Consultant defends economic study for Highway 2

HARLEM - Several members of an advisory committee for the U.S. Highway 2 project from Havre to Fort Belknap took issue Monday with an economic part of a study at a meeting in Harlem.

"I'm really troubled by this," said Bob Sivertsen, president of the Highway 2 Association. "It's flawed and it's incomplete."

Jeff Ang-Olson of ICF Consulting, the firm hired to conduct the economic study, told the committee that widening the highway would bring many jobs during construction, but he found no evidence that widening the highway would significantly improve the economy in the long term.

"I want to emp...