Stream access bill aims for compromise

HELENA – Bill “Sweet Willy” Holdorf, 83, recalls getting his first fishing license at age 15. The Butte man says he has floated and fished Montana’s rivers and streams all his life. Now, Holdorf worries his grandchildren won’t be afforded the same luxury.

“I’ve always had access,” Holdorf told state legislators in Helena Tuesday. “We never had a problem with cattlemen.”

Holdorf’s comments came during testimony on the first “stream access” bill of the 2009 Legislature. The subject has 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. Now lawmakers are wrestling over who’s responsible for providing access over, under or through the fences. -MORE-