Senators' letter to Governor Schweitzer on North Fork protection "We are pleased to have the opportunity to continue our work with you following the Memorandum of Understanding between the State of Montana and British Columbia"
We are pleased to have the opportunity to continue our work with you following the Memorandum of Understanding between the State of Montana and British Columbia. The MOU is a critical starting point for our long-standing efforts to establish permanent protections of the North Fork of the Flathead River, and we appreciate your work on it.
As we discussed, because more than 90 percent of the U.S. side of the Flathead is owned by the U.S. government, we took swift action to prevent future mining and oil and gas development in the North Fork by introducing our bill, the North Fork Watershed Protection Act of 2010. The Energy and Natural Resources Committee held a hearing on April 28, 2010, and we expect passage in the coming weeks. Simultaneously, we have been working with existing leaseholders in the region, and we are pleased to report that on April 28 ConocoPhillips, the largest single leaseholder in the North Fork, decided to voluntarily relinquish its interest in 169,000 acres without compensation—close to 71% of the leased area. On June 2, we announced that Chevron also decided to voluntarily relinquish its holdings of close to 11,000 acres in the area, also without compensation. With these two actions, we have succeeded in eliminating almost ¾ of the leased acreage in the area at no cost to the American taxpayer.
Because funding is not explicitly mentioned in the MOU between Montana and British Columbia, we need to clarify for what purposes the funds would be used. On June 7, we received your letter explaining that such funds would be used to “reimburse mining companies for past investments.” The exact scope of which entities are involved remains unclear. The press has reported Cline Mining Corporation and Max Resources as potential recipients and the June 7 letter refers to lost revenue by British Columbia. In either case, U.S. taxpayers are being asked to send money to private, foreign corporations. And in these tight economic times, we must justify every expense.
The Federal government was not involved in the negotiation of the MOU, nor is the Federal government a party to the agreement. Therefore such spending would be highly unusual without a complementary bilateral agreement between the United States and Canada, as well as the establishment of permanent, legally binding protections in the North Fork. This bilateral agreement will build on the foundation of the Memorandum of Understanding.
Legislating and appropriating U.S. tax dollars requires a carefully vetted, transparent process. With that in mind, we have the following questions to help us achieve our shared goal of permanently protecting the North Fork:
1. Did the State of Montana explicitly commit to providing $17 million or another amount of money to British Columbia as part of the MOU? Must it be money from the U.S. government? Or can it be money from the State of Montana? The Canadian federal government? Or the Province of British Columbia?
2. How was the figure of $17 million determined
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