Friday, July 30, 2010
Helena Montana
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1. Drumlummon Institute & Bedrock Editions Publish Writings of Montana Pioneer Hans Peter Gyllembourg Koch
Jointly published by Drumlummon Institute and Bedrock Editions of Helena, Montana, Splendid on a Large Scale: The Writings of Hans Peter Gyllembourg Koch, Montana Territory, 18691874, presents the diaries and letters of a highly educated Danish immigrant who made signicant contributions to the emerging EuroAmerican culture on the Montana frontier.
2. Northeast Montana Tornado Survivor's Condition Upgraded to Fair
HELENA, Mont. - A hospital spokeswoman says the condition of a woman injured in a tornado in northeastern Montana has improved and her outlook is favorable.
3. 1 dead, 2 injured in bear attack at Montana campground
HELENA, Mont. A bear attack today in a campground near Yellowstone National Park left one person dead and two injured, Montana wildlife officials said.
4. ACLU sues Montana over same-sex couples rights
HELENA (AP) - A civil rights advocacy group filed a lawsuit Thursday on behalf of seven Montana gay couples demanding the state provide them the same rights married couples have in making decisions affecting their family's health care, finances, inheritance and other matters.
5. Northeast Montana fatal tornado area declared disaster
HELENA Sheridan County officials have declared a disaster emergency in the wake of one of the most powerful and deadly tornadoes to touch down in Montana, a county commissioner said Wednesday.
6. Man dies in skydiving mishap in Montana
HELENA, Mont. (AP) A man attending a skydiving festival in the northwestern Montana town of Marion was killed when he plummeted to the ground after his parachute became entangled with another mans.
7. Helena Symphonys executive director resigns
Helena Symphony Executive Director Tawna Parisot announced herresignation Wednesday, effective July 31.
8. Montana Bear Attack Leaves One Dead, Two Injured
HELENA, Mont. (AP) -- Montana wildlife officials say one person was killed and two others were injured in a bear attack at a campground east of Cooke City and north of Yellowstone National Park.
9. Montana wildlife officials say 1 dead, two injured in bear attack near Cooke City
HELENA, Mont. (AP) Montana wildlife officials say one dead, two injured in bear attack near Cooke City.
10. Montana dropout rate rising, according to report
HELENA - Montana ranks among the bottom 10 states with teenagersages 16 to 19 who have dropped out of high school beforegraduating, the Annie E. Casey Foundations Kids Count reportedMonday.
Japanese Flour Miller Execs to Visit Montana
Date: 7/24/2008
Four high level executives from Japanese flour mills and an official from U.S. Wheat Associates (USWA) based in Tokyo arrive in Great Falls on July 16 to learn about the quality of the Montana’s 2008 wheat crop. The trade delegation will be hosted by the Montana Wheat and Barley Committee, the check-off organization representing wheat and barley producers in Montana.

While in Montana, the foreign visitors will tour a shuttle facility, as well as a local farm. Kim Falcon, Executive Vice President of the MW & BC, will give an overview of the wheat industry in Montana, presenting information on transportation, marketing, and the current crop conditions. Additionally, the group will participate in a discussion about chemical treatments on wheat in Montana. This group will also sit down with representatives of the local grain trade and some members of farm organizations to complete their discussions.

In Japan, the government agency, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF), purchases the majority of imported wheat and then sells it to the flour millers, the first and largest end users. The Japanese flour milling industry is directly responsible for supplying good quality flour to its bakery, confectionary and noodle industries. There are 124 flour mills in Japan and 100 milling companies, as of 2006. In FY 2007 (April 2007 to March 2008), MAFF purchased a total of 5,125,500 metric tons (188,310,870 bushels) of wheat, with the U.S. share accounting for 3,312,000 metric tons (121,682,880 bushels) or 64.6 percent. Montana is the largest supplier of wheat to Japan, providing, on average, one of every three bushels of wheat to that Asian country.

Since 1969, over 81 representatives from either the Japanese Flour Millers Association or independent millers have visited Montana.

 Japanese Flour Miller Execs to Visit Montana
Rock Creek Mine Brings More Lawsuits
Date: 6/11/2008
KALISPELL - Lawsuits continue to pile up in opposition to a controversial mine that would tunnel beneath the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness north of Noxon.

“We're just trying to make sure that nothing gets started up there before all the questions are answered,” said Loren Albright.

Albright sits on the national board of trustees at Trout Unlimited, one of four conservation groups that filed suit Monday to block activity at the proposed Rock Creek Mine.


The groups - which include the Rock Creek Alliance, Clark Fork Coalition and Earthworks - claim sediment from ground disturbance could harm Rock Creek's bull trout. State water quality law, they say, prohibits sediment discharge at levels harmful to fisheries.

“Every state and federal agency to look at the situation agrees that Rock Creek already has all the sediment pollution its native fish can stand,” said Karen Knudsen, executive director of the Clark Fork Coalition. “They've said the addition of any more sediment will harm the fishery.”

Permitting a mine in the sensitive creek drainage, she said, “just doesn't make sense.”

But Carson Rife, vice president of operations at Revett Minerals, says the mine will actually improve Rock Creek's water quality.

“Our implementation plan calls for extensive mitigation measures,” Rife said, and will include fabric fences, sediment traps and upgraded road culverts. The result, he said, will be 50 fewer tons of sediment pouring into Rock Creek than currently is the case.

And that's just during the exploratory stage. When the mine is up and running, Rife said, sediment levels will drop by 400 tons per year thanks to the company's mitigation work.

“This has been studied and studied,” he said, “since 1987, when the original application was submitted. We're confident water quality will actually be improved once we begin work.”

Bonnie Gestring, not surprisingly, disagrees. She's with Earthworks and contends a U.S. Forest Service review indicates sediment loads would increase by somewhere between 400 tons and 1,400 tons during the exploratory stage.

In addition, she and other plaintiffs are taking issue with the way in which state regulators approved portions of that work. Their lawsuit, filed in state district court in Helena, argues the Montana Department of Environmental Quality erred in handling the Rock Creek work through a “general permit.”

General permits, the plaintiffs said, allow common projects such as highway work to proceed without a site-specific water quality permit - which would require public involvement.

That system, however, was never intended to apply to projects such as the Rock Creek Mine.

“The general permitting laws say in black and white that they don't apply to situations where unique ecological resources are at stake,” Albright said. “If Rock Creek doesn't meet that definition, I don't know what does. It's deeply disappointing that the state sees this project as garden-variety construction with no need for public involvement.”

Whether it's garden variety or not, “the department did decide a general permit was the appropriate permit,” according to DEQ's chief legal counsel, John North.

On Tuesday, North had not yet seen the lawsuit, but he did confirm that general permits - in this case a construction stormwater permit - are used in cases such as the road work intended at Rock Creek. By law, he said, general permits require companies to implement certain protections as they work, “to ensure that the water discharges are adequately free of sediment.”

Having not seen the suit, North did not comment directly on its content, but Rife said he was certain his company and DEQ were operating under the proper regulations and permits.

“That seems to me to be more of a legal issue,” he said of the permitting complaint, “and I'm not a lawyer. But I do think that Montana DEQ is following the law as they see appropriate, and we rely on them to tell us which permits are required.”

Monday's lawsuit came about a week after Revett announced it had begun construction on the first phase of its copper and silver mine.

For much of the past month, the company has been erecting office and storage buildings on private acres adjacent to the public land where the mine would be sited. Revett also has begun foundation work on a water treatment plant that will handle groundwater pumped from the initial exploratory tunnel.

Rife said the company hopes to start work on that tunnel later in the summer.

That's an optimistic deadline, however, as the lawsuit is not the only legal challenge waiting to be heard.

Previously, a coalition of conservation groups sued in federal court on behalf of endangered species - including Rock Creek's bull trout. A second federal lawsuit challenges the mine's Forest Service approval process.

Those two claims have been rolled into one, and the company must provide the court with a 20-day notice should it decide to begin work on public land.

“And we're not going to sit back (and) do nothing while we watch those 20 days slide by,” said Tim Preso, attorney for the plaintiffs in the endangered species suit. By which he means the plaintiffs will seek an injunction to stop work on federal lands as soon as Revett posts its notice of intent to begin.

The four filing suit Monday, likewise, say they “will consider seeking an injunction to stop it,” should Revett move forward with mine construction.

Last week, company president and CEO Bill Orchow said that for the time being, “we're moving ahead under the assumption that we will prevail” in court. Currently, he said, only a handful of Revett employees are on the site, as pre-mining preparations continue on company land.

If completed, the 35-year mining project would build several miles of roads into the Cabinets, as well as railroad stations, pipelines, power lines, a tailings treatment plant and other infrastructure on more than 1,500 acres.

At full capacity, it should yield an estimated 10,000 tons of copper and silver ore per day, and employ 300 people for some 20 years.

 Rock Creek Mine Brings More Lawsuits
Federal Fund for Firefighting
Date: 4/18/2008
The first steps in creating a federal fund for fighting the country's largest fires was passed by a key House committee on Thursday. This would ease the financial burden on U.S.

“I believe this is necessary because agencies of the Interior Department and the Forest Service are having to rob Peter to pay Paul by borrowing funds from other agency accounts to cover the escalating costs of fire suppression,” said the chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., who wrote the bill.

“The overall mission of the agencies is being undermined, everything from trail maintenance to necessary construction activities,” he added.

The House Agriculture Committee is considering a similar bill. Rahall did add some provisions from that measure to his own bill at the request of Alaska Rep. Don Young, the top-ranking Republican on the Resources committee.

Those provisions would make an annual report on the fund available to the public, require a review of any wildfire that cost more than $10 million, notify Congress if the money in the fund fell to two months’ worth of expenditures or less, and provide firefighting grants to local communities.

But Rahall did not include other provisions from the Agriculture bill, saying they could slow or stop his bill by miring it in controversy over agency management practices. The Agriculture version would create “good neighbor” partnerships with states for projects reducing hazardous fuels in national forests.

Although he supported the Resource bill, Rep. William Sali, R-Idaho, said it only addressed the accounting side of the problem and not the underlying causes of increasingly expensive fire seasons.

“I believe this is inadequate,” he said.

Sali tried to add an amendment allowing the Forest Service the ability to bypass some environmental analysis for projects reducing hazardous fuels on public lands adjacent to non-federal lands.

Rahall agreed with Sali’s concerns and said the issue should be addressed in the future. But he ruled the amendment outside of the scope of the narrowly focused bill and therefore not eligible for a vote, because it would amend the Healthy Forest Restoration Act, which is not otherwise addressed by the bill.

“This exercise is about financing firefighting,” Rahall said. “We need to keep our eye on ball, we need to be focused.”

The panel accepted an amendment from Rep. Henry Brown, R-S.C., that would allow for federal land managers to cooperate with neighboring private landowners to carry out controlled burns.

Committee members and outside experts agree that too much of the U.S. Forest Service’s budget — now 48 percent — has been eaten up by ever-growing fire suppression costs, to the detriment of its other programs.

The bill would create a separate fund to pay for the less than 2 percent of fires that spread into giant fires and take up almost 85 percent of fire suppression costs.

The Western Governors Association, the National Association of State Foresters and five former chiefs of the Forest Service all support the bill.

Rahall and the heads of the relevant subcommittees introduced the Federal Land Assistance, Management and Enhancement Act, or FLAME Act.

The amount of money in the “Flame Fund” would be based on the average amounts spent by the Forest Service and Interior Department to suppress catastrophic fires over the preceding five fiscal years.

Last year, the Forest Service spent $741 million more than budgeted and Interior spent $249 million more than budgeted for emergency wildfire suppression, or a total of nearly $1 billion.

Congress would have to approve the money for the fund each year. It would be separate from the regular budget for the agencies, which also is approved each year. The anticipated, largely predictable amounts for fire suppression activities by the agencies would continue; the Flame Fund could only be used for catastrophic fires.

The secretaries of the departments would have to declare fires eligible by issuing an emergency declaration based on the size, severity and threat of the fire.

The act would also require the Interior and Agriculture secretaries to submit a report to Congress one year after enactment containing a cohesive wildland fire management strategy.

That would include a system identifying the most cost-effective means for allocating fire management resources, a system for assessing the level of risk to communities, an illustration of plans to reinvest in nonfire programs, a description of use of appropriate management response, and a system ensuring that the highest priority fuels reduction projects are being funded first.

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 Federal Fund for Firefighting
ANTHRAX CONFIRMED IN NORTHEASTERN MONTANA
Date: 4/7/2008
What appears to be a naturally occurring case of anthrax has caused the death of 37 cows from a single herd on tribal land northwest of Culbertson, according to Dr. Tom Linfield, Montana State Veterinarian.

The anthrax has been limited to one ranch, and neighboring ranches have been notified. Producers are alerted to outbreaks so they can consult with their veterinarians and vaccinate their livestock if deemed appropriate.

"The Fort Peck Tribes, Roosevelt county officials, local veterinarians, and the Montana Department of Livestock (DOL) have been working together to contain the disease and to implement preventive measures," Dr. Linfield said.

The dead cows have been placed in two deep burial pits located on the premises. DOL regulations require that carcasses of animals that have died of anthrax be appropriately disposed of, either by burning or by deep burial. The equipment used to handle and bury the animals has been cleaned and disinfected.

Local and state veterinarians have been on-site at the Roosevelt County premises and have taken appropriate measures to prevent further spread of the disease.

"Livestock producers and veterinarians provide the first line of defense against animal disease," Dr. Linfield said. "We are fortunate that the livestock owner and the herd veterinarian recognized the importance of early disease detection and implementation of the appropriate treatment, prevention and control measures. They have made every effort to notify neighbors and help confine the disease to the premises."

All remaining animals from the 250-cow herd have been removed from the affected pasture. All susceptible and potentially exposed livestock on the affected premises have been treated with antibiotics and vaccinated. A second vaccination will be administered after 7-10 days. A quarantine has been placed on the affected premises for approximately 40 days.

"Anthrax tends to be pretty rapid in its course and is a reportable and quarantinable disease because it can cause the rapid loss of a large number of animals in a very short time, and as a zoonotic disease, may have human health implications," Dr. Linfield said.

Anthrax is not usually spread from animal to animal; however, dead animals, if not properly disposed of, can be the source of infection for other animals in the area. Quarantines are imposed to prevent the movement of infected or exposed livestock, thereby limiting further spread of the disease and to help reduce additional environmental contamination.

Vaccination is recommended for livestock residing in or near an outbreak area, or for animals that will be moved into the area. Anyone administering the vaccine should follow the instructions on the product label and consider wearing a long-sleeved shirt and using latex or work gloves to prevent accidental skin contamination with the "live" spore vaccine.

The last confirmed cases of anthrax in Montana were diagnosed in 1999 in unrelated incidents, one in May in Yellowstone County and one in August in McCone County. Prior to 1999, the last case of naturally occurring anthrax in Montana was in 1985.

The organism naturally occurs in the soil in many parts of Montana, as well as other states. North Dakota and South Dakota have had multiple cases of anthrax this season.

Anthrax depends on two factors working together; the presence of anthrax spores in the soil, and suitable weather conditions. The organism forms spores that can survive in the soil for decades.

"When an outbreak is confirmed in a location, it is reasonable to expect additional cases within the same area," Dr. Linfield said.

Grazing animals are typically infected when they ingest or inhale spores on contaminated vegetation or soil. Animals primarily affected are cattle, bison, sheep, goats and horses. In addition, wildlife species such as deer, elk, moose and antelope, as well as wild carnivores, such as coyotes, bobcats, and mountain lions, can also be affected.

Typically, the disease in livestock and wildlife appears following periods of climatic or ecological changes, such as heavy rains or flooding preceded by drought. Spores may also be exposed by wind or water erosion, as well as other soil disturbances, such as excavations. These factors make it possible for an outbreak to occur one year, but not the next.

Signs of the illness usually appear three to seven days after the anthrax spores are inhaled or swallowed, but may occur sooner if a large number of spores are inhaled. Infected animals may exhibit clinical signs such as staggering, trembling, convulsions, or bleeding from body openings, followed by death. Untreated animals may die within 24-48 hours after infection.

Open or bloated carcasses should not be moved since movement could release bacteria into the air or further contaminate the surrounding ground causing further disease spread. Hides, horns, antlers or any other tissue from the carcass cannot be salvaged and must be destroyed.

In cases of sudden, unexplained livestock deaths, owners are urged to contact their herd veterinarians immediately. Anthrax is a reportable disease and the DOL is to be notified of suspected and confirmed cases. The State Veterinarian's office number is 406-444-2043. Animal carcasses in streams or rivers should also be reported to the Department of Livestock.

Hands should be washed thoroughly after handling livestock.

Residents within an anthrax area should keep dogs out of pastures and away from carcasses during an outbreak. Although dogs are reportedly resistant to anthrax, they can develop infection from bacteria and may require treatment.

People and pets should not swim in stock tanks or stagnant ponds in pastures where death losses have occurred. Streams are considered safer as the moving water will dilute organisms.

Anthrax Outbreak Poses Little Risk to Humans, Officials Say

An anthrax outbreak among cattle in northeastern Montana poses little threat to humans, state health officials said Thursday.

Jim Murphy, disease surveillance specialist with the state Department of Public Health and Human Services (DPHHS), said he and his colleagues consulted with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) about the incident and its potential risk to humans. He said they confirmed that only individuals who came into direct contact with the carcass or bodily fluids of infected cattle need to be monitored for potential exposure to the disease.

"Based on our consultation with the CDC, simply being in the vicinity of the animals suspected or confirmed to have anthrax is not an exposure, and no treatment or observation is necessary," Murphy added. "Even a person who handles a carcass or bodily fluids while wearing gloves would not be considered to be exposed."

There are three types of anthrax: cutaneous (spread through contact with the skin), inhalation, and gastrointestinal (caused by ingesting infected meat or milk). About 95 percent of human anthrax infections occur when the bacterium enters a cut or abrasion on the skin during the handling of the animal or animal products. According to the CDC, inhalation of the bacterium is not a concern in this instance.

Murphy encouraged anyone who may have been in direct contact with the infected cattle to watch for signs and symptoms of the disease for up to a week after possible exposure. Symptoms might include:

* Small, painless sores that develop into blisters and then into skin ulcers with black centers (cutaneous anthrax); or
* Nausea, loss of appetite, vomiting, bloody diarrhea, and fever followed by severe stomach pain (gastrointestinal anthrax).

Murphy suggested that individuals who did come into direct contact with infected animals may want to visit with their medical provider. In most cases, no treatment is indicated, but a medical provider can make appropriate decisions on a case by case basis. If an anthrax infection does develop, early treatment with antibiotics is very effective.

Anthrax is not known to spread from person to person.




ANTHRAX CONFIRMED IN NORTHEASTERN MONTANA
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