Compromise bill on "bridge access" moves ahead

HELENA – A compromise aimed at allowing recreationists to access Montana's waterways at public bridges took a step forward at the Legislature Tuesday.

By a vote of 16-2, the House Fish, Wildlife and Parks Committee recommend passage of House Bill 190, sponsored by Rep. Kendall Van Dyk, D-Billings (pictured). The committee tabled a competing bill.

“This really is 16 months of work from sportsmen, from landowners, from conservationists and everyone in between,” Van Dyk said.

The bill would allow public access to waterways at bridges while also allowing landowners to connect fences to bridges and abutments to contain their livestock. Landowners would have to modify those fences to allow access. Such work would be administered and paid for by the Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

Rep. Ken Peterson, R-Billings, voted no on HB 190 because he said it leaves too much power in Helena and none in the counties.

“A vote of no is not a vote against stream access,” Peterson said. “It’s a vote of no central control, no state control.”

In the same hearing, the committee voted 10-8 to table Peterson’s stream access bill, House Bill 26. Peterson said both bills offer the same kind of access, but differ on who would mediate disputes. HB 26 would give that responsibility to the 56 county commissions across the state instead of FWP.

But Van Dyk said HB 26 is the “wrong way to provide any sort of clarity to this issue,” because the 56 county commissions could handles such disputes 56 different ways.

Peterson offered his version of county control as an amendment to HB190, but the committee voted against it.

Rep. Mike Milburn, R-Cascade, said that while he agreed with Peterson on local control, he stuck with HB 190 because of the compromises and work put in by different organizations. “I can’t express how tough this was to bring forward to this level,” he said. “I think we probably can’t do a better job.”

When HB 190 was first heard before the committee on Jan. 15, opponents of the bill said it did not adequately address the issue of prescriptive easements. These easements are roads that have been used by the public for so long that the county gets right of way, whether or not it runs through private land.

In the hearing on Tuesday, it was clarified that the current stream access law in Montana does not create prescriptive easements and neither would either HB 190 or HB 26. The law states a prescriptive easement can only be issued on a case-by-case basis.

Disputes over stream access have been a legislative staple since 1985, when lawmakers enacted Montana’s landmark law allowing recreational access to the beds and banks of the state’s navigable waterways.

This year’s debate reflects a Madison County judge’s October ruling granting recreationists a right to access streams and rivers from bridges in the public right of way. But it also gave landowners a right to build fences up to those bridges to control their livestock.

-by CNS correspondent Molly Priddy