Tester continues push for extended Wild Horse hours

Montana’s senior U.S. Senator said Wednesday he is continuing to push for extending hours at the main border port north of Havre, an effort supporters of which say will help the economies of north-central Montana as well as the rest of the nation and of Canada.

“We continue to urge (U.S. Customs and Border Protection) to extend the hours up at Wild Horse,” said Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., who added that as a Big Sandy-area farmer he understands the issue.

“It’s literally right outside my back door,” he said from Washington during a telephone press conference.

But, he added, the effort is an uphill battle.

“This is a struggle,” he said. “They seem to have an attitude that they’ve made up their minds this won’t happen.”

Tester sent a letter in May to CBP Commissioner R. Gil Kerlikowske, who was sworn in March 7 as commissioner, asking for review of several issues including reversing its decision on implementing a pilot program trying to extended hours at the Port of Wild Horse.

The port lies on the U.S.-Canadian border between Havre and Medicine Hat, Alberta.

Tester said Wednesday he has not yet heard back from CBP about his requests.

International upgrade effort

Starting early last decade, groups in the Havre and Medicine Hat areas joined forces and created an international committee to push for upgrading the status of the port.

The Wild Horse Border Committee originally called for upgrading the port to a commercial port open 24 hours a day. It has since focused on having extended hours at the port, which is open from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. in the summer and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the winter.

Truckers carrying commercial freight across the border at Wild Horse also must apply for and receive a permit before they can do so.

Montana has only two commercial, 24-hour ports of entry into Canada, at the Sweetgrass-Coutts port north of Shelby and the Raymond-Regway port on the northeastern corner of the state, north of Plentywood.

The Wild Horse committee for several years now has pushed for a three-year pilot program using the summer hours year-long, saying that travellers and truckers never know what the hours are at the port.

The summer hours of the port have run for more months from 2009 to 2013, but never with both sides extending the hours at the same time or with advertisements of the same regulations. The supporters of extended hours say this lack of coordination created mass confusion and likely reduced the impact of the extended hours.

Studies by both University of Montana’s Bureau of Business and Economic research and the Montana Department of Transportation have backed up the claim that extended hours would increase traffic and improve the economy.

CBP denies extended hours

But the reply to the February letter sent by Tester and Walsh said CBP would not consider expanding hours at the port north of Havre, citing the need to carefully balance staffing at different regions around the nation.

CBP promoted the extended hours and changed the permit requirements at Wild Horse, but commercial traffic has not increased during the extended hours, CBP Assistant Commissioner in the Office of Congressional Affairs Michael Yeager wrote in April.

“We share stakeholder disappointment that the pilot outcomes did not meet expectations … ,” Yeager wrote. “Based on these results and current resource availability, we are unable to pursue further pilots at Wild Horse at this time.”

In his May letter to Kerlikowske, Tester questions both a decision to not increase the number of CBP officers at the ports of Whitlash and Sweetgrass despite projected increases in traffic — and wait times — and the data used to justify canceling extended-hour pilots at Wild Horse.

Tester writes that CBP’s analysis is only of the traffic during extended hours, and discounts data from three years of extended hours showing a 20 percent increase over the average traffic from 2005-2007.

“I continue to believe that a three-year pilot will increase operational efficiency at the port and, in turn, drive more traffic as the nation’s economy continues to improve,” Tester wrote.