6 April 2016

Aquifer presentation draws overflow crowd and uniformed LEOs

If you attended this evening presentation, held at FVCC, on the Flathead’s aquifer, you undoubtedly arrived early. I arrived a few minutes late, by which time parking space was hard to find and the crowd was standing room only, spilling out into the hall from the elegant but little theatre. Clearly, the people who organized the event did not anticipate how popular the presentation would prove. FVCC does have bigger rooms, and if necessary they can be used on the weekend.

Just as clearly, the college anticipated trouble. When I arrived, a sheriff’s cruiser was parked next to the main entrance. A uniformed officer sat on a bench next to the theatre’s entrance.

“Why,” I asked him, “is a uniformed officer’s presence necessary?”

“The college requested that we be here,” he replied, pleasantly.

Perhaps FVCC has been receiving threats both blood curdling and credible. Perhaps the people running FVCC read about a terrorist attack in Europe and suffered nightmares about suicide bombers from ISIS or student rowdies from Missoula causing trouble at a lecture on groundwater hydrology. Perhaps they thought Ammon Bundy had busted out of jail and was enroute with an armed occupation force. Who knows?

I hope the presentation was video recorded and will be make available to all on YouTube in 24 hours, and that the professional reports will be available as PDF downloads without fees (we’ve alread paid the fees with our taxes).