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A federal agency that oversees hydroelectric dams has been roped, again, into an ongoing dispute about water levels in Flathead Lake. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission received a pair of letters this month related to its ability to referee dam management to sustain water levels in the largest natural freshwater lake west of the Mississippi.
The dispute stems from last summer’s uncharacteristically low lake levels, which frustrated lakefront property owners accustomed to using their docks through the summer and squeezed businesses reliant on lake-supported recreation.
In January, a recently formed group called the National Organization to Save Flathead Lake petitioned FERC to intervene in the management of the Séliš Ksanka QÍispé Dam (formerly Kerr Dam), which is owned by the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. The group argued that previous dam operators managed to navigate drought without such sharp drops during the summer boating season. Energy Keepers, Inc., a CSKT-owned company that assumed management of the dam in 2015, countered that a modest snowpack, record-breaking springtime temperatures and stipulations of its license related to fisheries and dam discharge rates all played a role in the diminished lake.
FERC examined the petition the National Organization to Save Flathead Lake submitted and in February issued a letter to EKI finding that the company “fully operated” the dam “in compliance with [its] license.”
The saga continues, though: On March 1, the Lake County Commission submitted a letter to FERC requesting its intervention to prevent what it called the “real and dangerous public safety threat” posed by EKI’s management of the SKQ Dam. The letter argues that a low lake level could result in a loss of human life because it “negates any use of a secondary escape route for residents due to wildfire.”
“The numerous excuses previously used such as climate change, contractual obligations, lower than average snowpacks, water for downstream fisheries, etc. will be of little use following a devastating wildfire that may result in the loss of human life,” the letter reads.
The letter also outlines proposed dam management changes that could preserve such secondary escape routes. They include amending components of EKI’s license geared toward supporting fisheries and endangered species, directing EKI to curtail its springtime lake drawdown in drought years, and requiring the federal agency that operates the Hungry Horse Reservoir, which feeds into Flathead Lake, to “become more oriented towards helping relieve the impacts of drought” than toward flood control.
The county commissioners also suggested the tribes “consider leasing SKQ Dam to a corporation that has more experience and expertise in managing a hydroelectric facility.”
On March 20, attorneys for EKI and the CSKT, which uses dam-related revenue to support tribal operations, fired back a sharply worded response accusing the commission of creating “manufactured public safety concerns” that are “disingenuous at best.”
“Quite simply, the County’s Petition is nothing more than an effort to ensure a constant summer lake level to benefit a small group of lakefront dock owners — forcing the Licensees to curtail revenue from, and stream flows benefitting Tribal fisheries and other natural resources below, the project,” the response reads.
The attorneys write that the county seeks to “improperly shirk its own responsibilities to address wildfire safety and evacuation routes through its planning and zoning” and argue that the remedies commissioners seek — including forcing EKI to lease the dam to another operator — are outside FERC’s regulatory authority.
As of March 21, the Flathead basin had 75% of its typical snowpack.
—Amanda Eggert, Reporter
By the Numbers 🔢
Active job postings for Montana educators on the Office of Public Instruction’s website as of Thursday, which the agency said could include some postings that have been filled but not yet taken down.
State and local officials have for years voiced concerns about the number of teacher vacancies in K-12 public schools — a figure that topped more than 1,000 last fall — leading the Board of Public Education to adopt an alternative pathway to educator licensure this week.
The board’s decision adds the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence (ABCTE) to a list of state-approved endorsement programs for Montana teachers. In public testimony, supporters of the proposal, including the Montana Chamber of Commerce, argued the program offers a cheaper, faster route for educators to obtain state licensing and could help alleviate staffing challenges. Critics including the Montana Federation of Public Employees, which represents a majority of public school employees, countered that the program’s requirements are not as rigorous as those demanded by previously approved programs, potentially undermining Montana’s teacher quality standards.
The board granted ABCTE what it called “initial approval,” meaning the program is tentatively greenlit through January 2026. At that time, it will have to provide evidence that it has met specific performance standards set by the board.
—Alex Sakariassen, Reporter
If/Then ⏳
A decision from the Montana Supreme Court earlier this week cleared one obstacle facing a constitutional initiative, CI-14, that would explicitly enshrine abortion rights in the state Constitution. But the campaign backing the initiative, Montanans Securing Reproductive Rights, has more hurdles to overcome before it can start collecting the signatures necessary to qualify the measure for this fall’s ballot. The campaign has said that the increasingly tight timeline could lead to “death by process” for the effort in the coming weeks.
Here are three possible scenarios for how the next few steps could unfold between now and a make-or-break June 21 deadline. That’s when constitutional initiative sponsors need to submit more than 60,000 verified signatures to county election administrators in order to get the proposal on the ballot.
- Scenario #1 — The Supreme Court’s Monday decision, which determined that the measure passes legal muster, gives Republican Attorney General Austin Knudsen until March 25 to submit CI-14’s official ballot statements to the Montana secretary of state. Those statements are what follow the “Yes” and “No” boxes that voters will eventually check on their ballots. If the initiative sponsor group doesn’t have any issue with Knudsen’s drafted statements, the proposal will be forwarded to a Republican-majority interim legislative committee, which has 14 days to provide a formal opinion. If the committee uses that full timeline, the initiative could be cleared for signature gathering around April 8, giving backers about 11 weeks to collect their 60,000 signatures.
- Scenario #2 — If Montanans Securing Reproductive Rights disagrees with Knudsen’s ballot statement phrasing — something the group says could happen if it feels the language is misleading or inflammatory — it could take its opposition back to court. Depending on how fast attorneys file their briefs and Supreme Court justices rule, that would cost initiative backers anywhere from a few days to a few weeks before the proposal could be passed to the legislative committee. That timeline could punt the start of signature gathering to somewhere between mid- and late-April.
- Scenario #3 — If the backers of the initiative decide to sue over Knudsen’s ballot statements and litigation drags out, signature gathering could be pushed back to the tail end of April or the beginning of May. At that point, Montanans Securing Reproductive Rights might decide to pull the plug on the initiative entirely given the cost and effort involved in conducting a signature-gathering campaign.
With that last possibility fresh in mind, let’s revisit the precise details of the signature gathering requirement. For CI-14 to get on the ballot, Montanans Securing Reproductive Rights has to collect at least 60,359 verified signatures from voters across 40 of the state’s 100 House districts.
Because the error rate involved with signature gathering can be as high as 40%, however, the group will need to over-shoot that threshold, perhaps collecting as many as 100,000 signatures. That’s a substantial lift. Put another way: collecting 100,000 signatures between April 15 and June 21, let’s say, would mean bagging about 1,500 signatures per day.
Stay tuned.
—Mara Silvers, Reporter
The Viz 📈
Montana’s largest counties continue to grow in population, but the rate at which they’re adding new people has slowed in recent years, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, which released official county-level population counts for 2023 March 14.
Yellowstone County (including Billings), Gallatin County (including Bozeman), Missoula County, Flathead County (including Kalispell), Lewis and Clark County (including Helena) and Ravalli County (the Bitterroot Valley) combined are home to 656,000 people, 58% of Montana’s overall population.
All six counties have grown substantially in recent years, though at varying rates at different times.
Gallatin County and Missoula County, which include the left-leaning college towns around Montana State University and the University of Montana, saw their population growth crest in the mid-2010s before generally declining until again bumping up during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Bozeman area, for example, posted 3.8% growth in 2016, but was down to 1.2% in 2023.
In comparison, Flathead County and Ravalli County, comparatively conservative parts of the state, saw extraordinarily strong population growth during the pandemic, peaking respectively at 3.7% and 3.8% growth in 2021. Growth in both counties has also tapered off in recent years, however.
Montana as a whole has also seen population growth slow as the pandemic has ebbed, adding 9,900 residents for a 0.9% growth rate in 2023.
This data is based on numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau’s population estimates program, which uses public records such as birth certificates and IRS tax returns to estimate county-level population figures in the years between the once-a-decade census that tries to count every U.S. resident directly. The population figures represent the bureau’s estimate as of July 1 of a given year, meaning the rate for 2023 represents estimated growth between mid-2022 and mid-2023.
—Eric Dietrich, Deputy Editor
Help wanted 🙋
Summer is coming ’round again, and that means the world outside our windows becomes increasingly hospitable to many Montanans. Or then again maybe it doesn’t. Did the state stock enough snowfall to support summer irrigation, or even a late-July float? Could an unpredictably rainy spring ride to the rescue? Will fire season sport just a few sporadic flare-ups, or is this the year another really big one blows up?
That news, for good or ill, will be outside our doors this summer, and Montana Free Press is hiring an Environmental Reporting Intern to help track it. That means working with our award-winning team to produce MTFP’s annual Fire Tracker, finding and writing stories about the policies and people that interact with Montana’s changing climate, and reporting on other real-life matters in Montana’s warmer months.
Key stats: $18/hr, 12 weeks, based wherever you want to be within Montana. Full details available here.
Please note the April 8 application deadline. We’re real big on deadlines around here.
—Brad Tyer, Editor
Downstream Effects 🌊
Last fall, the state Department of Public Health and Human Services announced it would be seeking a single, statewide contractor to provide employment assistance and training to Montanans receiving food and cash aid from SNAP and TANF, two of the state’s most prominent public safety net programs.
In January, the state said it intended to tap the company Maximus, a global government contractor, to roll out a hybrid in-person and virtual service model starting this spring. Part of the contract will be pay-for-performance in an effort to incentivize finding career, education and advancement opportunities for enrollees, according to the state’s recent public presentations to lawmakers.
The intent of the new contract, the department has said, is to create more consistency in how employment assistance and training are offered, more efficiently move beneficiaries into sustainable jobs and education programs, and make it easier to access services anywhere in the state through a virtual platform.
The impact, at least in the short term, has included the closure of some of the brick-and-mortar community nonprofits that have contracted with the state to do that work for decades.
In a March 20 letter posted to its website, the Career Training Institute in Helena announced that the loss of the SNAP and TANF assistance contracts meant that it will be “dissolving” the nonprofit “after 4+ decades of successfully providing workforce development in the tri-county area.” The state’s decision to hire a single contractor that can run a virtual platform, it said, had made CTI’s local model uncompetitive.
Discussions about possibly subcontracting with Maximus, the letter continued, convinced CTI’s leaders that such an arrangement “would not be feasible.” CTI Executive Director Jasyn Harrington declined to provide additional comment about those discussions in an email Thursday.
“It is with a heavy heart and great sadness that I write this,” Harrington wrote in the published letter. “For 41 years, CTI and its staff has been embedded in this community. We have established working relationships with our community social service partners, training providers, post-secondary institutions and employers, all in an effort to provide individualized assistance to our clients to overcome barriers to employment and enter the workforce. We have literally helped thousands of community members to improve their lives.”
Harrington also expressed doubts about the new partly virtual contract: “I, and many others, have great concerns regarding the new service delivery model DPHHS has chosen and its potential devastating impact on clients.”
Another organization, Career Futures in Butte, has also said the loss of the state contracts will force its closure in the coming months. Maximus has said some groups have decided to continue on as subcontractors, but has not publicly specified which ones. The company will begin accepting new client caseloads in April.
— Mara Silvers, Reporter
On Our Radar 
Amanda — I’ve long been fascinated with the societal qualities that support well-being, so this piece in Outside on the happiest countries in the world (per the 2024 World Happiness Report) caught my eye. I also have an inexplicable curiosity about the globe’s far-northerly environs, so that played a role, too.
Alex — During my time in Montana journalism, I’ve watched several coworkers tackle distinct chapters in the legal saga of Cody Marble, whose 2002 rape conviction was famously overturned in 2017. Another former colleague, Pulp co-founder Matthew Frank, picked up the latest critical developments in the decades-long criminal justice story in a piece published this week.
Arren — A gambling scandal surrounding the interpreter of baseball phenom Shohei Ohtani is consuming the increasingly betting-friendly sporting world.
JoVonne — Helena’s historic Montana Club is set to close at the end of this month. The building was originally built in 1885 and has hosted many events throughout the years. The New York Times reported on its history this week, noting that longtime Montana Club bartender Julian Anderson was the second Black bartender to publish a cocktail recipe book, in 1919. The club will host one last event on Friday, March 29, when it plans to serve Anderson’s famous mint juleps.
Mara — When it comes to the abortion ballot initiative in Montana, there’s plenty of news to keep me occupied. But what’s happening here is part of a national trend as abortion access advocates across the country try to advance state-level initiatives. KFF Health News had this helpful overview earlier this week for anyone curious about what’s happening on ballots in other states.
Eric — The impending closure of a longtime Seeley Lake lumber mill, announced last week, is sending shockwaves through western Montana. Missoulian reporter Griffen Smith traces the connection between the mill’s staffing woes, the local housing shortage and a long-running debate about whether the unincorporated community should build a sewer system.
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