Wild Horse Border Committee talks about improvements to port

The Wild Horse Border Committee Monday talked about trying to improve Montana Secondary Highway 232 - Wild Horse Road - to increase safety and try to get the Wild Horse Port between Montana and Alberta Canada, upgraded.

Havre Mayor and Wild Horse Border Committee co-chair Tim Solomon said perhaps one of the best ways to facilitate more traffic through the port and change the port's designation is to improve the highway.

The Wild Horse Border Committee is made up of Montana and Canadian politicians, economic developers, property owners, coalition member and community members, and has been in existence for the past 15 years.

The goal of the committee is to upgrade the Wild Horse Port north of Havre to operate for longer hours and to increase commercial traffic, re-designating the port to operate every day for commercial vehicles.

The port now is open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the winter and 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. in the summer. Commercial vehicles must receive a permit to take freight through the port.

Solomon said if Wild Horse expands hours it would help relieve the stress the Coutts-Sweetgrass port north of Shelby is receiving from high commercial traffic numbers.

A study the Van Horne Institute, a Canadian think tank focusing on transportation, trade and resource development, conducted for the Wild Horse Border Committee and released in 2015, was discussed at Monday's meeting.

"Expanded hours and improvement of commercial operations at the port of Wild Horse will result in economic benefits from more efficient trucking services; expanded tourism; and additional family and business automobile traffic opportunities and more efficient use of current infrastructure," the study said.

Hill County Commissioner Mark Peterson said improving Highway 232 would encourage more commercial vehicles to use the port and increase safety.

The process of improving the highway has already started on the Montana side of the border, he said, with Montana Department of Transportation approving work on Highway 232 for almost 10 miles of the road, adding the work is needed for safety reasons.

In 20 years, Peterson said, Highway 232 has had 159 accidents, 54 of them rollovers and seven of them sideswipes, resulting in seven fatalities. He added that with 54 rollovers it is lucky there weren't more fatalities. The high number of rollovers is due to deep trench off the sides of the road, he said; if a vehicle goes off road it is highly likely to roll over. He added there has been on average 6.6 accidents per mile on Highway 232 in 20 years.

Highway 232 has been designated narrow and dangerous for years, Peterson said, with Hill County trying to get improvements going for close to 20 years. The process will start late this year, he added, with MDT open to improvements throughout the entire stretch of the highway in the future.

"They like to finish what they started," Peterson said.

Solomon added that this could facilitate more commercial traffic through the port and encourage the Canadian government to follow suit.

Canada's main hurdles

Jim Turner, city of Medicine Hat councillor and committee co-chair, said getting more commercial traffic is one of the main hurdles to improving the Wild Horse Port. He added that because the port is only open to commercial traffic four days a week, it is hard to encourage companies to use to port because of the inconsistency for commercial use.

Walter Valentini, executive director of Alberta's Palliser Economic Partnership, agreed that only being open four days for commercial traffic is a problem. Drivers won't go to Sweetgrass on some days and Wild Horse on others, he said. Companies find it more efficient to send vehicles through the Sweetgrass-Coutts port.

Medicine Hat District Chamber of Commerce Business Advisor Tracy Noullett said even if commercial traffic is restricted to four days a week, if Wild Horse port is easier and safer companies will use it because it is closer and would be cheaper. She added that if commercial traffic is not improving neither the United State or the Canadian government will move to change the designation. The committee needs to be more aggressive in approaching companies to use the port, Noullett said.

Committee member and Highway 2 Association President Bob Sivertsen of Havre, who is facing incumbent Rep. Jacob Bachmeier, D-Havre, and Havre Libertarian Conor Burns in a race for the Montana House of Representatives, agreed that the committee will need to have more of an aggressive approach to companies, encouraging use of the port.

The board also discussed other improvements that could be made to Wild Horse.

Turner said one of the hurdles that needs to be fixed is the lack of training port authorities have in Wild Horse to inspect some commercial vehicles and the lack of technology available to the port, such as electronic permitting.

The board agreed to do some research to resolve these issues.

Turner said there are many hurdles on the Canadian side of the port due to very little progress being made in the Canadian government with the port. Valentini and he met with American and Canadian official last spring and both countries' official said they felt that there was no justification for expanding the hours of the port. He added that there is no political will to expand Wild Horse and for the effort to work it needs to operate on all levels.

Valentini added that if the port was open longer people would take advantage and use it.

Unified message and other items

The board discussed unifying their message about the port.

Turner said one of the reasons the effort doesn't have much traction is that different interest groups are approaching it different ways, adding that the scope of the committee should be expanding the hours and services.

The problem of inconsistent port permitting was also brought up to the committee, with several people reporting commercial vehicles were able to use Wild Horse on certain occasions but not on others and some companies are encouraging truckers to use Sweetgrass-Coutts rather than Wild Horse. These concerns were agreed by the board to be further investigated.

Bob Kaul of Havre told the board he has concerns with a lack of traffic data being received from Wild Horse, saying it has been six months since he last received numbers. Kaul said that 1992 was when he first requested these numbers from the American side of the port. He then received a debriefing and after that had received traffic data for the port once a month.

Other members of the committee said they also had not been receiving the data recently.

Solomon said Havre had also not received any reports or data for the port in the past months.   

The committee agreed to further investigate this matter.

Tariffs and the future

Bear Paw Development Corp. Executive Director Paul Tuss said tariffs also are factor in the future of this port. Trade between Canada and the U.S. is uncertain due to the tariffs, said Tuss, a Havre Democrat who is challenging incumbent state Sen. Russ Tempel, R-Chester, in this year's election. Tuss added that trade between Havre and Canada, Medicine Hat, is important for the well-being of both communities.

Peterson said Canada is an important trade partner with Havre. With the possibility of natural disasters, such as the Milk River flooding the area, Canada would be one closest that could assist with supplies, he added.

He added that the communities are closely linked to each other.

"We don't need lines," Peterson said.

Turner agreed that tariffs are disruptive to trade between the two counties and that the matter rests on political will what the future of these trade agreements will be, although Canada is very reliant on South America for crops and that won't change.

During the committee meeting it was also agreed that Owner of Brand Spanking Marketing Therisa Hardiker will be in charge of finding a third party to facilitate the committee's next meeting that will be held in Alberta, Canada before the spring of next year.

Solomon said Wild Horse is important for both communities and both communities need to make sure they continue communicating. The biggest problem, Solomon said, are the hours, adding that there have been many things done to help the numbers and there has been progress made, such as the commitment to the road improvements on Highway 232. He added that the Wild Horse on the U.S. side of the port is ready and able to handle higher level of traffic.

"Keep on the fight," Solomon said, "keep both communities alive."