I’ve been “offline” for a little while, but I’ve been so busy! I’ll try to catch up on the updates. Here’s the first installment.

Last week, I asked two people in the Montana Legislative Fiscal Division how federal stimulus dollars have been distributed between the Women Infants and Children (WIC) nutrition program, school lunch program, and American Indian food distribution programs. The funding provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) is one-time-only and will not be continued in the 2013 biennium budget process.

Women Infants and Children Nutrition Program
The legislature approved spending authority of $783,000 in ARRA funding for the WIC program in FY 2010 and $700,000 in FY 2011. Authority was provided for up to $500,000 in each year of the biennium to provide services and food for the WIC program. Should the state require funding above what was included for the regular WIC program, Montana can request additional funding under the ARRA. The program provides for food benefit packages to:
o Pregnant women
o Breastfeeding women
o Women who recently had a child
o Infants birth to 12 months
o Children up to 5 years of age
Qualifying individuals must be determined to be at nutritional or medical risk and be below 185 percent of the Federal Poverty Income Guidelines. The funding can be used to support additional eligible individuals or increased costs of providing food package benefits. WIC food benefit packages have recently expanded to include fresh fruits and vegetables that have increased costs for the program.

In addition, ARRA funding of up to $283,000 in FY 2010 and $200,000 in FY 2011 was provided for technology support for the WIC computer systems. The actual award for the computer system was $721,000. These systems have been in place since the 1980s. Montana is in the process of updating its WIC computer system.

School Lunch Programs
Montana received a one-time appropriation of $250,000 for equipment assistance to school districts participating in the National School Lunch Program. The Montana Office of Public Instruction awarded the grant funding by July 2009 to 45 school districts around the state. The listing of districts can be found at http://www.opi.mt.gov/schoolfood/grants.html.

Each district was awarded $5,000. As required by federal statute, priority was given to schools where at least 50 percent of the students were from low-income families. Funding is to be used to assist school districts in expanding their participation in the school meals programs and to help improve overall food service operations. This should result in improved school lunch program infrastructure.

Food distribution on American Indian Reservations
ARRA Funds: Funding is used to support storage for the state’s food distribution programs to reservations for frozen and refrigerated foods. The total amount received was $51,000 for an emergency backup generator for the state’s food storage warehouse cold storage compressors.

Tribes also received additional funds under the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR) funding sources that are not related to ARRA. $135,440 of “pass through” funding will go to six tribes for nutrition education, administration, and food storage warehouse needs. For example, Fort Belknap will use $24,000 to replace a forklift for their warehouse.

The Emergency Food Assistance Programs (TEFAP)
The division received $146,034 for costs associated with the handling, storage, and delivery of USDA commodities. The division also received about $200,000 to be used as “credit” for acquisition of food from USDA.

Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP food stamps)
The division received ARRA assistance for increased SNAP benefits of over 13.6%, which allows for well over $50 million in SNAP assistance for the state over the entire ARRA period. There is additional ARRA funding for program administration of $670,424.

HB 645 General Fund Appropriation
The Montana Legislature also provided general fund money of $500,000 over the biennium that is restricted for food for Food Banks throughout the state.

We’re working hard to take care of basic nutrition and food needs of Montanans, and we’re doing it well and effectively. Remember our less fortunate neighbors, everyone, as we celebrate Thanksgiving this coming week. There are too many of our fellows who are hungry, all the time.

Law to Allow Donation of Unused Cancer Drugs
The Associated Press October 18, 2009

HELENA (AP) Wendy Gwinners work brings her in contact with people still reeling from a cancer diagnosis. The oncology social worker said shes seen nearly 100 patients since April who couldnt afford the drugs needed to treat their disease.
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Gwinner hopes a new law that establishes a way for unused, unopened cancer drugs to be donated to participating pharmacies and dispensed to qualifying patients will change that.

The state Board of Pharmacy began developing rules to implement the law at a meeting earlier this month.

It would be my hope that they feel the urgency in this, said Gwinner, who works at Bozeman Deaconess Cancer Center.

Since April, the clinic has seen 97 patients that we had to get assistance so that they could afford the medications that would save their lives, Gwinner said. Cancer drugs are some of the most expensive ones on the market, said the bills sponsor, Rep. J.P. Pomnichowski of Bozeman.

Gwinner also works with Medicaid patients whose cancer diagnosis sends them into the doughnut hole a gap in coverage between Medicaids initial coverage limit and the point at which its catastrophic coverage kicks in during which patients must cover all their medical costs.

Then the decision becomes, Do I spend every last penny that I saved for my retirement to treat my cancer or do I not treat my cancer? Gwinner said. I never want to hear that.

So Gwinner works with pharmaceutical companies and foundations to seek money to help people get the drugs they need.

On the other side of the issue are people who have been prescribed three months of a drug, such as an anti-nausea medication, but it quits helping after six weeks. Someone else could benefit from the drug, but its illegal to give it to anyone else.

Patients who develop a resistance, patients who pass away, there are drugs and there are patients who need them, Pomnichowski said. This is really an attempt to make drugs available that otherwise would be tossed. Perfectly good medication is being thrown away when people who need it cant have it.

The cancer drug repository would be the middleman, allowing pharmacies or other health care facilities to accept, store and dispense or administer donated drugs and supplies.

The draft Board of Pharmacy rules limit which drugs can be donated, requires that they be in tamper-evident packaging, that records be kept and stipulates that the drugs cannot be resold.

This is a very controlled process, Pomnichowski said. This is not someone handing off their medication to another patient. Knowledgeable people are handling the drugs.

Christopher Harris, an attorney representing GlaxoSmithKline, testified during a state House committee hearing that the company enthusiastically supports this.

This is an extremely well drafted piece of legislation and has all the safeguards to protect against abuse, Harris said during the mid-February hearing.

Ron Klein, executive director of the Board of Pharmacy, said he expects a public hearing will be held later this year to discuss the proposed rules and that when the board meets in January, it will review public comment received at the hearing and in writing.

He said the rules could be ready to implement as soon as the latter part of January.

Its unclear how many people would participate.

I think it will serve some market, but how big it will be I dont know, said Bill Burton, a Helena pharmacist and president of the Board of Pharmacy. I just know theres an awful lot of big-dollar items wasted in nursing homes when people die. I think it will serve the public well.

Montana is one of about 40 states that have or are developing a cancer drug repository.

Nebraska has 77 participants in its program, said Marla Augustine, spokeswoman for the states Department of Health and Human Services. But she said the agency doesnt have a way of knowing how much its used.

Our impression is that its not used a great deal, but again, we dont have a good way of monitoring that, Augustine said.

Gwinner said the key is for people to know the cancer repository exists.

A huge component of this will be in the implementation, she said. Everybody has to know about it. It wont work unless we have the donations and patients know to ask for help.

I wrote an op-ed for Montana newspapers about a bill I carried in the 2009 Legislative Session. It was HB409, to allow unused, unopened cancer drugs to be donated to patients who cannot afford them.

The first Montana paper to print the piece was the Fairfield Sun Times!

New Law May Help Cut Costs Of Cancer Treating Drugs
http://www.fairfieldsuntimes.com/articles/2009/10/02/opinion/letters/doc4ac4d97af2008123015896.txt

Here’s the news on the new law:

Nearly everyone’s lives have been touched by cancer. A new state law effective October 1 establishes a cancer drug donation program to help cancer patients get drugs they cannot afford by distributing thousands of dollars of unused medication to patients instead of destroying the drugs.

In the last state legislative session, House Bill 409 created a way for unused, unopened cancer drugs to be donated to participating pharmacies and care facilities and re-dispensed to qualifying patients, who otherwise could not attain them because of their astronomical cost.

The need for this new program is immense. Cancer drugs are among the most expensive pharmaceuticals on the market. They do wondrous things: they target and kill cancer cells, target the interactions between cancer cells and the patient, and help with nausea from chemotherapy. Cancer drugs can also prompt the development of red blood cells and help with a patients energy level.

But a drug is only good if it can be administered.

In testimony at the legislature last February, Dr. Jack Hensold of the Bozeman Cancer Center said that, new cancer therapies are, without exception, very expensive, ranging from $3000 to $9000 in monthly costs. Since nearly all the oral chemotherapies are subject to co-pays, all patients, independent of their insurance coverage, are placed at significant financial risk when diagnosed with cancer. Within the first month of treatment, a patient will be liable for a $5000 payment for their drug.

The cancer drug donation program will make available very sophisticated drugs from people who want to donate them to people who need them but simply cannot afford them.

Cancer patients testified in support of the bill too. One woman said she was grateful that the hearing was this year and not the previous session because she was undergoing chemotherapy then and was bald. She appeared before the House committee with a packet of medication she wishes to donate, an anti-nausea drug to which she developed a resistance.

She has a months supply with an expiration date of 2011. She said, Its hundreds and hundreds of dollars in my medicine cabinet. I cant bring myself to flush it down the toilet. Someone should use these!

In the Senate, a woman testified that shed been an office administrator for an oncologist for 20 years and saw the need first-hand. Four years ago, her husband, a former firefighter, was diagnosed with multiple myeloma and undergoes treatment monthly. One of his prescribed medications, Velcade, costs $7000 a month for 21 pills. Another of his drugs costs a co-pay of $4295 a month, and yet another, more than $6000 a month.

Its difficult enough to face a diagnosis of cancer. Patients who want to fight cancer but who may not have the financial or pharmaceutical means now have a chance to receive drugs from the new donation program. The Montana Board of Pharmacy will adopt rules very soon to implement the law.

In Montana, the spirit of helping one another is strong. Theres no reason for effective cancer drugs to be wasted or destroyed for want of a process to make them available to people in need. Thats why I sponsored House Bill 409. For those with cancer drugs to donate, and for the patients who desperately need the drugs, the cancer drug donation program bridges the gap.

Representative JP Pomnichowski is serving her second term in the Montans House of Representatives. A fifth-generation Montanan, she has worked as an EMT/firefighter, an orthopedic surgery practice manager, and in medical records.

Friday, I visited the one-room Pass Creek School, 22 miles north of Bozeman, at the invitation of Allison McGree, the teaching artist of the Art Mobile of Montana.

The Art Mobile of Montana mission is “to provide a permanent statewide traveling art
outreach program for schools, the general public, and diverse groups; offer presentations of quality, original art exhibits, teach art lessons, extend teacher education, and emphasize the importance of art and relate to art in a personal way.”

I’m an artist, and an art lover. I appreciate the expertise and expression of artists, in all media. And best of all, the Art Mobile of Montana brings art to students statewide, fostering new artists and inspiring art from them. And in tough times, schools make sure they’re providing the keys of education, so many do not have art programs now.

Art Mobile of Montana, based now in Bozeman, “provides a traveling art outreach program for those with less access to the visual arts. Targeting students and underserved areas such as Indian reservations, Art Mobile provides not only collections of original works of art but also quality art lessons and teacher workshops in art education.”

Allison McGree, the artist/teacher, sets up the traveling display. The artists featured in Art Mobile are primarily Montanan artists. These artists, whose works speak to the rich, visual legacy of the West, are well received by the mostly rural audiences that Art Mobile visits.

When the paintings, drawings, ceramic, leather, and woven art was arranged, Allison asked students to select works of art that interested or appealed to them. Then she described the artist, subject, media, and technique, and compared works of art that express the same subject (mountain landscapes, for instance) but use very different styles (abstract versus literal). Students learned key elements of art: the difference between abstract and ‘concrete’ art, the diversity of media (it’s not just pencils and paper), and two- and three-dimensional art (length and width, depth). It was great to see the students work out the distinguishing elements of the pieces.

Students then participate, making art, in a range of media from printmaking to watercolor to pastels. The art exercise is often related to art works in the exhibits. On Friday, some ledger art from Native Americans was presented, and the art-making was on ledger art.

Ledger art are pictures drawn and painted on ledger pages by Native Americans. Their narrative in ledger art includes pictures of Indians crossing the prairie on horses, battles with other tribes or US soldiers, Native American kids going to reservation schools; the LedgerBook of Thomas Blue Eagle was a featured text on Friday, and it is stunning.

I was so pleased to see the Art Mobile of Montana and Allison McGree in action. The students and teacher of Pass Creek School were wholly engaged in the visit; it was inspiring to see the excitement and enthusiasm of the kids in their desire to create.

More on the Art Mobile of Montana:

In 2007, Sally Williamson, the then-artist/teacher of the Art Mobile, traveled 13,000 miles across Montana and worked with more than 6,000 kids who would never have the opportunity to see and learn about art. In 2003-2004, Art Mobile traveled to 70 sites in 27 counties, reaching 7,256 individuals, mostly students. In FY 2004, Art Mobile received an NEA Challenge America grant of $12,000 for its 2004-2005 activities. During the year, Art Mobile visited 55 sites in Montana (including the states seven Indian reservations), reaching just about every area of the state, and serving nearly 7,000 people.

The Art Mobile of Montana receives grants for its annual operating budget. A basic two-hour art mobile visit includes one presentation and one art lesson and costs $165.00. Travel costs are additional, divided among the number of sites presented during one tour.

The Art Mobile is a non-profit organization and is supported in part by a grant from the Montana Arts Council (an agency of state government) and by the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art. Funding is also received from Montana’s Cultural Trust.

Last week, I attended the carbon sequestration conference in Gallatin Gateway, just a short distance from Bozeman and from Montana State University, home of the Big Sky Carbon Sequestration Partnership.

The topic of the conference was on trapping carbon dioxide in subterranean deposits of rock or saline formations (geologic sequestration) and in soils and trees (terrestrial sequestration).

The need for carbon sequestration is from energy production. When fossil fuels are burned, they are oxidized to carbon dioxide and water (as well as nitrogen oxides (NoX), sulfur dioxide (SoX), volatile organic compounds, and heavy metals), producing significant amounts of energy–and carbon dioxide.

We produce energy, beneficial to us, and carbon dioxide, not good for us. The US Department of Energy, through regional sequestration partnerships, is researching the disposal (trapping, sequestration, storage) of CO2.

Our Big Sky Carbon Seq Partnership (BSCSP) says that “carbon sequestration is the capture and storage of carbon dioxide that would otherwise be emitted to the atmosphere. Greenhouse gases can be captured at the point of emission or they can be removed from the air by plants.”

The process is most often referred to as CCS–carbon capture and storage. The term “storage” is a misnomer; storage implies that we’ll want to access something later. We mean, by sequestration, to dispose of the carbon by trapping it. The goal is to get rid of the carbon, not to store it and retrieve it later.

The biggest questions for me were about liability for leaks of CO2, changes in chemistry of receiving waters or rock (when you add CO2 to water, carbonic acid is created. It’s a weak acid, admittedly, but the chemistry changes.) I’m also concerned about the ownership of the CO2. It’s released by energy production, can be trapped or collected, then pressurized and transported via pipeline to a receiving site, and pumped underneath the earth and ‘sequestered’. But who owns the CO2?

The study of sequestration is most important because we’ll be using fossil fuels for some time, even though we’re getting better at diversifying our energy profile to include renewable energy sources that don’t combust fuels and release CO2, like wind, solar, and wave energy. Sequestration will be valuable because the goal worldwide is to reduce carbon emissions, so we’ll need to trap/sequester/bury/store the carbon.

Montana is being eyed as a recipient of CO2 by Canadian provinces, coal producers and coal plants in the state, and by other states. Before we accept carbon and experiment with trapping it, I’d like to know that we’ll not be changing our ground and water chemistry by injecting CO2 into valuable Montana land and waters. I want to know about ownership and liability and long-term ‘storage’ responsibilities. What about injecting CO2 into subterranean deposits that shift in earthquakes? What happens to our most precious and limited resource, water? What about geologic deposits that underlie multiple jurisdictions (for instance, the Williston Basin underlies Alberta, Saskatchewan, Montana, North and South Dakota. Who can inject into that formation, and what’s the liability for the other entities?)

I spoke with a representative of the Environmental Protection Agency at the conference. I asked what the EPA’s policy was for protecting waters that aren’t US Drinking Waters. “There isn’t one,” she said. “Well,” I said, “Montanans in arid regions use water that’s highly salinated and mineralized for stock water for cows, for domestic use, sometimes for ag operations. We need those waters protected, too.”

Presenters admitted that the technology and processes are in their early stages. Some of the comments included, “If we don’t understand the subsurface pretty well, we’ll be in trouble.” “We may need to drill wells to release pressure. We may need to produce water.” This goes to a comment of mine that nature hates a vacuum, and nature hates high pressure and will try to equalize that pressure. When gas or liquid is pumped into a formation, pressure changes and other elements will be forced through or out of the formation. Another: “The costs of carbon sequestration have been woefully underestimated.” With regard to pumping CO2 into deep saline aquifers, my concern is this: water has a limit for dissolved solids and gases. The more metals or saline or other gases in water, the smaller the potential for that water to accept and dissolve another element. One presenter said, “No one’s drilled down to find out what the salinity is [of deep saline formations].” Another proposal is to pump CO2 into porous rock–into its pore space. Although we can identify types of rock, it’s difficult to say how much or how consistent its pore space is. One presenter said, “No one has gone prospecting for pore space, so no one really knows.”

My closing thoughts are these:
+ We can do better with energy production. We’re moving in that direction. Just as we know we need to diversify economic portfolios, we need to diversify our energy sources to include renewables. Let’s use all the solutions available to us.

+ If we don’t produce vast amounts of CO2, we don’t have to figure out how to collect, transport, trap, and forever monitor it.

+ Developing nations want cheap and easy fuels, too. That means coal and oil. With a limited tolerance in the atmosphere for a certain amount of CO2, NoX and SoX, then we cannot all emit those gases.

+ We are creative. We can find ways to more responsibly use all our forms of energy.

I’ll keep working for a better energy future for Montana, for resource protection of our waters and land, and for cheap, reliable power. I’m an energy user, too.

Yesterday, I bought a lovely crowntail betta fish. This is his first picture in his adoptive family.

He’s named Dee Snider. Five points to the person who gets the reference right off!

(Okay, here’s the story: he’s named Dee Snider because his fins look like some crazy hair. Dee Snider was the lead singer of the 80s hair band Twisted Sister, and had bigger hair than even I do. The new betta fish, when his fins are splayed, bears a striking resemblance to Dee Snider. Ref the “We’re not gonna take it” music video.)

The Water Policy Interim Committee, on which I serve, met for its second meeting in Helena yesterday. There was an update on our 2009 statewide water year, water demonstrations by the Montana Water Center (based in Bozeman!), discussions on legal definitions and statutes, and progress on groundwater investigation from a law that passed last session.

2009 was Montana’s best water year (precipitation, snowpack, groundwater) since 1997. The entire Intermountain West is in the best shape for hydrology and agriculture that it’s been in years. In Montana, precipitation in the spring was slim, but cooler temperatures helped keep crop growth slow until rain and warmer temperatures came in summer. August and September have been dry, but that’s okay; wheat is ripening and drier conditions are better for field work. Spring wheat harvest has been up: 28 bushels per acre on average, higher than 26.4/acre (the five-year average). Durum is up, too: 26 b/acre, higher than 24.2 (5 yr avg).

But we’re headed into another El Nino cycle, with drier and hotter conditions, and so our water future may not be nearly as good as this year.

The definition of navigability of rivers and streams has been a hot topic of late, since administrative determinations and court cases have focused on state ownership of the beds of navigable rivers. Our fine legislative counsel described three definitions of navigability (two federal, one state) and the specific applications of those definitions.

One of the most important efforts in the state now is the Groundwater Investigation Program. Much of our water use is from aquifers: subsurface deposits of water. Knowing the quantity, quality, and demand on our aquifers is key to managing our water resources so that we have what we need. Currently, there are forty sites being monitored, with some of the state’s high-growth areas garnering attention. Sites with many individual wells, stream depletion (pre-stream capture of water), and problems with contamination (sometimes from septic tanks. Eeeuuw.)

There is also a focus on groundwater permits and more and more exempt wells (mostly domestic wells for homes) drilled in closed basins. A closed basin is a drainage in which all of the water that’s available is claimed (appropriated), and there is no more available. There is much more area than funding currently available for the program, but the emphasis to start is the high-growth, contaminated areas. Let’s focus our attention there and fix those problems first, establish a baseline of groundwater quantity, quality, and demand, and then expand the program to other areas.

The Montana Water Center presented examples and demonstrations of artesian pressure (wells) versus atmospheric pressure (surface water or the water table), streambank protections, groundwater contamination, and surface water runoff and pollution.

These are the issues that the WPIC and water wonks like me are working on. I love this work. Water is the most important resource our state has. I’ll keep working to protect it for use by Montanans.

And I’ve been shopping some back-to-school sales lately. Check out the shoes:

I’ve been working hard all summer on legislative stuff, constituent requests, and civic issues, and one of my focii has been water–water quality, water quantity, and our stewardship of our waters in all the ways we use it.

I serve on the board of directors of the Greater Gallatin Watershed Council and in June released a report on E. Coli contamination in Bozeman Creek. There are public health cautions about drinking or playing in the water. I often say it’s a heck of a lot easier to keep something bad out of our water than to remove it once it’s in there, and a public health threat indicator like E. Coli garners our attention and action.

I’m proud to serve in this legislative interim on the Water Policy Interim Committee, and I’ve been studying water policy related to coal bed methane (CBM) drilling. I’ve written on this before (see my entry of March 30) but now, our neighbors to the North (Alberta and British Columbia, Canada) and to the South (one state removed, Colorado) have found that water is a precious resource that merits protection and is not simply a byproduct of a mining practice.

Alberta requires reinjection of groundwater aquifers after water is pumped out to release the pressure holding the methane in place, so that the methane can then be extracted. In April, the Colorado Supreme Court found that CBM producers must adhere to the same water rules and regulations as other state water users, and that the extraction of tributary groundwater for coal bed methane production is a “beneficial use” of water that is subject to water rights administration and approvals by the water courts.

These are two precedents–more than that, actually, they’re laws and statutes–that recognize the importance of water quality and quantity and require other processes to respect the importance of water.

Alberta also has requirements for drilling companies to determine baseline data and to establish monitoring wells before drilling ever begins, prohibits the injection of fracturing (or fracking) liquids (like diesel fuel) into the ground to break apart coal or to loosen the ground, and requires CBM extractors to reinject produced water back into the ground.

Think of this in the context of other mining operations. Take, for instance, strip mining coal. For a coal seam seventy feet deep in the ground, a company removes the topsoil, rock, clay, loam, and other material that lies on top of the coal, and that material is called the “overburden”. The topsoil and clay and loam and other stuff is piled up, put aside, and the company mines the coal seam. They then RECLAIM the site by REPLACING the overburden in the strata in which it originally lay, grade the site, and return it as closely as possible to its original state.

Water is the overburden that is removed in CBM production. At the end of the CBM mining, the overburden should be returned.

Water users dependent upon, or with water rights to, groundwater must not have that groundwater pumped off and released to surface waters, never to be available from that underground aquifer again. It’s not fair.

Canada and Colorado have established that CBM mining must recharge the aquifers and treat water as a resource, not a waste product of mining.

The Colorado Supreme Court determined that the extraction of tributary groundwater for coal bed methane production is a “beneficial use” of water that is subject to water rights administration and approvals by the water courts. The findings of the case, Vance v. Wolfe, state, among other things, that the water that holds the coalbed methane under pressure in coal seams, holding it in place, is a beneficial use of the water, and that coalbed methane can be extracted BECAUSE of hydrostatic pressure. If the water were not holding the methane in place, the methane couldnt be extracted. The water itself makes CBM production possible, and that lends value to the water, as well as by virtue of the importance of water itself.

The court decision reads, in part: “the presence of water and its subsequent extraction during CBM production is far more than an “inevitable result.” Indeed, the presence and extraction of water are integral components to the entire CBM process. CBM producers rely on the presence of the water to hold the gas in place until the water can be removed and the gas captured. Without the presence and subsequent extraction of the water, CBM cannot be produced. As both Three Bells and Zigan make clear, the fact that the water used during the CBM process may become “a nuisance” after it has been extracted from the ground and stored in above ground tanks (that is, after it has been “beneficially used”) does not prevent a finding that the water is put to a beneficial use. While the Engineers and BP are correct that no Colorado case has specifically held that water used during CBM production is a beneficial use, this fact does not prevent us from finding such a beneficial use where our case law and the language of the 1969 Act so dictate.

That the water used in CBM production is integral to the process itself distinguishes this case from a host of other instances in which nuisance water is merely removed but not beneficially used. The Engineers and BP argue that the use of water in CBM production is akin to snow removal, removal of flood water from a subsurface mine, and storm water control at construction sites — all of which constitute mere removal of nuisance water rather than beneficial uses. We find the analogy attempted by the Engineers and BP to be a faulty one. In their examples, the water is exclusively a nuisance and not integral to the task at hand. In contrast, CBM production cannot occur without the presence and controlled removal of the water.”

Our Montana Constitution says, “The waters of the state are the property of the state for use by its citizens.” It’s our responsibility to protect these waters, to make beneficial use of them, and not to waste water. We’re a headwaters state; there’s no water upstream from us, so when we go dry, that’s it (until the next snowfall and melt season). Good and protective precedent is set by our neighbors to the north and (one state removed) south.

I’ll work to make sure Montana’s waters are well and responsibly used–and restored.