Posted on 07/27/2007 7:14:05 PM PDT by george76
Lawyers for media mogul Ted Turner persuaded a district judge to issue a restraining order blocking Gallatin County from paving a five-mile stretch of road that runs through Turner's sprawling Flying D Ranch south of here.
Attorneys for Turner Enterprises Inc. obtained the order from District Judge John Brown. It bars the county from paving a segment of Spanish Creek Road.
Commissioners said the county has been planning to pave the road for years.
To save money, the county was planning to use millings - essentially ground-up rubble from other road projects - provided by the Montana Department of Transportation to pave the road.
Joe Barr Coleman, an attorney representing Turner, said they sought the restraining order that was issued Monday because the millings could endanger water quality in Spanish Creek, which runs parallel to the road.
Commission Chairman Joe Skinner said the county has never had any violations or complaints about water quality from past road projects that used millings.
A meeting between the county and Turner's representatives last Friday left both Skinner and Commissioner Steve White with the impression everything was basically all right, White said.
"There was no mention of this action, there was no mention of anything about water quality," White said. "This whole thing is just a big surprise."
(Excerpt) Read more at billingsgazette.net ...
Liberals hate it when their exhalted personal elite liberalism is offended by the little people.
The gravel road carries about 450 vehicles a day, making it a prime candidate for paving. It also generates more than 200 hours of work a year for county road maintenance crews, work that would be reduced considerably by paving, White said.
Unfortunately, the county’s cost to pave a road with asphalt is about $120,000 a mile, compared to about $20,000 a mile using millings. Without millings, the road will likely never be paved, White said.
Ted does not want any little people around...unless they are there to serve him.
Why doesn’t TT offer to pay for the asphalt paving or else STFU. Typical left-wing elitist bozo.
If it were up to me that SOB would pay to have it paved in gold.
I wish we had the money to explore this further. It would be ahoot if Turner’s reasoning was personal and nothing about water “quality”...
Hey Ted, what about all that cable and wires for your broadcasting companies..Not only did it tear up natural habitats to lay wire but what do you do with the old cable? Probably just throw it out in some land dump.
Libs are such egotistical phonies! Ha.
Did Ted every pay that $ One Billion to the UN ?
A rich arrogant hypocrite and an ignorant judge = intolerable stupidity.
Ted Turner, how is he relevant today, in the general scheme of things? He should just go into senility with serenity. Dreaming of his sexual exploits (gag) with Hanoi Jane should keep his mind busy until death.
Of course his real reasons are personal. He doesn’t want the road paved at all, because paving will attract more traffic and increase land values because of easier access.
He prefers to buy it up as cheaply as possible and/or discourage discourage development.
Anybody got an address?
I don’t know. I don’t believe so. He spent a lot of dough founding the United Nations Foundation, which he runs. But that’s completely different from giving the UN a billion dollars.
This is pathetic! He’s using the enviros tactics and this moonbat judge is going along with it.
If they haven’t had a problem with millings polluting in the past I don’t see where those millings will all of a sudden start polluting.
You can bet your last buck that’s not the real reason Turner’s against it.
But neighbors and other critics say Turner has an odd way of demonstrating his concern for nature on his own land:
* Six of his ranches are world-class sporting destinations that charge up to $4,000 per person for big-game hunts. The CNN founder has sponsored elite bison hunts at $10,500 per person and erected “killer fences” that snare and torture migrating wildlife.
* The exploration for natural gas on the pristine Vermejo Park ranch in New Mexico is expected to net more than $80 million in royalties for the Turner clan during the next 20 years, according to Forbes magazine.
* He ordered the topmost 10 feet of a Montana ridge to be “shaved” by bulldozers, according to The Guardian, so he “could see the Spanish Peaks mountain range reflected in his trout pond.”
Ordinarily such behavior would draw howls of protest and legal action from a broad range of environmental groups. But critics of Turner’s stewardship say he largely escapes repercussions for such activities because the media mogul is one of the environmental movement’s most generous benefactors, donating millions to the cause. Indeed, environmental groups’ nickname for Turner is “Daddy Greenbucks.”
in December 2001, a judge blocked a U.S. Forest Service plan to salvage timber from destructive wildfires in 2000 even as a Turner ranch began salvaging timber burned by the same fires. The projects are different because one was on private property and the other on public property, says Miller. Turner’s project, he adds, is endorsed by the Nature Conservancy.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1571/is_7_18/ai_83553863/pg_3
Thanks to a land swap, Montana commoners will no longer be able to hunt, fish or hike on state lands nestled deep within the private kingdom of media mogul Ted Turner ...
Turner didn’t like uninvited guests invading the Flying D Ranch southwest of Bozeman, Mont., so he offered the state a deal it couldn’t refuse.
Sportsmen who didn’t like the deal challenged it in court. One of the main complaints was the loss of fishing opportunities on several prized streams. But District Judge Thomas Honzel approved the exchange in late October, acknowledging that it would not please everyone.
http://www.hcn.org/servlets/hcn.Article?article_id=2920
Ted's buying up water rights. He doesn't want his asset spoiled.
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