Sanders County Ledger - Your Best Source For Sanders County News

In Montana the rivers and streams belong to all of us. We have the right to fish, float, swim and play in the state waters given to us by Montana’s stream access law. Even if the stream is flowing through private property, the water still belongs to us all. The law respects private property rights by requiring that recreators stay below the high-water mark and use public entrances. Stream access has not set well with the ultra-rich who build McMansions along our rivers. They assume their wealth will protect them from seeing kids on 5-dollar inner tubes floating by their 4 million dollar second homes. In this legislative session a senator proposed SB 497 “revising laws relating to prescriptive easements…”. Hidden in this verbiage was the death of our right of stream access. Fortunately, on a vote of 47 to 4, the bill was “indefinitely postponed” effectively killing it. This isn’t the first bill attempting to trash our stream access rights and probably not the last. As Montanans, we must be vigilant to insure that a few wealthy landowners don’t force their values upon us.

Lou Springer, Heron