GRASS ROOTS

In search of some other information, I serendipitously accessed some Internet info about the village of Valier. 498 people (I’ve been saying about 300 -- all I have to do to be right is wait, since the estimated decline is 5% per year. But lately we seem to be growing again in terms of houses.} 256 male, 242 female. Not many kids. 75 in high school, 85 in grade school, 29 junior high, 64 children in nearby Hutterite Colony schools. Median age: 42.7. Median household income: $30,000. Median house value: $58,600. (For comparison, I’m 67, my income is $12,000 and my house is formally assessed at $30,000. I’m an underachiever.)

A second comparison: Heart Butte, which forty years ago was hardly more than a crossroads while Valier still swelled with business, is now at 698 (339 males and 359 females). HB’s median resident age is 21.3, median household income is $20,885, and median house value is $67,500. HB is 95% American Indian (Blackfeet founders, probably a thousand years ago. It’s a very old camping spot.) while Valier is 92% white (German, English, Irish, Norwegian, and Belgian -- the founders, still only a few generations ago.) HB schools number 79 in high school, 89 in grade school and 32 in junior high.

There are a few differences that don’t show up here. The weather information at the website didn’t differentiate much between the two towns, but in Heart Butte one can’t grow corn or tomatoes while in Valier one can. Heart Butte has lots of kids, Valier has lots of grandparents. Heart Butte (altitude 4462 feet) gets slightly more snow but Valier (altitude 3805) gets slightly more wind.

There are two differences that are crucial. One is that Heart Butte’s housing stock belongs to a tribal entity rather than families. The buildings and infrastructure are owned by the housing authority and maintained by them on their schedule. In Valier the houses are individually owned. Heart Butte houses were mostly built since the 1964 flood. Valier houses are of two kinds: old, small and at least fifty or seventy-five years old, or recent modern homes, often modular. The number of people per household has got to be considerably higher in Heart Butte, but I didn’t see numbers.

This is all background to the subject of this blog, which is actually the October 11, 2006, Town of Valier council meeting. The focus of the entire first hour of the meeting was lawn. This community, like many midwestern Germanic communities, is absolutely obsessed with the importance of green, manicured lawns as an indicator of respectability, prosperity, and virtue. The three characteristics are interwoven in the minds of the home-raised Valierian. When a barking dog problem was discussed later, the mayor said, “These people [complainants] have such a nice house and maintain it so well -- they shouldn’t have to suffer from a barking dog.” This council includes two young businessmen, one experienced and competent local older woman, the mayor, and an immigrant, one of the rich people who have migrated to this area from the East Coast. The rich person didn’t come randomly but because her husband has the contract to build a huge water pipeline from Glacier Park across the Blackfeet Reservation to the parched highline towns. They live in Valier rather than on the rez.

Because the Blackfeet Reservation lies athwart the run-off decline from Rocky Mountains to High Line wheatlands, the two quite different political entities are entwined in dilemmas. Valier’s need for lawns and irrigation run up against the pre-existing water rights of the Blackfeet. (Heart Butte cares nothing about lawns and has a stream running through town, but no lake. But it was the Blackfeet who dug most of the irrigation canals, often by hand.) In the early days “Indians” were simply ignored and powerful whites in charge of the reservation and all along the railroad ran things. The Great Northern’s tracks along the High Line depended on Marias Pass through the Rockies to reach the West Coast and formed the populated “High Line” by enticing homesteaders in the early 20th century. Projects were developed that crossed boundaries.

At the top of the reservation, weaving back and forth across the international boundary, was a system of diversions and flumes that took Milk River water to communities hundreds of miles to the east. (It is now disintegrating and the subject of many meetings.) At the bottom of the reservation was an irrigation project that began with Swift Dam, in the mountains up from Heart Butte, fed Birch Creek, and ended in Lake Frances right next to Valier. (It was Swift Dam that broke in 1964 and swept down Birch Creek, nearly eliminating Heart Butte and killing dozens of Blackfeet.)

Lake Frances is seen as a recreational money-maker and community enhancement since it contributes boating, wind-surfing, and fishing, both in summer and in winter through the ice. Valier owns a little recreation area with a campground, recently improved by the addition of piped water and electricity to each space. Other plumbing includes the Fire Hall (used for gatherings), a public bathroom (no showers) and a fish cleaning station. But actually the Lake is owned, maintained and managed by the Pondera County Irrigation and Canal Company. It is the key to the prosperity to the alfalfa and grain farmers of the area. The campground plumbing is attached to the town lines, not the lake. Same with the sewer. If I took a bucket of water from the lake for my own uses, I would be stealing it from the Canal Company.

Valier does not draw its municipal water from Lake Frances, but Conrad, the county seat a half-hour’s drive to the south, does. They own shares in the Canal Company. A Hutterite pig farm is located on a ridge across the lake and a few years ago suffered a break in its sewage lagoon which drained into the lake. (They claimed the fish were unusually big that year.) A no-grow, no-spray zone surrounds the lake, but -- as we know -- inspection and regulation are not rigorous these days. Snow run-off has been so low for the last half-dozen droughty years that the lake is low. Conrad has been left sucking mud, so it is signing on to the big water pipe project. Some say the lake level is affecting the town’s wells, which get so low in the summer that restrictions must be imposed on the users.

Over the years ten wells have been drilled for Valier: three in 1915, one in 1937, two in 1948, one in 195l, one in 1952, one in 1960, one in 1961. Only four are in active use. It appears that the 1951 and 1952 wells are the same one, now called Well #1 and yielding something like 160 gallons an hour. Sometimes only Well #1 is pumping to fill the water tower. Well #2 is the 1948 one, quite nearby #1 with an unspecified flow. Well #3 was drilled in 1961 and has a flow of 160. Well #4 was drilled in 1937 and has a flow of 25. It’s rarely used. There are private wells in the area. Two of the earliest holes have been sealed with bentonite, which is a clay material abundant around here with the characteristic of swelling when it’s wet and setting up into something like concrete when dry. (This is why there are no truly square houses or doorframes in town unless they are made of steel. They flex to match the changing contours of the land as it gets wet or dry.) The town workshops are built over the earliest wells. The first pump was a big noisy piston pump that needed to be enclosed.

One could speculate that the wells were probably drilled when the town first got plumbing before WWII, , when the town got a growth spurt after WWII, and in the last major drought -- the ill-fated Well #4 drilled in 1937. Probably there was government money then. Valier is as dependent on federal subsidies for infrastructure as Heart Butte is, and the women on the council are experienced and successful “grant-hunters,” which is probably what gets them elected. They are less interested in water and sewer than they are in niceties like curbs and sidewalks.

One of the favorite projects of the immigrant lady is trees. She has pressed us all to plant trees, including quite a few out at the “rec area” by the lake. But the water was so low and the temps were so high so long this summer that even established trees are taking a beating. Opinions about trees conflict: the appearance people love them, the infrastructure people hate them for invading and breaking up sewers.

In fact, a great deal of time was devoted to resolving a sewage problem that cost a homeowner more than $400 to dig up his sewer line. The town’s position has been that since it’s impossible to know whether blockage is in the town’s main or in the homeowners privately owned line, the homeowner should prove first that the private line is clear. Then the town will dig up and amend the main. The town’s water man asserts that most of the time the problem involves both private and public, partly because it is likely to be due to boulevard trees in the grass strip outside whatever footpath there is. The homeowner wants to be reimbursed since his private sewer line was proven to be clean. The problem in the main is fixed. The final decision, after MUCH discussion of character, bill-paying habits, probable income and other typical small town speculation, was that half the money would be paid, but NOT to the homeowner -- rather to the guy who dug up the private line! It was assumed he hadn't been paid. Loyalty to him was high, since he’s pretty much interwoven with the town’s work.

Back to that all-concerning lawn problem. At one time Valier was a thriving business hub with several large hotels. That’s in the past now, partly due to consolidation of land-owning and partly due to factors like CRP, which puts much land into fallow grass on the principle that if less grain were grown, prices would be higher. (This turned out not to be true.) An unintended consequence was that no one needed new equipment, used equipment flooded the market, and since there was no crop to harvest, people migrated south for much of the year -- emptying the cafes.

Valier knows that tourists constitute a crop. They are convinced that if the town “looks good,” tourists will stop. Therefore, when one of the last big hotels along the highway -- a decrepit fire hazard -- was reduced to rubble, the idea of building a little park came up. The Valier development committee loved the notion. The landowners would give them the land, but they couldn’t do it tax-free unless they gave it to the town. Technically, now the town owns the park but the VADC is far more emotionally involved. It’s grass, flower borders (daylilies and some kind of tough rose), and a little gazebo. Of course, a necessity for this mindset is an automatic watering system. And rigorous schedules of fertilization, weeding and mowing. I never see any tourists in it.

So for an hour the council discussed whether 3” or 4” grass was better, the comparative performance of the mowing machines and what would happen if bagging the clippings weren’t regular, etc. Somehow the town employees were supposed to mow, fertilize, pick up trash, weed the borders, etc. though the original agreement was that VADC members would do the work. The mayor was generous about the town donating costs of labor, gas, machine maintenance, dump fees, etc. because “it just makes our town look so much nicer. We’ll just work out any little problems.” She resisted putting anything in writing.

Not watering was not an option, though people get angry every time they are restricted more tightly and see the water spray. So it was agreed that “someone” would go over and turn off the automatic system if it “were raining much” or turn it on “if it’s been dry for a while.” Thus it’s no longer an automatic system. A citizen was appointed to be the liason between VADC and town. He’s an easy-going, well-liked guy whose wife is a dynamo in the VADC. I’d bet money he’ll end up doing the work. The men spent time on the performance of individual spray heads, agreeing that the wrong kind had been installed in some places. No decision on who pays for this being fixed. Or who drains the system in the fall, checks and starts it in the spring.

Which all goes to show that grass is one of the most powerful symbols of community. And when someone uses the phrase “grass roots” they are talking about money.

To be continued