LETTER: Just a bad idea

My immediate reaction to the March 8 article on the bottling plant in Creston was simply, “That is a bad idea.” In this day and age, with what is happening to our environment, the last thing we need is someone contributing to the drought we are already experiencing by taking water from the land and putting it in PLASTIC bottles to further pollute our world.

The only ones who might benefit from such an activity are Mr. Weaver and his prospective employees.

I was thereby amused and delighted to see the March 9 headline and know that I wasn’t alone in my dismay. It was interesting to note that the Montana Artesian Water Co. was “quietly working to open a plant that could bottle as much as 191.6 million gallons of ground water per year,” and Mr. Weaver disavows in Thursday’s headliner that it in anyway suggests they were being secretive. Still, it’s a red flag.

And what about the idea that the plant would cause “no adverse impacts” to other water rights in the area? Of course it’s going to impact these rights. How could it not? Everything we do has a residual impact on something or someone else, good or bad. And what happens if the plant is successful and they want to expand? With a precedent set, it’s going to be hard, if not impossible, to shut the door once it’s been opened.

It is staggering to me that people can’t see what is happening to “The Last Best Place” and that they naively think “it can’t happen here.” It can and it is. We are blindly and very rapidly moving toward a time when you won’t be able to see the mountains for all the buildings obscuring the view, the expanded highways and ever increasing traffic, the signs and light polluting the night sky. Our amazing wildlife is disappearing because of loss of habitat, changes in our environment and people “inconvenienced” by these creatures who are just trying to live and are being “dispatched” in one way or another. As I said before, we’re going to miss them when they’re gone.

The bottom line is we were called to be “stewards” of the land, not to rape, pillage and plunder it for our own benefit. And, as always, if every decision we make is an economic decision, it’s probably the wrong decision. Conversely, if we do what’s right and is in the best interests of the land that sustains us and its people, we all win in the end.

Our resources are not endless. That mentality started with the settlers who first saw this great and rich land, but our greed, our arrogance, and our stupidity have caught up with us: EVERYTHING is endangered — our land, our wildlife and us.

So if we destroy “The Last Best Place,” then what?

— Kathryn Berg, Bigfork