Thursday, February 10, 2011

HB 309 - onto the Senate

Montana House Bill 309 passed third reading in the house - it even picked up a couple votes this go-round passing 57-43. It's up to the senate now, but my man Kendall Van Dyke thinks he can rally support to end it. Here's hoping - in the meantime, e-mail your senators! Find yours here.

2 comments:

Will Jordan said...

I served a pizza to KVD this weekend, and had a chance to talk to him about 309. He said he's very confident that they can put a stop to it in the senate. And he said if it came down to it, he has no doubt that Schweitzer would veto it. If it were to pass, he said it's unlikely that it would make rivers private in and of itself - but it would set the stage for landowners to take the issue to court on a case by case (river by river) basis and make their argument for privatization of a particular waterway.

Josh Bergan said...

Very cool. Interesting - I was wondering if that's how it'd work. It would certainly create more on-stream incidents between landowners and river users, for example:
"Hey, get offa my property!"
"No, I am within the high-water mark have a right to be here."
"No you ain't got that right! This here's private and there's return flow from a ditch up there! (shot-gunned bb's fly over anglers head....)"