Eleven of us met on March 29 at 6pm at the home of *****

I want to highlight where we are right now and some immediate action steps:

1. We have a name: Water for Flathead’s Future

2. We have volunteers working on setting us up as a Montana nonprofit and setting up a bank account - we will need financial support!

3. We have volunteers working on graphics and setting up a website and domain.

4.We will have a table at the Creston VFD Annual Auction (upstairs in the Grange Hall) this Saturday, April 2
 *** Updated 3/31/2016*** TABLE @ CRESTON AUCTION CANCELED***

5. We are setting up a special meeting with John Wheaton and James Rose of the Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology for Thursday, April 7.

6. Get involved in the DNRC process now! The deadline is now April 7 to file an initial objection to the MAWC application in the form of a DNRC form 611 http://dnrc.mt.gov/divisions/water/water-rights/docs/forms/611-u3-25-2016_fillable.pdf This form requires the payment of $25, and we highly recommend retaining legal help. Many of us who filed objections on March 11 received rejection notices on March 25. That created a new deadline of April 9 to respond to the denial letter for those who already filed those objections. Those who receive rejections later will have later response dates (15 calendar days from date of rejection letter.) ****** is already involved in this case representing people , and he can help you. To obtain his help, email him requesting that he represent you on this case. His email is ********* New filers should expect to contribute a minimum of $125 of which $25 is a fee paid to the state, and those wishing to dispute a “rejection” should expect to contribute a minimum of $100 since they’ve already paid the $25 filing fee. Whether or not you use Mr. *******, we can’t emphasize enough that without expert help you can expect to have your objections rejected. We cannot circulate privileged legal advice.

Since many of you already on this email list head up HOAs, please feel free to circulate this to your members. We are still working on our goal/purpose statement and the wording of the petition, but since we have very short deadlines ahead (particularly the auction) I wanted to get this much out now. We tentatively plan to meet again this Thursday evening, and we discussed the possibility of gathering auction volunteers in advance to provide guidance. Also, if anyone knows a way to quickly create some T-shirts for us to wear at the auction, let me know.

If there are any Thomas Jefferson’s among you who would like to help with some of the writing - please let me know. We have a goal (mission statement), the petition, some language to go on the website (which may just be based on the former language) and I’d also like to create some preliminary FAQs for the website. Email me at ******* to help.

You will hear more from me very soon,

Thanks to all of you for your support!

*******