There were two mentions in the Beacon recently concerning the North Fork.
While I am happy to see more people endorse paving the North Fork Road, columnist Rob Breeding undercuts his own argument to do so.
He wrote about loving to float the river and fish the river from Big Creek down to Glacier Rim.
He wrote that “if there’s one downside to the Big Creek-Glacier Rim float it’s how clouds of dust hang over the river wherever it meanders near the road. That stretch of unpaved motorway is a nasty, wash-boarded, traffic-infested mess on summer weekends”.
He never questions whether that dust hanging over the river is polluting the air and water.
More people are questioning whether the Glacier National Park cares as officials there continue to refuse to monitor the effects to the air and water as a result of that dust — but not this columnist.
He simply says that he wants the road paved so his floats can be more enjoyable. He states that he does not want the road paved north of Camas.
Apparently, since he doesn’t float south from the border he believes that it is OK for those of us who do to suffer from the same clouds of dust that hang over the river that bother him.
If that dust is affecting the purity of the air and water, apparently he hasn’t realized that pollution entering the river north of Camas flows south into his float zone.
Secondly there was a letter to the editor that argued that Congressman Daines’s North Fork Watershed Protection Act bill was a “no brainer” given his “political ambitions”.
Actually the need for Glacier National Park officials to monitor air and water pollution on the western boundary of the Park is the real “no brainer.”
But they won’t.
Joe Novak
Polebridge