by Jay Stevens
Once again, Tom Maclay’s application to use Lolo national forest lands for his proposed ski resort was denied, this time because revised forest use plans didn’t include “net increase in acreage of groomed snow in habitat considered to be occupied by lynx.”
I have to say, Maclay’s proposed Bitterroot resort is a colossally bad idea. Forget for the moment that there’s probably not enough snowfall at its altitude to support a viable ski resort, why in the h*ll should we fork over our public lands in a subsidized giveaway for a multi-million-dollar playground whose only economic benefit to the area would be a glut of low-paying jobs? (Jobs that, if the other Montana resorts are a guide, won’t be filled by Montanans, but foreign students because the wages are too low.) Don’t we already have enough infrastructure woes in the Bitterroot? Are our public lands so cheap, that we can throw them away on projects like this?
It’s time to quote James Lee Burke again:
Regarding the debate over the development of Lolo Peak, the central issue seems to have been quickly diverted into a discussion of jobs and real estate values, etc. That’s all good and fine. An individual, for the most part, can do whatever he wishes with his private land, and if he creates jobs for other people, even low-paying ones, so much the better. But the group wishing to develop Lolo Peak wants to use public land and in effect to change the character of a mountain that is one of the most beautiful in western Montana. That’s the issue.
That land belongs to all of us. It also belongs to people who have not been born yet. We’re entrusted with its care. We are also entrusted with protecting it. But rather than rely on words in a letter to the editor or reportage on a public meeting, drive just south of Lolo Creek on Highway 93 and look westward at the mountains whose faces have already been scalped with ski runs that are evidently the first stages in the development of a Lolo Peak ski resort. To say they are ugly doesn’t do them justice. They look like enormous lesions. I assume they represent the model for what will be done on Lolo Peak as well.
The fact that a small group of people can even propose commercializing a state and national treasure and then seek to negotiate the issue strikes me as mind-numbing.
It’s somewhat fitting, then, that the lynx have undone the Bitterroot Resort’s asked-for handout this time around.
July 5, 2008 at 6:43 pm
somewhere in wildlife biologist heaven, david maclay is smiling down on this.
July 6, 2008 at 9:39 am
It’s kinda far away from the highway, but it sure didn’t look like much was going on up there at the base lodge area when I went by a couple months ago. Maybe Maclay can’t get financing – ?
Anyone know? I mean they were making the rounds of the service clubs four years ago talking about this, and said they were going ahead with the development no matter what the FS decided about peak access.
July 6, 2008 at 2:33 pm
That seems to be the gist of the radio ads the Bitterroot Resort runs on Trail 103.3: “Change is inevitable. The Bitterroot Valley and Missoula have changed over the decades. So, we’re gonna change Lolo Peak whether you like it or not.”
July 6, 2008 at 9:52 pm
McClay has to keep the happy speak going on about development, in the face of USFS rejections, or he’ll loose all of this funding. The biggest fear for McClay is that all of his money people are going to worry about getting caught in litigation.
When we fought the Lolo Peak ski area back in the late 80’s, and ran the ballot initiative to gauge public sentiment, we considered it a success that we got as much support as we did, even though we lost, and didn’t get even close to 50%. But it was enough to scare the money bags off, when they realized how much antipathy there was to them, even though the project hadn’t gone very far.
The problem is with McClay’s current process, is that he is going to badger the USFS with rapid fire proposals until he finds a wedge into some kind of permit, and then incrementally push the issue up to what he really want, which is a full scale ski resort.
If the only issues with the USFS are marginal ones, like habitat and viewscape, then McClay will eventually win, as he will wangle the mitigation factor until the USFS has nothing left on the table to deny his apps.
The project needs to be killed on its merits, and the best way to do that is to threaten to fight a legal war of attrition. There are few developers that want to keep throwing large money at lawyers, when it’s a crap shoot if they’ll win. And it keeps the money bags from dropping the big bucks that McClay needs to move ahead in a major fashion. They’re just not going to invest dollars that require a USFS permit to make it profitable.
And when they get a permit–any permit–then the feeding frenzy begins. And the USFS will be locked into a shotgun wedding neither they, or most of Missoulians want.