North Fork bill clears Senate hurdle

The North Fork Watershed Protection Act took another step to becoming law last week. Sen. Max Baucus said the bill, which bans future energy leases on federal lands in the North Fork and Middle Fork of the Flathead River drainages, was unanimously endorsed by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Getting a bill out of committee is one of the first steps to getting it passed.

Rep. Steve Daines has sponsored the bill in the House. It’s one of the few land management bills in Montana that has received bipartisan support in the past 30 years.

Baucus said passing the bill is one of his top priorities before he retires. The bill does not stop existing leases from moving forward, but many energy companies have already voluntarily relinquished their leases on more than 200,000 acres in the two drainages. The leases had seen no exploratory or development activities in decades.

A federal court case several years ago successfully forced the Forest Service to conduct a full-blown environmental impact statement on energy exploration in the area. That EIS was never completed.