Ed Kemmick/Last Best News
Clarks Fork Valley farmer Bonnie Martinell makes her case before the Carbon County Commission on Monday.
RED LODGE — A group of Clarks Fork Valley landowners appealed to the Carbon County Commission on Monday to create a special zoning district that would protect them from the impacts of oil and gas development.
“We’re not here to stop it,” organic farmer Bonnie Martinell told the commission. “We want it done correctly.”
Marintell, who farms near an Energy Corporation of America well, presented the commission with a petition asking for the creation of the Silvertip Zoning District, which would encompass about 3,000 acres along the Clarks Fork River north of Belfry.
Citizen-initiated zoning districts are allowed under state law and the Carbon County Growth Policy. Martinell said before the meeting that she and the other landowners are seeking a local solution after being spurned by the Montana Board of Oil and Gas.
After hearing that the ECA might develop as many as 100 wells in Carbon and Stillwater counties, Martinell said, landowners had asked the board for many of the protections now being sought by petition, but all were denied.
“They lectured us for being radical environmentalists who want to shut down oil and gas development,” she said.
Doug Tucker
About 30 people crowded into the County Commission’s small board room Monday, with another 20 people or so in the hallway outside.
Only two of the commissioners, John Prinkki, of the Red Lodge District, and Doug Tucker, of the Bridger District, were at the meeting. John Grewell, of the Joliet District, was absent.
Prinkki said the first step would be to examine the petition and a summary of the zoning plan submitted by Martinell, and then to hold a public hearing on the matter, probably in about a month. Martinell said the petition contained more than the required number of signatures.
Prinkki didn’t say much about the merits of the zoning district proposal, but Tucker expressed some reservations.
He said most of the farmers and ranchers who back the plan appear to be relatively small operators. In his conversations with farmers and ranchers who own most of the land in the valley, he said, “they’re not on board with what the Northern Plains Resource Council is proposing.”
John Prinkki
Martinell and some of the other landowners belong to the Carbon County Resource Council, an affiliate of the NPRC, and the NRPC helped develop the proposal.
The petition asks the County Commission to establish, as provided by state law, a planning and zoning commission for the new district. It would be made up of two residents of the zone, the three county commissioners and two elected officials.
The summary of the zoning plan says it would, among other things, require well heads to be at least a mile apart, ban holding pits and reserve pits, prohibit well flaring except in emergencies, require on-site sound suppression and mandate comprehensive testing, at least monthly, of water sources within a mile radius of each well.
Martinell said the existing ECA well near Belfry is located in a drainage area that regularly floods. If the well had been there during two flash floods this spring, she said, toxic chemicals would have been swept into nearby irrigation ditches and eventually into the river.
She also pointed that the state ordered the ECA to stop pulling water from a pond for which it did not have water rights, after Martinell and other neighbors documented the unlawful use.
“We are dealing with a company that has already shown us that they’re not reputable,” she said.
Though most of those who spoke Monday favored the zoning district, Belfry-area farmers Willis and Teri Herden said they were opposed.
Willis Herden, who said their farm is just 1,000 feet from the ECA well, said the company has been fair and easy to work with, and he hasn’t had any problems with the nearby well.
“I’m against zoning, period,” he said. “I don’t want a bunch of people telling me what I can and can’t do with my property.”
He also said that if there is a problem, it should be dealt with statewide. If communities create small zoning districts, he said, it will only drive oil companies out of those areas, depriving mineral-rights owners of the benefits of development.
Ed Kemmick/Last Best News
Clarks Fork Valley farmer Willis Herden said he was opposed to any kind of zoning.
Carol Nash, a supporter of the district, said the zoning regulations would not limit the rights of property owners, and would only affect oil companies.
Carbon County Attorney Alex Nixon, however, said the broad wording of the petition — “to require that any natural resource activity be done in a responsible way” — could affect agricultural uses like grazing or a feedlot operation.
“That’s wildly vague, is my concern,” he said.
Martinell said the petitioners were not seeking to regulate anyone but oil and gas producers, which is made clear in the wording of the summary plan she also submitted. But Nixon said it might be a good idea to revise the language of the petition.
Supporters also heard from Brent Moore, a planner with CTA Architects Engineers who is under contract to the county. He said that while citizen-initiated zoning is one option, supporters might want to attend meetings of the Carbon County Planning Board — the next one is Tuesday at 7 p.m. in the county courthouse — which is working to update the county growth policy.
He said the planning board could put some of the proposed regulations into the growth policy, so that they applied countywide, not just in the proposed special district. Moore also said that the county might need a legal opinion as to whether it has the power to institute some of the proposed restrictions.
Moore said it would help if supporters had more concrete solutions, not just the vague goals outlined in the petition.
Martinell said her group had been planning to submit a complete proposal — which has been vetted by four attorneys and two land-use professors, she said — but it appears that the appointed planning and zoning commission is supposed to develop any policies.
She agreed, at the request of the county commissioners, to make her group’s policy recommendations available. Maggie Zaback, with the Northern Plains Resource Council, said after the meeting that the complete proposal should be done by the end of the week.
Nash told commissioners that Montana is in a unique position, able to apply lessons learned in neighboring states where so much oil and gas development has already occurred, sometimes with disastrous results.
“We have an opportunity to get ahead of it,” she said.
Martinell urged the commissioners to protect “one of the most beautiful areas in the world.”
