Drilling Near Park Border Divides Community : Environment: A Montana permit kindles a hot debate over where to draw the line on oil and gas wells.

Just west of the rushing whitewater river that marks the western boundary of Glacier National Park stands a 150-foot oil derrick, a thorn in the side of environmentalists.

This well is no longer a threat to the ecology of the park. After months of controversy, drilling was abandoned in late October and the well was capped--not out of concerns for the environment, but because no oil was found.

Now the oil exploration companies have their eyes on other drilling sites in the region, and that has environmentalists worried.

National conservation groups have observed for years that environmental problems seldom observe man-made boundaries. They have warned that the national parks are threatened from development both inside and outside their boundaries.

The Wilderness Society last year listed parks it considered endangered because of development. Glacier National Park was on that list, with oil drilling cited as a major worry.

But the state Board of Oil and Gas Conservation in September voted unanimously to approve the project after 2 1/2 days of hearings in which four wildlife experts testified that drilling would affect grizzly bears, wolves and bald eagles.

The board also heard from 9-year-old Shinnah Sullivan of Whitefish, Mont., who said she represented a group called Children for Wildlife.

“Animals have rights too,” she told the board. “I bet they would say a lot if they could talk about this. I worry and wonder if there won’t be a place for them in the North Fork when I grow up.”

But supporters of the well pointed out that it was on private property.

“When a private landowner can’t do lawfully what he wants to on his land, then we have the true endangered species: the free American,” said Dan Blomquist of nearby Columbia Falls.

The board issued a new permit with some conditions covering public safety and pollution. Board chairman Jim Nelson said the hearings were not in vain.

“It’s clear now that this board has a duty to ensure protection of the environment,” he said. “That’s one of the criticisms we’ve had on this: that we don’t know what is going on.”

Now the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management have approved the drilling of two more wells south of Glacier next summer.

“All the oil development scenarios have an impact,” said Riley McClelland, a Park Service eagle expert. “A dry hole would have the least impact; however, with each incremental step in oil-field development, the degree of risk to bald eagles increases.”

“The industry thinks that no place should be out of bounds or off limits, but that’s not true,” said Jim Jensen of the Montana Environmental Information Center. “There are places on the earth where dangerous development, where any kind of industrialization doesn’t belong. This beautiful corridor is one of them.”

The MEIC and another environmental group filed the suit challenging the state’s initial decision to issue a drilling permit, contending that public-participation laws were ignored.

The well, accessible from a gravel road where deer are a common sight, is just half a mile from the North Fork of the Flathead River, Glacier’s western boundary and a designated wild and scenic river.

It is the first well to actually be drilled in recent years near the park. Three others have been proposed but have been delayed by environmental challenges.

Cenex, the exploration company, received speedy approval of its July application for the test well because it is located on private land and not subject to the review process required for drilling on public lands.

In the last decade, concerns have been raised about logging, subdivisions, roads and--in particular--an open-pit coal mine proposed eight miles to the north of the park in British Columbia.

The coal mine proposal was recently dropped, logging has been scaled back and a compromise plan was accepted for improving the highway leading to the park.

But proposals for oil and gas drilling remain alive, with little middle ground evident between the companies proposing wells and the groups opposing them.

Industry officials say modern drilling technology leaves little mark on the land.

“I have been a little puzzled by the degree of public reaction,” said Janelle Fallan, head of the Montana Petroleum Assn. “You’d think this was a major open-pit copper mine that was going to be there 50 years and disturbing hundreds of acres.”

In fact, she said, the rig takes up a relatively small area that will be reclaimed once the well is capped.

Joe Keating, director of oil and gas operations for Cenex, said the industry believed for years that the portion of the Overthrust Belt near Glacier would not produce oil or gas, largely because the pockets were covered by such a deep layer of stone that they could not be reached by drilling.

But Keating said speculative geophysical work done in the area during the era of high oil prices reversed that thinking.

Park Supt. Gil Lusk has criticized the state Oil and Gas Conservation Division’s decision to issue a permit for the Cenex well using criteria applied to other wells around the state, most of which are located on the range land of eastern Montana.

Both the industry and the oil and gas board need to realize that “there’s a hell of a lot different about this area” of snowcapped mountains and glacial river valleys, he said.

Lusk stressed that he believes some development might be acceptable near the park, if it is done properly.

“There can be industry next to the park,” he said. “That’s not the issue. The issue is, is industry willing to invest to make it a good neighbor?”

Lusk cited Columbia Falls Aluminum Co. as a business that has done just that by installing new equipment to reduce emissions that were blamed for killing trees and slowing tree growth in the area.

But others believe a balance of development cannot--or should not--be struck.

“This area is not appropriate for many reasons--for aesthetics, for wildlife, for destroying the qualities of why people want to come here or live here,” said John Frederick of the North Fork Preservation Assn., which filed legal challenges to both Cenex wells proposed in the area.

Frederick lives in Polebridge, a tiny community five miles north of the well site. The preservation group he heads also has opposed the British Columbia coal mine, some subdivision efforts and proposals to pave the dirt road that leads to Polebridge.