Commissioner, rancher to talk setbacks
by PERRY BACKUS - Ravalli Republic
Almost a decade ago, when people who cared about southwest Montana’s Big Hole River started talking about the future, Victor was one those places they liked to point toward.
“It was a place that was held up as a model of what would happen if you didn’t do anything,” said Beaverhead County Commissioner Garth Haugland.
That example and others around the state helped spur four county governments and hundreds of landowners along the full reach of the Big Hole River to agree on an ordinance that some people might call a streamside setback.
That’s not what they called it.
“The word setback has this connotation,” Haugland said. “We knew some people would see it as a taking.”
Back then zoning was a four-letter word in Beaverhead County
“You didn’t use it in mixed company,” Haugland said.
So the folks in Beaverhead, Madison, Butte-Silverbow and Anaconda-Deer Lodge coined their ordinance the “Big Hole River Conservation Development Standards and Permitting Process.”
On Thursday night, Haugland and Big Hole Rancher Harold Peterson will talk about the long process people went through to develop the ordinance at a presentation at the Victor Middle School from 7 to 9 p.m.
The ordinance, which was adopted by all four counties, establishes a 150 foot building setback from the river’s edge. The key to make it acceptable to landowners is a variance process that allows construction in areas closer to the river if it’s obviously out of the floodplain.
“If people want to build on a bluff that’s obviously far above the floodplain, they can go through the variance process,” he said.
The ordinance also requires anyone considering construction within 500 yards of the river to get a free permit from the county.
The process to develop the ordinance didn’t happen overnight and it wasn’t driven by local government, Haugland said.
Instead, it began with the formation of the Big Hole Watershed Group back in the mid-1990s. That group included a wide range of different interests looking to protect both the river and the lands surrounding it.
The move to develop the ordinance grew following some years with high water and some flooding.
“People started to talk about the need to expend resources and money trying to protect structures that shouldn’t have been built there in the first place,” Haugland said. “We had several years that were dry and the river never came up.
“New people who had moved in didn’t realize what the river could do when it got back to its natural condition,” he said. “People who had spent their lifetime along the river knew what could happen and they saw what it might mean.”
At first, Haugland said the group that came together to talk about developing an ordinance considered making agricultural lands exempt. But a few well respected ranchers stepped forward and urged the group to place all lands under the same umbrella.
“When they stepped up to offer their leadership, that was really the turning point,” he said. “That’s what made it work.”
Editor Perry Backus can be reached at 363-3300 or editor@ravallirepublic.com
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