Greetings, Beacon Nation! And welcome back after our Thanksgiving holiday hiatus. My inbox is as bloated as I am, and while an untended Outlook account can make for a harrowing homecoming, your emails were all warmly received.
Many of you took special interest in our report detailing the decades-long saga involving the Town Pump’s underground storage tanks contaminating the Whitefish River beneath Spokane Avenue, as well as the Montana Department of Environmental Quality’s sluggish remediation and enforcement response to a gasoline seep first documented in 1989. It got me thinking about other instances in which local water quality violations have gone unabated — including cases involving hazardous hydrocarbon waste leaching into the soil and groundwater for decades — and how jurisdictional confusion and lax regulatory oversight leads to a protracted cleanup timeline.
And it got me thinking about other cases in which private interests profit at the public’s expense, including one that members of the Whitefish Lake and Lakeshore Protection Committee just so happen to be addressing at tonight’s Whitefish City Council meeting.
Stick around to learn more and sample some holiday leftovers you might have missed over the break.
One letter centers on a private developer’s May 2024 shoreline violation on Whitefish Lake’s Beaver Bay, located just outside the city’s lakeshore jurisdiction. In that case, builders detonated explosives to excavate a lakefront property but inadvertently triggered a landslide, cleaving the embankment into the water and destabilizing the slope so severely that city officials and water quality experts called it the most egregious violation of local lakeshore regulations in more than 25 years. Flathead County promised to halt construction on the property located inside the lakeshore protection area until the damages were repaired; however, the county later issued the developer an after-the-fact permit allowing construction to continue without any shoreline restoration or remediation. The about-face rankled neighbors and compelled the Whitefish Lakeshore Protection Committee to urge the county to “review this property to ensure that all shoreline development activities are in compliance with applicable regulations and environmental safeguards.”
The response to the landslide was murky from the beginning, due in part to a complex jurisdictional matrix encompassing Whitefish Lake. The lakeshore protection zone spans city, county and state boundaries and causes confusion between agencies. For example, Flathead County initially determined it did not have enforcement authority outside of the lakeshore protection zone, which statute defines as stretching “20 horizontal feet of the perimeter of the lake and adjacent wetlands when the lake is at the mean annual high-water elevation.” In the case of Beaver Bay, however, the violation involved upslope activities that directly impacted the lakeshore protection zone, meaning the county can exert authority.
Once the confusion was cleared up, Jared Schroeder, a code compliance technician for Flathead County, told the Beacon last year that the blasting amounted to a violation and that “we are working with the builders on a cleanup plan.”
Koel Abell, a Whitefish resident and former member of the Whitefish Lakeshore Protection Committee, received similar assurances from Flathead County Commissioner Brad Abell (no relation), who in an email promised that “all work has been stopped inside the lakeshore protection area and can’t resume until a flood plain permit issued, this includes remediation of damages of the shoreline.”
But then Flathead County issued the after-the-fact permit authorizing additional work, including “tree removal, and initial approval for the placement of stone steps, gravel application, and rip rap within the lake and lakeshore protection zone.” The permit did not require lakeshore restoration or remediation.
In August 2025, when Koel Abell asked the county about the status of the remediation, Schroeder responded in an email: “The permit does not require [sic] to restore the lake, lakebed or lakeshore. Because the governing body did not require that in the permit (which is set to expire November 7, 2025) we cannot hold the property owners to this.”
For Koel Abell, the county’s lax attitude toward the lakeshore violation sends a disturbing message.
“It has become common-place for the wealthy to come to the area and do whatever they want with little to no repercussions and our elected officials seem fine with it,” he said.
I’m Tristan Scott, here with the rest of your Daily Roundup.
Public Service Commissioner Representing Flathead County Draws Commissioner of Political Practices Complaint
The complaint filed against Dr. Annie Bukacek by recently ousted President Brad Molnar accuses her of using Public Service Commission resources to conduct personal business. It's another development in a string of conflicts among the commission’s members.
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