O’Brien said.
For this year she said they were limiting tickets to 1,000 people and reservations to 200 campsites. Even with the limited capacity, they plan to bring in crowd management services this year. Organizers anticipate selling out. They have already sold around 40% of their capacity since pre-sales began April 14.
Sewer Project and Car Wash
Jim Erven, Missoula City-County Health Department environmental health specialist, spoke on regulations and permitting in regards to the septic system and sewer board. Because the board was recently unable to have the necessary bonds approved to fund the project they had selected, they have lost their funding and are making transitional decisions that will have an effect on their budget and operations for the future.
Erven said that they were pursuing a sewer system in Seeley Lake in the first place because of groundwater pollution. MCCHD has collected around 15 years of data from sampling points and published studies and have found that there is an accumulation of nitrogen being discharged by a dense collection of septic systems mostly to the east of Seeley Lake along Highway 83.
He said they began to notice that this was an issue around 2011. The presence of nitrogen is normal for septic systems but due to the density it can become an issue.
“It’s not that the septic systems are necessarily not functioning properly, it’s the density of them, the number of them in that small area,” he said. “So, we have this sort of phenomenon where you have low amounts of dilution, high amounts of nitrogen input from the septics. And so at times we’re seeing exceedances of the allowable standards for Montana and federal law for nitrate.”
According to Erven, Montana state law says that there can only be 10 milligrams of nitrate per liter of groundwater at any time, whether it is a drinking water source or not. This is because there are health concerns associated with the consumption of water with a high nitrate concentration. In addition, high concentration of nitrate in water can also have an environmental impact in terms of causing algal blooms and the “eutrophication of water bodies” where water bodies are fertilized beyond their capacity and the area ends up with excessive plant growth resulting in oxygen levels deteriorating.
In a response to a public question, Erven said the size of a lot is a factor when seeking approval for a project, but an even larger deciding factor is the downstream impact.
Erven said that MCCHD feels that they have “excellent data” from their three test wells. They know there is a problem widespread enough to be of concern. However, as a next step they are considering gathering additional data to help them make appropriate regulatory decisions. If they were to expand their data collection, this would involve sampling more locations more frequently and sampling for more constituents in the wastewater. Right now they have been sampling for chlorides, nitrates and coliform as well as temperatures and static water levels.
In response to another question, Erven said they would be open to redrawing the boundaries of the Seeley Lake special management area, established in 2015, to more accurately reflect the data they have collected over the years depending on what they discover.
Erven said the Sewer Board typically meets on the third Thursday of every month. He encourages anyone looking to get involved to attend and participate in those meetings. He also encourages anybody interested to call MCCHD at 406-258-4755 or to visit their webpage at https://www.missoulacounty.us.
On a side note he briefly talked about the carwash and why it is currently closed. According to him, the carwash was built without approvals to begin with and upon a MCCHD inspection requested by the carwash owners, the operation was found to potentially discharge hazardous waste and volatile organic compounds when in use.
“We also would love to see the carwash return to operation for a lot of reasons, … but we have talked with potential buyers and the owners and the listing agents of that property and at this point in time, they have not secured approvals to begin operating again,” Erven said. “I hope we can get there.”
The Resort at Paws Up
Steve Hurst, managing director of The Resort at Paws Up, gave updates on the two motels in Seeley Lake being used as employee housing and plans for the future. According to him, Paws Up had actually been using both motels for employee housing “for quite some time.”
“It provided a great opportunity for us to keep having people housed in our community and continue to have people working for us here at Paws Up,” he said.
Hurst said they have not made a definitive decision yet as to whether or not they would make the building partially available to the public during the offseason.
Forest Service Update
U.S. Forest Service Wildlife Biologist Scott Thomson provided updates on Seeley Lake Ranger District summer projects. He announced that local campgrounds will open on schedule May 28.
The projects funded by the Great American Outdoors Act are beginning to go into effect. Due to renovations, Double Arrow Lookout will be closed for this summer. Forest Service staff are also working on some technical designs for a new boat ramp at Seeley Lake Campground. Other than that, there should be no impacts on the campgrounds this summer.
Thomson said the Forest Service was able to do prescribed burns for about 80 total acres around Mountain Creek and Horseshoe Hills. There is also some burning lined up around the Westside bypass. Due to the limited burn window he said that they will focus on doing some additional burns in the fall.
He added the area could be looking at a big fire season this year. However, Seeley Lake has been greener and wetter than many other areas of Montana.
Old Business and Updates
In old business council member Bruce Friede said that Seeley Lake did not qualify for any grants within the county to finance additional speed limit signs for the area. Fortunately Shane Stack, Missoula County public works director, told Friede that he had ordered portable speed limit signs that are keyed by radar. Stack told him that he would bring them up and allow the community to use them for at least the busier part of summer.
Friede said the idea is that if the signs are effective at mitigating speeding, then they could reach out to local businesses to see if they would be willing to pool enough money to buy a set of them for around $6,000. These signs would likely be placed in the 25 mile per hour zone between Clearwater Montana Properties and the former location of the Seeley Lake Motor Lodge.
“I personally witnessed in the last week, four trucks going through town at probably about 40-45 miles an hour and these are full blown semis,” he said. “So there’s a problem. And I think a lot of those guys just don’t notice the signs. When the troopers are there, the deputies are there, it works, but they can’t be there all the time.”
In an update for the Senior Center, Council Treasurer Sally Johnson spoke on behalf of Center President Boyd Gossard. She said that the Center was looking at reopening in-house service after July 4. The Board will reevaluate its decision at their meeting towards the end of May. They had hoped to reopen earlier in June, but they did not have the budget to make the required structural modifications to maintain social distancing.
There is still a vacant position on the Council that would run through May 31, 2024. While it was on the Missoula County Commissioners May 11 agenda to appoint John Richards to the Council, the Commissioners instead extended the application period to increase the applicant pool.
The Commissioners sent Richards a letter stating, “As with all positions, [we] are looking to attract a pool of applicants so we can appoint members who represent not only a broad cross-section of the community but who also help fill expertise gaps or needs on the board.”
In an email Commissioner Chair Dave Strohmaier wrote the position will remain open indefinitely until the Commissioners feel like they have a sufficient pool of strong candidates to choose from. After consulting with staff, Strohmaier said they do not have a ready example of a time when a community council position was left vacant with a qualified application. However, this does not mean that there hasn’t been a time when the applicant pool, whether based on the applicant’s written application and interview, didn’t warrant soliciting additional applicants prior to appointment.
“Community councils are solely advisory to the BCC, so it is our prerogative to select who we think would be the best fit for the council and provide us with the best advice,” Strohmaier wrote. He added in an additional email, “We have the freedom to make the appointments at our discretion.”
To apply for the open position visit https://boards.missoulacounty.us/apply/.
Since Vice Chair Jack Greenwood will not be attending the June and July meeting and they have not selected a new chair, Board Member Doug Anderson volunteered to act as chair during June’s meeting. The council unanimously voted to cancel their July and August meetings due to lack of attendance in years past.
A recording of the meeting is available on the Seeley Lake Community Council’s Facebook page. The next meeting is scheduled for June 14 at 6 p.m. via ZOOM.
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