Darby senator sinks his stream access bill

An angler tries his luck on Mitchell Slough near the Bitterroot River. Disputes over public access to the slough fueled a series of court cases over whether Montana’s landmark stream access law applies to waterways altered by man. (Photo by Michael Howell/ Bitterroot Star)

By LAUREN RUSSELL
Community News Service
UM School of Journalism

What was shaping up to be major fight over public access to Montana’s smaller waterways ended quietly last week when Sen. Rick Laible decided to kill his own bill.

The Darby Republican’s Senate Bill 314 would have effectively barred anglers and other recreators from most of the state’s smaller streams, according to state fish and wildlife officials.

Laible, whose district includes the greater part of Ravalli County, cancelled two hearings before the Senate Natural Resources Committee earlier this month for the bill, which attempted to define the terms “natural” and “natural water body” for purposes of Montana’s stream access law.

The bill officially died this week when it missed the deadline for passing from one house to another.

Laible said the bill was created to address concerns of farmers and ranchers over November’s Montana Supreme Court decision on the Bitterroot Valley’s Mitchell Slough. The court ruled that the slough was a natural waterway and therefore subject to the 1985 state law for stream access, overturning earlier court decisions stating that any water body manipulated by man was no longer a natural stream.

Laible said he had been asked to sponsor the bill by a constituent who was worried the Mitchell ruling would provide the public access to existing ditches. As the bill progress, Laible said he was unhappy with the broad implication of the measure’s language.

“I thought the original intent was to protect water rights of ranchers and farmers, but I was told the language was actually trying to overturn the Supreme Court decision,” Laible said. “I didn’t think it was the right thing to do.”

Laible would not say who wrote the bill.

“I did some more research and kept the bill going, thinking we could amend it,” Laible said. “But I talked to the attorney of (Department of) Fish, Wildlife and Parks, who said that even an amendment didn’t fix it. Turned out it reversed access for sportsmen, access which is our Montana heritage.”

Opponents of the measure included Fish, Wildlife and Parks and Montana Trout Unlimited.
Bruce Farling, executive director of Montana Trout Unlimited, said that since most streams in Montana have been modified by irrigators, many smaller streams would have been off-limits to public access.

“That bill would have radically undermined our 25-year-old access bill in the state and would have put hundreds of streams that are now accessible out of access for the public,” Farland said. “Once Rick talked to our guy in Helena and talked to legal counsel and realized he didn’t understand the implications of the language, he was a gentleman and a good guy and decided to abandon it."

Because no clear definition of what constitutes a “natural” stream will be determined in the Legislature this session, future issues of state public stream access will most likely be decided in the courts on a case-by-case basis.

Laible described the experience of sponsoring the contentious bill as one of the most challenging of his legislative tenure.

“It was not good,” Laible said. “I didn’t know it was going to be that controversial, I thought it was cleanup language. Sometimes bills don’t turn out the way you want them to, so you kill ‘em.”