Montana’s Urban Sprawl Brings Growing Pains, Controversy

HELENA, Mont. —  Colleen McCarthy fretted through four traffic-light changes, trying to turn onto what used to be a rural road heading into the Helena Valley. It’s now a strip of new stores, fast-food restaurants and burgeoning subdivisions.

“We used to have the rush-minute,” said McCarthy, a Helena native who is the city’s mayor. “Now we have the rush half-hour.”

Montana’s capital city is growing with ever-extending fingers of sprawl. So are Bozeman, Missoula, Kalispell and other once-quiet Montana towns that suddenly have become desirable, even trendy, places to live.

“We’ve been discovered by businesses and retirees and people who want to be cowboys,” said Robb McCracken of the Montana Commerce Department.

The Census Bureau estimates that Montana’s population stood at 870,281 in mid-1995 and is expected to reach 1 million within 15 years. That’s about the number of people who live in San Antonio, but folks in Montana are not used to crowds.

What other state has a quick questionnaire, the Mountain Lion Response Form, for people spotting the big cats lurking in their neighborhoods?

Montana’s recent growth has brought not only traffic congestion, but concerns about water quality, and problems with subdivisions encroaching on wildlife habitats.

Encounters with wild animals are increasing as woods and fields are occupied by houses, garages and fences. Homeowners, delighted at first to see deer in their backyard, suddenly realize a mountain lion is stalking the deer--and possibly their children or pets.

“As the population expands out into a lot of the areas that have been traditional habitat for deer, elk, lions, bears--everything--the animals aren’t leaving,” said Rich Clough, a Missoula administrator for Fish, Wildlife and Parks. “They’re adapting to these changes.”

Wildlife managers see it as a threat to the animals.

“Usually what happens is that the animal turns out to be the loser, particularly if it’s a repeat offender or a dangerous situation,” said Joel Peterson, a state wildlife manager in Bozeman. Sometimes troublesome animals are moved, and sometimes they are killed.

Calls from suburban dwellers and ranchers complaining about wild animals are so frequent that the state has specialized paperwork for them.

“What action did the lion take?” asks the Mountain Lion Response Form. “1. Watched person. 2. Growled. 3. Hissed. 4. Showed teeth. 5. Lip curl. 6. Fled. 7. Crouched. 8. Attacked. 9. Other.”

For people in these changing communities, life is full of unforeseens, particularly for the longtime residents. McCarthy, Helena’s mayor, can attest to that as she struggles through the rush half-hour.

She thinks Helena will remain a good place to live if planning provides for managed growth.

“The community’s changed,” McCarthy said. “But it has not changed in a way that has made me want to leave.”

City and county planners struggle not only to keep up with the growth, but to try to get ahead of it, holding workshops to find out what people want of their communities.

In Missoula, for example, which anticipates a population growth of 24% by the turn of the century, Ron Erickson heads a group called the Open Space Advisory Council, which is working with city and county officials to develop a land-use program.

“There is a sort of grass-roots awakening in Montana,” said McCracken of the Commerce Department.

The population surge in the last five years has occurred in the stylish “quality-of-life” places, with Ravalli County in southwestern Montana’s Bitterroot Valley leading the way.

A number of show business celebrities and other luminaries have taken up residence in Montana.

Ted Turner and his wife, Jane Fonda; Tom Brokaw and writer Thomas McGuane have homes in southwestern Montana, as does singer Hoyt Axton, a resident of the Bitterroot Valley.

Jim Nabors, Mary Hart and former Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Steve Howe have homes in the Whitefish area, in the northwestern part of the state. Writer Stephen Ambrose lives in Helena.

The growth is not clustered but is spreading. Pasture becomes housing tracts; wildlife habitat becomes backyards. More cars hit the road for longer distances, as newly minted rural folk make long drives to work, to shop--to do just about anything.

The trend led the 1993 Montana Legislature to tighten the law requiring government review of new subdivisions less than 160 acres.

Tracts of 20 acres or more had been exempt as agricultural land, but the 20-acre tract became the “ranchette” of wannabe cowboys and mountain men, and huge tracts were carved up in 20-acre squares.

“We knew we had to make changes in the subdivision law, or Montana as we knew it was going to be chopped up into mini-ranchettes,” said state Sen. Steve Dougherty of Great Falls.

But those changes did not bring coordinated land-use planning to the state. Planning is up to local governments, and although many have it on the books, some do it assertively and others passively.

“That’s something Montana has to address in the near future,” Dougherty said. “Planning is a long, contentious process. . . . But if your traffic doesn’t work and your sewage doesn’t flow, that’s a pretty strong imperative to sit down and figure out where the growth ought to occur.”

Some local governments are aggressive. Powell County commissioners recently voted to require commission approval of any change in land use in the Blackfoot Valley during the next year.

“People are interested in preserving what they have in the agricultural way of life,” said Powell County Attorney Chris Miller. “They don’t like what they’ve seen in some of these areas such as the Bitterroot Valley.”

But there is potent opposition to zoning and planning restrictions, particularly among longtime residents, who often see them as an erosion of private-property rights. Robert Watne won election to the Flathead County Commission on a private-property platform.

“Up here, it’s a small core group that’s pushing this [land-use restrictions],” Watne said. He sides with longtime residents of the Flathead Valley, just west of Glacier National Park, who see their land as retirement nest eggs and fear new land-use restrictions will hurt resale value.

“These people are the ones that supported this valley for years,” Watne said. “They shouldn’t have to deal with that.”

Gallatin County, which abuts the northwest quadrant of Yellowstone National Park, tried to impose a land-use permit system a few years ago, “but it was not well received and was deferred,” said R. Dale Beland, the county planning director. “It was definitely perceived as regulation.”

Meanwhile, the sprawl continues. And regulations that are on the books seem to draw criticism from all corners of the land-use debate.

“I guess what everybody is saying is that they don’t like the rules because they don’t fit me,” said Bill Spilker, who has developed land in the Helena area and sells real estate.

He believes some land-use regulations are anti-growth and drive up the cost of housing.

“I think there’s an opportunity to give some direction to growth, but instead there’s been an effort to control it,” Spilker said.

Paul Reichert of the Alternative Energy Resources Organization in Helena said land-use ordinances should be written in a way that makes growth “happen for you, not to you.”

“We haven’t bothered to learn from some of the more urban areas,” he said.