Serving Proudly As The Voice Of Valley County Since 1913
Serving Proudly As The Voice Of Valley County Since 1913
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The Glasgow City Council met for a brief, post-holiday session in council chambers on Jan. 4. Among the agenda items addressed were the approval of two Dry Prairie Rural Water easments. Both are located along Skylark Road (from Roy Jimison's property to land leased by the city from Sunnyside Golf & Country Club). The easements will grant Dry Prairie's contractor a corridor to maintain and repair 3,500 feet of water line serving Valley County residents. Also approved was the hiring of Glasgow...
As nightfall sets in sooner and longer in the fall, there is a risky mix on Montana roads that requires drivers to be extra alert. There might be increased traffic from drivers ed students filling their hours, parents driving to out-of-town ball games, and haul trucks with big loads. At the same time, does and fawns are attracted to roadside vegetation, which also brings the bucks close to roads during breeding season. As a result, we see a rise of deer-vehicle collisions. A State Farm 2015 statistic indicates that Montana has the highest...
Cherry Creek & Milk River Levee System is a vital piece of the city’s infrastructure system that is not only critical to the welfare and safety of our community but also bogged down in federal regulation. An array of complex issues and opinions as to the solutions necessary to keep the levee system in compliance and meeting the needs of the community keep the levee system at the forefront of the city’s attention. The southernmost portion of the city of Glasgow borders the Milk River and Cherry Creek waterways and the associated flood pla...
Carroll MT Properties, the Bureau of Land Management and the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation have teamed together to improve access to over 30,000 acres of public lands and to provide new access to 9,000 acres of private lands. This agreement, which begins with the start of the big game rifle season, provides public hunting access to the heart of the Deep Creek and Willow Creek watersheds in the northern portion of Valley County on the former Hinsdale Livestock Company lands. The agreement provides an access point off of Rock...
Mining is not a major industry in Valley County, but it has seen historical significance. Beside coal of the old days and gravel pits scattered throughout the county, bentonite is the only mineral that has brought commercial value to the county. Developed in the 1960s, the bentonite mine outside Glasgow is proposing to start extraction again. The bentonite mine is owned by S&B Industrial Minerals based in Berwyn, Pennsylvania. It is located about 20 miles southwest of Glasgow on Bentonite Road. It was active five years ago when S&B mined, then...
BLM has proposed to withdraw 983,156 acres of public land in Montana from “location and entry under the United States mining laws” to protect a key greater sage grouse conservation area. If approved by the Secretary of the Interior under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, these lands can be excluded from hardrock mining for a maximum of 20 years. This proposal is now undergoing a public comment process through Dec. 23, 2015. These acres have been designated as “Sagebrush Focal Areas”, and, effective Sept. 24, 2015, there will be a 2-...
The Board of Valley County Commissioners approved the granting of $60,000 towards the repair of Skylark Road at its Sept. 16 meeting. The motion passed unanimously — though Committee Chairman Bruce Peterson expressed concern as to the source of the funding before casting his vote. “We should request a $5,000 loan from the golf committee,” he joked. “So long as you don’t schedule the repairs during the playoffs, that should be fine,” replied KLTZ’s Stan Ozark, grinning. In times of tightened purse strings, some find solace in keeping thing...
Sheriff’s Department The Valley County Sheriff’s office has joined other law enforcement agencies across the state in the Department of Transportation’s “Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over” campaign. According to a January 2015 study published in Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research (Vol. 39, No. 1), there is a significant link between the number of alcohol related traffic stops in a given community and the rate of impaired driving out there on the road. In an effort to increase law enforcement visibility, extra patrols began Aug. 21 a...
The Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes of Fort Peck Reservation and Dry Prairie Rural Water Authority have announced their agreement for the delivery of water from the tribes' intake and treatment facilities near Wolf Point to Dry Prairie customers throughout Montana's Northeastern corner. They'll have a ceremony to sign the agreement on Tuesday, March 31, in Poplar at the Fort Peck Tribal Headquarters, 501 Medicine Bear Road. The ceremony will begin at 10 a.m. and comments from dignitaries will begin the ceremony that will lead up to the signing of...
Havre police and six other agencies were led on a high-speed chase throughout Havre to Chinook and to a field several miles south of Chinook Friday afternoon. In the end, they captured an escaped convict, Eric Bruce Fowler, born in 1980, a passenger in the vehicle, and arrested his accomplice, Ranette R. Doney, born in 1980 and from Glasgow, the vehicle's driver. The Montana Department of Corrections had issued a warrant for Fowler's arrest in January for escaping from the Watch program at the Warm Springs Addiction Treatment program. He had...
The supposed day of unluck came and went and nothing extraordinary happened for a local family. Saturday, March 14, came and the family went on with their normal daily activities. Becky Holter was at home taking a nap on the couch, while the rest of her family, Curt, Mariah and Roland, were all out at different places. When Becky got up from the couch and headed to the kitchen she saw the smoke coming from the window. She said she quickly went to the door where the water heater was and opened...
This is the second of two articles in The Courier regarding concerns about the proposed Valley County Keystone XL pipeline workforce camps.TransCanada officials visited recently and participated in a public hearing where the plans were discussed. A landowner only a few hundred feet from the Hinsdale camp stated that he had concerns with the landowner keeping a trailer park at the location in the future. He also had concerns with the road conditions and traffic, perhaps someone out enjoying the mud and tearing up the dirt roads. Alan Lietz, the...
The Valley County Planning and Zoning Commission held its first public hearing on work force camps proposed by TransCanada during the Keystone XL Pipeline project. Valley County would house two of the four proposed work camps in Montana, one near Hinsdale, the other between Nashua and Fort Peck. The meeting lasted a little over two hours. A little over a dozen residents showed up to the public hearing, and an additional 10 employees of TransCanada and Target Logistics were at the meeting to help...
Floyd L. “Shorty” Doke peacefully passed away at home from natural causes on Sunday, Feb. 22, 2015. Funeral services will be held at 11 a.m. on Thursdaay, Feb. 26, at the Lutheran Church in Glasgow. A luncheon will follow at the VFW. He was born in Glasgow on Oct. 10 1944, as the fourth child to Elmer Floyd and Mary (Pointer) Doke. He grew up on the family farm west of Glasgow and graduated from Glasgow High School in 1963. After graduating, he left Glasgow to work with his brother-in-law as...
A road closure and temporary health department closure will affect area residents in the next week. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has announced that the Beaver Branch Road south of Glasgow will be closed starting Jan. 27, 2015. It will not open until late May or early June, officials said. Newly constructed Judy Dam, which serves as a portion of the road, has failed and will be breached until weather allows repair of the damaged area. The road is still usable by the public on either end of Judy Dam, but the road will not be a through...
A crowd large enough to fill a court room showed up on New Year's Eve to welcome the newcomers and to say goodbye to those going out of Valley County Office. David Pippin stepped down as County Commissioner and Paul Tweten took over the seat. The other newcomer is Christine Hillman who is now officially sworn in as the justice of the peace. Pippin retired after two terms of service, or 12 years. David Reinhardt will be taking over the chair position this year during his third term as a...
January • Has Glasgow really been sucked into some vortex that's dropped the temperatures below zero? The easy answer is no. Tanja Fransen, warning coordination meteorologist at National Weather Service Glasgow, explains that this is actually a low pressure system that came down from the North Pole and brought cold weather with it. The Arctic cold front pushed down farther south than usual, which brought colder than average temperatures to much of the nation. • Resigning one city council sea...
The New Year came with a lot of snow and cold temperatures. The National Weather Service in Glasgow reported that 6.7 inches of snow fell on Monday, Jan. 5. On top of the snowfall from Friday and Saturday, the snowfall added up to over 11 inches in the month of January as of Tuesday morning. The good news is that the snowfall will slow down and not a whole lot of accumulation is expected in the upcoming week. Some areas may see about another inch at most. What followed the snow was a bitter blast of cold. Temperature fell below zero over the we...
Hunters found a terrible surprise on Thursday, Oct. 30. While they were out hunting on a relative's property they thought they had discovered an abandoned vehicle but on closer inspection they found that a body was inside. They made the call to dispatch just after 1 p.m. The Valley County Sheriff's Office confirmed the vehicle was registered to a missing person. Kevin Coverdell, 52, was a seasonal county employee who had been working mowing ditches and the sides of the roadways. He had identification cards that also tied him to Rock Springs, Wy...
As flood waters receded in late August, Valley County Disaster and Emergency Services Coordinator Rick Seiler started working on figuring how much damage existed. Those numbers began to rise in Valley County, along with those in nearby Musselshell, Petroleum, Blaine and Carter counties and the Fort Belknap Reservation. The preliminary assessment of damages in Valley County added up to almost $958,000. Combined all areas are at about $1.6 million in damages, with Fort Belknap reporting around $53,000, Carter County $37,000, Musselshell $55,000...
With absentee ballots out and over 250 votes already in, that last push for candidates to get their story out there is in full swing. The Glasgow Courier hopes to educate voters on who’s on our ballot in our local county, both contested and non-contested candidates. All county contested candidates were asked two questions: • What is your platform for this election? (This question is about your philosophy.) • What experience or qualities do you think you could bring into the position? The candidates were given approximates 150 to 175 words...
Last week I ran away from home. I left 1,500 bales of hay in the fields waiting for Donna to pick them up. I cleaned out my fridge of all stuff that would perish in my absence. I packed eight shirts, eight pair of socks, eight pair of shorts, four pair of Wranglers, boots, shaving kit, cell phone plug-in thingie, two guitars and assorted other stuff and hit the open road. My first stop was in Sapphire Village to visit my Aunt Carol and Uncle Jim before they head south for the winter. Jim promised I wouldn't have to do any work. Sometimes the...
The Valley County budget is still getting some last minute adjustments before the commissioners look at passing the finalized budget in the upcoming week. While there wasn't a lot of changes made from the previous year there were a few noteworthy items. The commissioners support a 1.5 percent raise in salary for county employees across all departments. That increase adds to about 30 cents an hour for employees. The raise was eligible for employees who worked at least 20 hours and were permanent employees who qualify for insurance, leaving...
While the rains have stopped, the water is still flowing. The record-breaking rainfall isn't quite done causing damage as the waters as of Tuesday hadn't receded under flood levels. But the Milk River was expected to fall below flood stages within the next day. The forecast was for some minor flooding to continue. Disaster and Emergency Services Coordinator Rick Seiler explained Tuesday that officials are waiting for waters to recede before they can fully assess damages from flooding last week....
Bureau of Land Management offices along the Hi-Line are warning drivers to be cautious when traveling secondary roads en route to or on BLM-managed lands, due to damage caused by a recent multi-day rain event. Preliminary assessments by BLM personnel of Phillips and Valley counties’ non-paved roads on or en route to BLM-managed lands revealed a range of damage and dangerous situations. Here's a look. Valley County According to Glasgow BLM Field Manager Pat Gunderson, there are several damaged roads within south Valley County. The two main B...
