Flathead Forest prepares to approve new Holland Lake permit
Laura Lundquist
(Missoula Current) Another corporation is applying for a Forest Service permit to operate Holland Lake Lodge, and locals are asking people to comment on it before Wednesday night.
A month ago, the Flathead National Forest announced that it had received an application from the new owners of Holland Lake Lodge for a special-use permit to operate the lodge so it’s accepting public comment on the application.
Eric Jacobsen and Thomas Knowles applied for the permit to operate the existing lodge annually from June through October. Forest Supervisor Anthony Botello said in a Forest Service scoping letter that he is proposing to authorize a 20-year special-use permit.
“There is no proposed expansion of Holland Lake Lodge with this proposal, and only minor maintenance of existing facilities is proposed focused on public and employee safety,” Botello wrote.
The public comment period was originally scheduled to close on May 7, but it was extended until 10 p.m. on May 14. Swan Valley residents and the grassroots group Save Holland Lake are concerned that the new permit differs significantly from the old one in what it allows so they oppose Botello’s use of a categorical exclusion in approving the permit.
A categorical exclusion allows a forest supervisor to bypass the requirement for an environmental assessment or impact statement of the action.
“Simply put, the special-use permit has technically been terminated (due to numerous non-compliance issues) and before a new one is issued, the terms must be defined with details on authorized use. This is a 20-year permit,” Save Holland Lake said in a social media post.
Since then, Botello has said that if there is a future master development plan, the Flathead Forest would be transparent and share that information with the public.
However, Save Holland Lake is challenging Botello’s claim of transparency because the Forest Service isn’t making the public comments public. So Save Holland Lake has created its own online Reading Room and are asking people to send copies of their comments. They are reaching out to the people and organizations who sent in comments during the last round of public comments.
For many other Forest Service projects, the public can go online to a Public Comment/Objection Reading Room where all digital public comments related to a particular project are published. The public can see how many comments have been submitted on each project and who submitted them. But for the Holland Lake Lodge proposal, no comments are posted in the Reading Room.
When Keith Hammer of the Swan View Coalition brought this to Botello’s attention, Botello said in an April 24 email that “the issue was due to a planned web migration being done at our Washington Office. We were informed that this migration would be happening, but did not know the planned date/time. The issue has been resolved.”
However, an April Holland Lake FAQ document said there would be no reading room because on a previous project, “members of the public targeted other commentors who had comments and input different than theirs and it became a venue where harassment and bullying happened.” Comments would become public at the time of final record.
Holland Lake Lodge is a popular facility on Forest Service land in the Swan River Valley that has seen controversy over the past few years due to previous permit owners trying to change and expand the existing property. Locals opposed the expansion plan proposed in 2022 by POWDR, a Utah ski resort corporation, and Christian Wohlfeil, the lodge owner. When citizen efforts revealed that the Flathead National Forest had been aiding POWDR in its efforts for two years before the expansion plan was released, the plan was eventually rejected.
Wohlfeil listed the buildings and business for sale in October 2023 for $3.5 million, and POWDR withdrew its special-use permit application in January 2024. In September 2024, Jacobson and Knowles, venture capitalists from Park City, Utah, made it known to Swan Valley citizens that they would be taking over Holland Lake Lodge.
When asked during a September 2024 public meeting whether they might either expand or sell out within a few years, Jacobson said in order to cover the costs, “there has to be some level of expansion. I think it depends on your definition of ‘significantly,’ but it requires roughly double the revenue.”
A number of problems exist for the Holland Lake Lodge property, including wastewater lagoons that didn’t meet Montana Department of Environmental Quality standards. The lagoons leaked sewage into the ground, which affected the groundwater and potentially Holland Lake. The lagoons have yet to be fixed.
“A major concern of ours is: at the same time when hundreds of USFS employees are being let go from their positions, the USFS is planning to spend seven figures of taxpayers dollars to rebuild these lagoons. Which we now know are not necessary for the public to enjoy Holland Lake. The main purpose of the lagoons is to process the waste from the for-profit lodge operating on our public land,” Save Holland Lake said in a May 11 social media post.
To submit public comments online, the project website comment portal is working.
Contact reporter Laura Lundquist at lundquist@missoulacurrent.com.