Lower North Fork Road will see dust treatment soon
A car drives up the North Fork Road in this file photo.
By CHRIS PETERSON
Hungry Horse News
The lower North Fork Road from just north of Glacier Rim to the Camas Creek entrance to Glacier National Park will see dust control measures this summer.
The county received a $137,000 Good Neighbor Authority grant for three years of magnesium chloride dust abatement on the road, county Public Works Director Dave Prunty confirmed Monday.
The funding comes through the Good Neighbor Authority program, which allows states to use federal dollars for forestry and other projects.
Flathead National Forest spokeswoman Kira Powell said the Flathead Forest wrote a letter supporting the dust abatement project.
Dust is a major problem in the summer months on the dirt North Fork Road and a perennial complaint.
The county had applied for federal funding for an environmental review to pave the Glacier Rim-Camas section, but was not selected in the last round of projects.
Debate on whether to pave that section has been ongoing for decades, with some saying it would ruin the character of the North Fork and result in more wildlife deaths from road kills, while others claim the pollution from the dust isn’t doing the river and surrounding landscape any good, either.
All of that aside, Prunty said the county’s dust abatement contractor started on dust abatement on dirt roads in the southwest part of the county and if all goes well, should be in the North Fork in two or three weeks.
The hope is to have all of the county’s dirt roads scheduled for dust abatement done by July 4.
Meanwhile, construction will continue this summer on Glacier Drive and the upper North Fork Road north of Trail Creek.
Motorists should expect delays and the upper North Fork Road, like it was last year, will see a closure to all but local traffic in early August.
The Glacier Drive work is expected to be finished by the end of August. It’s receiving a new base and millings from the Going-to-the-Sun Road reconstruction, which, in essence, will make the Drive a paved surface, which includes work around the Polebridge Mercantile.