From the Saturday, April 9, 2005 online edition of the Daily Inter Lake . . .
The Montana Senate has restored funding for a long-term water quality monitoring program on Flathead Lake. . .
The funding approval came on the heels of a Wednesday Senate vote approving a joint resolution that expresses concern over the potential for coal and coalbed methane development in British Columbia at the headwaters of the North Fork Flathead River.
The resolution calls for a "transboundary environmental assessment" of the North Fork watershed prior to any development in British Columbia. And it urges involvement of the International Joint Commission, a panel of American and Canadian officials responsible for preventing and resolving transboundary disputes under the Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909.
"What the Legislature is doing here is telling the State Department that this is a high priority for Montana," said Steve Thompson, Glacier program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association, one of many members of the Flathead Coalition, an organization formed 30 years ago to protect the Flathead's transboundary waters.
The issue must be referred to the International Joint Commission by the Canadian and American federal governments, Thompson said.
Once that happens, the International Joint Commission could pursue an environmental assessment to establish baseline data, basically an inventory of current ecological conditions in the North Fork Flathead.
"It's an important statement and it's significant that it's bipartisan," Thompson said of the joint resolution. . .
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