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Disaster prone: MDT mulls limiting trucks on Highway 35
By VINCE DEVLIN of the Missoulian
April 11, 2008
Ron Kohler, left, and his son Robert survey the beach in front of Ron Kohler's home on Flathead Lake on Thursday afternoon. A fuel spill last week on Highway 35 just up the hill and a little south of Kohler's home has contaminated the springs on the property and gas fumes are permeating his house. A major effort is under way to filter the runoff and spring water before it gets to Flathead Lake.
Photo by MICHAEL GALLACHER/Missoulian
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POLSON - Jim Lynch, director of the Montana Department of Transportation, has directed his staff to investigate whether the state can impose limits on large truck traffic on Highway 35, the narrow and sometimes winding state highway that runs along the east shore of Flathead Lake.
The request comes in the wake of last week's crash of a tanker truck on the highway, which dumped almost 6,400 gallons of gasoline about 100 yards from the lake bed.
Limits, if not a total ban, of trucks on the road have long been advocated by many east shore
residents, who say there is a much wider and safer route along the west shore.
The trucking industry will oppose any effort to limit the trucks that can travel Highway 35, according to Spook Stang, executive vice president of the Montana Motor Carriers Association.
“The thing is, the same people who don't want to see trucks on Highway 35 demand the services trucks deliver,” Stang said. “Virtually everything in Montana is delivered by trucks, from groceries to gas, and we have to have the ability to deliver it - not just to do it, but to do it efficiently.”
Many truckers prefer the east shore route because even though the speed limit is just 50 mph, it's a more level route than that provided by Highway 93, which travels along the west shore of the lake. While the truck speed limit there is 60 mph and Highway 93 is more modern, with shoulders and passing lanes, it also has much steeper inclines and can take longer and use more fuel.
“It is true that over the years (east shore) residents have asked us to have truck traffic rerouted,” said Charity Watt Levis, spokeswoman for the Department of Transportation. “The department has always said we can't, because it's a federally funded road. That's been the standard answer.”
But, she said, Lynch has asked his staff to research “the options available to us. We are looking into, from a safety perspective, if we could control the truck traffic better.”
Stang questioned whether communities such as Polson, Lakeside and Somers wanted to see the truck traffic through them increased - the only possible option if some or all trucks were restricted from Highway 35.
“The people on Highway 35 want to move their truck problem to the people on Highway 93,” he said. “We saw the same problem two summers ago” when chip sealing was being applied to Highway 191 between Bozeman and West Yellowstone, cutting off a shortcut truckers use to get between Interstate 90 and Idaho Falls, Idaho.
Trucks were rerouted on Highway 287 through Ennis, Stang said, and soon the calls were coming in from Ennis wanting to know why they didn't send the truck traffic through Twin Bridges and Dillon instead.
“Trucks are a necessary evil,” Stang said. “Whether it's lumber to build your houses or groceries to stock your shelves or fuel to move your cars, it won't be there if we can't get it to you.”
Truck traffic removed from Highway 35 will end up on Highway 93, Stang said, and what happens if Highway 93 residents complain? Where do the trucks go then to get between Missoula and Kalispell?
But some east shore residents say that, with Highway 35 hugging the Flathead Lake shoreline as much as it does, especially in the Blue Bay area, there is too much at stake. An accident similar to last week's, just in a different spot on 35, could have an immediate and devastating impact on the lake.
As it was, crews recovered about 1,000 gallons of the spilled fuel by removing more than 1,400 tons of soil from the crash site, but that leaves more than 5,000 gallons still underground, and presumably making its way toward Flathead Lake.
On Wednesday evening, one week after the rear tanker, or “pup,” of the double tanker overturned in a barrow ditch, nearby residents Ron and Barbara Kohler moved into a neighbor's house after discovering gas fumes in theirs.
Crews dug a trench along the west side of their home Thursday and installed pipes in an effort to vent the fumes before they reach the house. Under the guidance of Cedar Creek Engineering of Winchester, Ky., crews had already installed two cisterns, a carbon filtering system, and a pond with an underflow dam on the lake bed in front of the Kohlers' home to capture vapors that were showing up in two springs, one located on their property and one on the property of their neighbor, Dennis Arnold.
Flathead Lake is still about 10 feet below full pool, meaning the lake water is about 200 yards from the summertime high-water mark in this area of shallow East Bay. Flathead usually reaches full pool in mid-June, but the water will reach the area where crews have done their work by Memorial Day, if not before.
Kohler, who has lived here for 17 years, said most of the crashes he's seen involving trucks on Highway 35 have involved ones pulling double trailers or tankers.
“It seems like there's almost always a pup,” Kohler said. “Usually it's chip trucks, and that they can come out the next day and load into a dump truck.”
Gasoline is a different animal, however, and Kohler said he was happy to learn the state was at least looking into options for regulating what can and cannot travel on Highway 35.
Reporter Vince Devlin can be reached at 1-800-366-7186 or at vdevlin@missoulian.com
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