I’ve lived in the Bitterroot Valley since 1993, and I’ve spent the better part of my leisure time in my canoe. So when I discovered a half-dozen or more fences across Mitchell Slough — strung with barbed wire and stretched tight above the water — I was alarmed. Some weren’t even holding cattle. They were deterrents, plain and simple.
We won that fight, and every stream access fight since, for one reason: Montana’s courts answered to the Montana Constitution, not to a political party. This November, two votes decide whether that survives: CI-132, which would lock nonpartisan judicial elections into our Constitution, and Amy Eddy — the candidate for the open Supreme Court seat who refuses to take party money.
Eddy will be the kind of judge who stands up for every Montanan’s right to access this state’s amazing rivers and streams.
Here’s the deal: In the early 2000s, I filed a portage request over those fences with the Ravalli County commissioners. They dragged their feet — nearly every one of them openly hostile to Montana’s Stream Access Law, though they conceded it was the law.
A couple of us took commissioners down the Mitchell Slough in our canoes so they could see the hazard themselves. With Fish, Wildlife and Parks staffers helping along the way, we took on well-financed landowners — including investor Charles Schwab and ‘80s rock icon Huey Lewis — who wanted to keep the public out.
The landowners tried to claim Mitchell Slough was a private ditch — that man, not nature, had made it. But then the Montana Supreme Court ruled unanimously in 2008 that the slough is a natural stream, open to all of us under the Stream Access Law. As the justices dryly noted, “The claim that man has made the Mitchell Slough is a bold one, indeed.”
A similar fight played out on the Ruby River, where a billionaire landowner fenced off county bridges. It took many years of litigation before the Supreme Court confirmed in 2014 that the public has a right to reach the river from a county bridge right-of-way.
Today, Fish, Wildlife and Parks has built access sites at four Madison County bridges, where an angler can walk through and wade into the Ruby — that’s the Montana way.
Article IX of the Montana Constitution clearly states that our waters belong to the people.
But that foundation is cracking. Last year, the Legislature passed House Bill 39, legalizing direct contributions from political parties to judicial candidates. The Montana Republican Party has already given $20,000 to a Supreme Court candidate. A judge who owes party bosses will be expected to rule like one — including the next time a fence goes up on a public stream.
CI-132 answers that with a single sentence added to the Constitution: judicial elections shall remain nonpartisan. If passed, CI-132 simply locks in the system Montanans count on because accessing this state’s rivers is a central part of our lives.
Amy Eddy, a Flathead County district judge since 2015, understands and respects this principle. She’s experienced, steady, and respected across the political spectrum — and she doesn’t play politics or pander to a party line shaped by wealthy donors who happen to own lots of waterfront property.
Eddy has criticized the infusion of partisan cash into judicial races and remains committed to upholding the Montana Constitution. Meanwhile, her opponent, Dan Wilson, has headlined Republican Party events and gladly accepted partisan cash — which always has strings attached. That is exactly the problem a yes vote for CI-132 will fix.
Stream access was never a left-versus-right fight. Hunters, anglers, and ranchers of every party won it together. Even our Republican commissioners came around once they saw the wire fence across the river from the seat of a canoe.
This weekend I’ll float the Bitterroot from Bell Crossing to Stevensville. Our rivers are the jewels of our valleys, and enjoying them is every Montanan’s right. Vote yes on CI-132, and vote for Amy Eddy — so the next generation inherits open rivers, and courts that keep them that way.
Andy Roubik is an arborist in Corvallis.