Proponents of a four-lane U.S. 2 plan next steps

Supporters of a four-lane U.S. Highway 2 listened to a presentation Tuesday night about an economic study that says widening the highway is crucial to economic development, and then planned their next steps.

"It's coming down to where it's decision-making time," said Bob Sivertsen, president of the Highway 2 Association, adding that it's time for supporters of the four-lane option to add their comments to an environmental impact statement being written about reconstruction of the highway from Havre to Fort Belknap.

Hal Cooper Jr., author of a study paid for by the Highway 2 Association, said significant economic development along the highway's corridor can't happen without a four-lane highway. He said the need for new jobs is especially important to deal with population growth and high unemployment on the Indian reservations on and near the highway.

"We can't make it happen without expanding the highway," he said.

The Highway 2 Association hired Cooper, a civil engineer who operates a consulting firm in Kirkland, Wash., to review an economic study done as part of the EIS. That study, by ICF Consulting, found that a four-lane highway would create no significant economic benefit over an improved two-lane highway with intermittent passing and turning lanes.

The EIS for the 45-mile stretch between Havre and Fort Belknap was commissioned after the 2001 Legislature passed a law directing the Montana Department of Transportation to seek federal funding to build a four-lane highway along the route of Highway 2.

Bill McCauley of Cut Bank, a member of the Highway 2 Association board of directors, said it will be important for people who want a four-lane Highway 2 to speak at public meetings or make written comments about the EIS.

Public meetings on the EIS are scheduled next week in Havre, Chinook, Fort Belknap and Harlem.

Cooper, who will speak at a meeting in Chinook tonight, plans to attend the public meetings next week.

Sivertsen said he has had questions about the methodology of the ICF study since it began. He said he will ask the consultants those questions again next week, with Cooper's study to back his assertions.

His main complaint has been that the economic study was limited to the 45 miles of the project and doesn't examine the impact of creating a four-lane corridor from Minneapolis to Seattle by widening the highway across Montana.

Mick Johnson, MDT Great Falls District administrator, said in an interview Tuesday that since the construction project is for a stretch between Havre and Fort Belknap, that is the only area the EIS addresses.

Karl Helvik of MDT's Consultant Design Bureau said a reason the economic study done for the EIS did not need to look outside of the Havre-to-Fort Belknap section was because MDT had commissioned another study, the Montana Highway Reconfiguration Study, to examine the economic impact of widening highways to four lanes.

When the results of that study were applied to Highway 2, it showed the benefits of widening the highway to four lanes would be outweighed by the additional cost of widening it.

The Federal Highway Administration, which will have the final say on the design of the highway between Havre and Fort Belknap, has selected the two-lane configuration as its preferred alternative in the draft EIS.

The Montana Department of Transportation has selected a four-lane configuration as its preferred alternative.

Cooper said the ICF study has several flaws besides being limited to the 45-mile section. Other flaws include assuming the economy will not expand, but will continue in the same trend it has been in since the mid-1980s, he said.

"They did not make a case for growth in the corridor," he said. "If you use their assumptions, you will come up with their results. I'm saying you need to take a longer-term view."

Cooper, who is one of the consultants working with American Indian tribes in North Dakota and South Dakota to examine building energy generation plants and transmission systems to supply electricity to the Pacific Northwest, suggested that Montana could do the same.

Cooper proposes using coal-fired generators supplemented by wind power to produce the power. The coal-fired generators could include systems to remove pollutants like sulfur and nitrogen oxides and other substances, which would then provide other uses including fertilizers, he said.

The reservations, which have rapidly growing populations and already have high unemployment, also have large reserves of coal, natural gas and oil and high wind levels, which make them logical locations for the generators, Cooper said.

The highway expansion across Montana would also increase through traffic, he said. The Highway 2 corridor not only provides a route from Winnipeg, Canada, to Seattle that is about 65 miles shorter than the interstate system, it has fewer mountain passes and a gentler grade, he said.

The EIS estimates traffic growth on the 45-mile segment from 2,680 vehicles a day in 2000 to 6,975 in 2030.

Cooper believes that if the highway is widened across the entire state in conjunction with economic development programs, the traffic growth would be much higher. He estimates the growth would be from 2,680 vehicles a day to 15,900 vehicles a day in 2030.

Cooper will speak at a meeting tonight at the Chinook Motor Inn starting at 7:30 p.m.

The public meetings on the EIS are at the Great Northern Inn in Havre from 6 to 8 p.m. Tuesday, at the Chinook Motor Inn from 6 to 8 p.m. next Wednesday, and at the Fort Belknap bingo hall from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. and the Harlem City Hall from 6 to 8 p.m. on July 15.

Comments on the EIS can be mailed to Mick Johnson, MDT, P.O. Box 1359, Great Falls, MT 59403, or made at the MDT Web site.

On the Net: MDT EIS and EA, Havre to Fort Belknap EIS: http://www.mdt.state.mt.us/environmental/eis-ea/