SMALL TOWN PROBLEMS

A new citizen of Valier, one of a clutch of new home builders from other places had busied himself with investigations and spread the word that at this monthly village meeting he would confront the council about the infrastructure, which he didn’t investigate much before moving here. As it happened, a half-dozen old-timers were present but their concern was loose dogs. The problem of big dogs, one of which appeared to be ornery enough to snarl at people and start fights, is very mild compared to most places, but has certainly increased recently.

I had the impression that this new man in town was an engineer and this was the reason he was concerned about water and sewer. It turned out that he’d spent ten days bugging the town clerk about the town financial arrangements and made the assertion that $142,000 or so of cash was sitting in the bank, not drawing interest, and unexplained because it was embedded in a mesh of obligated income, state or county payments, and dedicated bits of this and that. The only one who understands it all is the town clerk, who is the best we’ve ever had, a former bank employee. Gradually it became clear that this “engineer” only had a firm grasp on one fact: the town had enough money to do what HE thought they should do. He was so assiduous in his role as Perry Mason that finally one of the council members (all the council members are male, young and probably weigh 300 pounds or so) rebuked him for persecuting the clerk and directed him to take on the council members if he wanted to attack anyone. The “engineer,” considerably smaller, backed off.

The REAL attack dog at the meeting was the old lady who feels entitled to punish anyone who deviates from the way things were done in Valier just after WWII. Everyone generally shines her on, but her tongue is sharp enough that one hopes not to attract her attention. She was so angry about dogs that I got up early yesterday morning and went out to “patrol.” There is one big young long-legged black lab who was loose in his yard and probably is the troublemaker. Another who bugged the “engineer” is locked into a kennel now. Two others were loose in their yards and have been that way for many years without causing much trouble. A golden lab who occasionally crosses my yard was loose in his own yard up the street. The St. Bernard who used to be chained to a tiny house at the edge of town was gone and a “for rent” sign in the window. I think that as soon as the sheriff gets a little more active about contacting people these problems will abate, but we definitely have more, bigger and less confined dogs that we used to.

A more pressing matter is the budget and financing practices of the village. It’s clear that ancient decisions and practices, probably dating back twenty or thirty years, have been continued without reflection. This is the sort of thing that happens when citizens become preoccupied with their own affairs and let those few willing to guide the town do things their own way. New council members are not willing to change money matters in particular, esp. in a drought period when businesses are closing. Our mayor has not been a numbers sort of person and, indeed, even the Portland bureaucrats sweated when they came to such matters. It’s the national dilemma and catastrophe over the stock market writ very small. What seemed to be prudent “sugar bowl” methods, are now too complicated to be monitored efficiently.

But the gorilla that wasn’t on the agenda is the stockpiling of poisons at the airport where the crop duster is surviving by selling herbicide and pesticide, mixing the concentrate by adding water from the city water system. A month ago the “engineer” insisted that the backflo valve needed to be professionally checked, but it still hadn’t been done. No one has done ground checks for contamination, though the city’s drinking water wells are not far away. If the poisons somehow made a major spill, they would travel downhill through the yards. The person whose yard abuts the airport claims his pets have a remarkable number of tumors and die young.

We may have a potential Love Canal situation here: worst case, forced government buyouts. If the contamination gets into Lake Francis, Conrad will also be affected. A few years ago the Hutterite pig farm across the lake sprang a leak in their sewage lagoon and filled Lake Francis with pig poop. Valier’s attitude was sort of, well, it’s Conrad’s problem. Which is only fair since Conrad, the county seat, seems to think Valier is beneath notice.

The “engineer” turns out to simply run an underground lawn sprinkler business, one of the real water-hogging practices in Valier since the valves and timers are always going wrong. He’s another lawn worshiper. In front of his new bachelor pad he has installed a massive fountain, burbling away in recycle mode, but still rather a taunt in a dry farming area where farmers must come in with a tank to get their household water.

A few months ago the council discussed the case of a resident who refuses to pay for sewer or water, on grounds that he doesn’t use them, which ended up more or less stumping the panel by his resistance. This week I learned that last summer the man took two 55 gallon drums of his own excrement to the roll-off dumpster site. I’m unclear about what happened after that, but it seems to prove that he was telling the truth about not using the sewer. The next question is what happens to urine. He seems to be using a tank truck for household water. He’s IN the town, on the highway.

Like the sprinkler salesman, many of us judge by appearances and get distracted by small matters of individual concern. And all the while, true disaster is simply not recognized. In my efforts to find a small safe beneath-notice place to hole up and write, I may have gotten myself dead center in trouble. I had thought this was a timeless sort of village where things didn’t change much, and they haven’t in the past. But it is a microcosm of Montana, and of the West as a whole. People of very different kinds and assumptions are moving in and out. And the poor, the weak, the old pay the price. I feel an obligation to make a fuss.