Sterling Miller - July 21, 2005
National Wildlife Federation
Lolo Ski area
July 21, 2005
Lolo Ski Area
Eight miles south of Missoula on the Bitterroot Valley, you encounter the small but historically significant town of Lolo. Just a few months short of 200 years ago, Lolo is where Lewis and Clark rested up for their final push over the Bitterroot Mountains. On their return trip in spring of 1806, they again rested at the same campsite which they called Travelers’ Rest. From Travelers’ Rest, they divided their forces with Lewis exploring up the Blackfoot River and Clark down the Yellowstone River. The Travelers’ Rest site in Lolo is now a state park.
Within sight of Travelers’ Rest State Park and everyone who drives highway 93 between Hamilton and Missoula, however, there are now 6 ugly gashes carved through the timber on the east side of Lolo Peak. However ugly these gashes are now, they signal much worse to come if a land development scheme masquerading as a ski area proposal succeeds in convincing the Forest Service to use our public lands to benefit a private landowner and his financial backers. A local landowner hopes to convince the Forest Service to change its forest plan to allow him to extend the proposed ski runs on his land further uphill into Forest Service lands all the way to the top of Lolo Peak.
I, like many of you, like to ski. Since I like to ski what, you may ask, is my problem with having another ski area? I’ll explain why, will suggest some additional reading on the subject, and invite you to a public meeting that will be held tonight to talk about whether the Forest Service should accommodate this scheme. The additional reading is a book by Hal Clifford called “Downhill slide, why the corporate ski industry is bad for skiing, ski towns and the environment.”
The Lolo resort is being billed as the largest ski area development in the United States. Plans call for it to have more than 2,000 high-end housing units, a full-service village of fancy shops, an ice skating rink, restaurants, and a golf course. If developed, this ski area and the surrounding area will look like the mega ski area resorts at Vail, Aspen, Sun Valley, and Lake Placid. Indeed, the developers tout an end result like this as a selling point for their proposal. Correspondingly, it is worthwhile to look at these areas and see how large corporate ski developments affect the lives and livelihoods of local residents.
Most of the jobs in the communities where large corporate ski areas dominate the economy are minimum wage service jobs. If they live locally, the people who work at these jobs commute long distances for the privilege of serving canapés and fancy drinks and harvest tips from wealthy people owning second homes in the development. Many of these service jobs are held by seasonal migrant workers. The jobs most of us work at now will not pay enough to allow us to pay the increasing taxes on the land and homes we now have. The service jobs available will certainly not allow our children to buy homes where we now live. Taxes will also go up to provide infrastructure such as roads, airport expansions, and sewer facilities for the development.
In the short term those of us, like me, who currently own property near the development may make money when we are forced to sell out by raising taxes and land values. However, I and most of my neighbors, live here because we value what western Montana offers us not because we expect to get rich. We stay here because we love Montana: its honest and trustworthy people, its landscapes, its wildlife, its trails, its fishing, its friendly locally-owned shops, its clean waters and clear skies. In short, we value our lives here precisely because it is not what exists at Vail, Aspen and the other high-end ski resorts. This is indeed one of the last best places where people of modest means can still live a quality life. Most of us will not be able to afford the costs of the lift tickets to ski on Lolo Peak, to play golf in the exclusive golf course, or to buy a second home in the gated community. We’ll have lost our souls if we sell out Montana and then have no last best place to live ourselves. In the bible Jesus is reported to have said “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”
The ski area development proposal in Lolo has little to do with skiing as most of us know it. Instead, it has everything to do with marketing real estate to the baby boom generation looking for profitable places to build second houses with their cash reserves. The literature promoting the ski area clearly targets this demographic segment of the US population. Montana, however, already is one of the oldest populations in the US and attracting more of the baby boomers looking for second homes not what we should be emphasizing for the future of our state. Instead we should be marketing the amenities of clean water, clear skies, abundant wildlife, affordable recreational opportunities, and the open and friendly nature of Montanans. Ski areas like that proposed for Lolo head Montana in the wrong direction for our economic future as it will adversely affect all of these things. Montana needs to be smart about how it chooses to develop and sell our strengths to businesses that will nurture and develop the things that make Montana a great place to live.
Please come to the meeting tonight where the Lolo and Bitterroot National Forests will be accepting your input on whether to allow a ski area development to include significant areas of public lands on the National Forest. The meeting will be at the Double Tree Hotel in Missoula starting at 7:00 tonight.
This is Sterling Miller
For the National Wildlife Federation in Missoula. Thanks for listening.
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