Coal-bed methane and irrigation farming

Agriculture is the ultimate renewable resource: the sun keeps providing energy and the heavens keep providing water. All we need to do is take care of the soil.

Today's Gazette had an article about water quality along the Tongue River, and the possible relationship between soil damage and coal-bed methane waste water.

These things can be very hard to tease out, since many western rivers like the Tongue River are very saline to begin with. Irrigation has a cumulative effect on land when it comes to increasing saline content, so some salinization of soil is a natural effect of irrigating land year after year.

But the last thing that is needed is something to speed the process along, and if a process were to be designed to speed water and soil salinization, it would be coal-bed-methane extraction combined with release of untreated water.

In the comments section of the Gazette article, someone says that since Roger Muggli is the last user on the Tongue River, every other upstream farmer should also be affected if CBM were the culprit.

Hardly. The way that irrigation farming along western rivers works is that the farther downstream you get, the more saline the water gets. Water percolates through the soil during irrigation, and the run-off is higher in sediment, minerals, and salts than was the water that went onto the soil.

If salinization levels in the Tongue River were rising, it is precisely the last user whose land would first show the effects.

Montana is farther downstream than Wyoming is on the rivers in question, so our farmland will be the first to show adverse effects from salinization. There are other things that can cause it, such as poor farming practices, and those are things that the DEQ needs to figure out.

But as anyone familiar with irrigation agriculture knows, once certain soils becomes salinated, it is virtually impossible to reclaim them.

The Northern Plains Resource Council is a polarizing organization, in no small part because 80% of their money comes from out-of-state and they apparently refuse to make public who their donors are and how much each gives. The NPRC is asking for trouble in Montana by not going out of their way to avoid the appearance of being pawns for outside environmentalist interests.

On the other hand, the Republican party in this state needs be very, very sure that they know what they are doing when it comes to things that affect water and soil quality for farmers and ranchers in eastern Montana. That part of the state has been rock-solid Republican for years, and in our close Montana elections, Republicans need to be able to run the table out there in God's country -- we didn't in 2006, and Jon Tester was our reward.

If we advocate, in the name of economic development, policies that end up rendering farmland unusable along the Tongue and Powder Rivers, we will be paying a political price for decades to come.

For conservatives, there should be few things more worth conserving than our agricultural lands.

Kobe beef revisited

One may wonder why, when the war in Iraq was today voted on by Montana's U.S. Senators, Montana Headlines would be revisiting the Kobe Beefgate stir.

The answer is that our Senators' culinary recommendations to the Senate Dining Room chef are no less binding than is the non-binding resolution on the Iraq surge that our Senators voted for today.

Anyway, Montana Headlines was so busily noticing how the Senators waxed eloquent for the world about our cows -- "Montana cattle graze on the high plains and in the mountain valleys so their beef is natural, delicious and healthy..." -- that we neglected any substantive media critiques.

We note that The Western Word made no such mistake. They asked what should have been an obvious question to a website dedicated to critiquing the Montana press: will enterprising reporters delve into finding out how long foreign beef has been appearing on the Senate menu?

And if this isn't something new, why has it taken our senior Senator, Max Baucus, 28 years to notice it, or care?

In other news, Sens. Tester and Baucus have submitted a non-binding resolution calling on Kobe Bryant to change his name to "Montana" Bryant.

Kobe Bryant

New sidebar for Montana Headlines

It was time. Montana Headlines now has a new subheading and a new "about" sidebar that more accurately reflects the contents of this website.

As noted in Comments, fair and balanced (both riff and raff welcome), change is painful for conservatives. This is both because of our often curmudgeonly temperaments and because our historical and cultural grounding makes us acutely aware of the dangers of unintended consequences.

But as we also noted, true conservatives have always recognized the need to change -- sometimes returning to older ways, sometimes embracing new ones. So look for yet more evolution as Montana Headlines adapts to the ever-changing environment of Montana politics and the Montana press.

We have been gratified (and a bit surprised) by the rate at which the numbers both of new visitors and of returning visitors has grown. Thanks for reading.

Who's working for whom -- part 2

We received some comments when Montana Headlines posted Who's working for whom?

The valid question was asked: why, if state employees know more about a policy than does the average Montanan (since they deal with it every day), should they not be lobbying the state government for the policies they think best?

Indeed, the most knowledgeable state employees and officials should be present at hearings, available to be called to answer questions of legislators as informational witnesses. They certainly do know more about a given policy or program than does the average Montanan.

But they are also people with personal vested interests in the policy. They also often have loyalties to a given political party (i.e. usually the Democrats), which can tempt them to advocate for a given policy simply because it is part of that party's agenda.

It is a fine line, and the fact that the practice seems to have been so widely abused in our legislative system in Montana lets Montana Headlines know that all too many people on the state payroll don't know where that line is.

There was an excellent example in today's Gazette, tucked in the major article about the House GOP's major school funding and tax relief bills. In it one finds this gem:

"This amount of property tax shifts is not sustainable," Madalyn Quinlan, chief of staff for state Superintendent of Public Instruction Linda McCulloch, said of HB701. "Depleting the state's budget will not serve our students in the long run."

Now the state Superintendent of Public Instruction certainly is the key public official when it comes to telling the legislature how much money is needed to fund Montana's public schools. She is, of course, in charge of making sure the money goes where it needs to.

But why is a representative from the Superintendent's office offering advice on taxation? Is it any business whatsoever of that office where their money comes from? Are they experts in economics and tax policy, making them the logical "go-to" department for advice in this matter?

Montana Headlines thinks not. Unless someone can offer a good explanation, this little snippet is a good example of how people on the public payroll shouldn't lobby the legislature.