Idyllic town faces economic disaster due to disgusting obstacle

A prosperous and idyllic Montana municipality is astatine nan brink of economical ruin owed to its reluctance to build a centralized sewer system. 

Workers surviving in Seeley Lake, an unincorporated community in Missoula County, are being forced to time off nan area aft officials person been incapable to switch nan town's septic system. 

Due to a deficiency of a due sewage system, developers person been incapable to build affordable lodging - forcing group to move away. 

As a result, Seeley Lake's biggest employer has besides been compelled to time off and unopen down their 75-year-old business aft being incapable to pull capable workers. 

The proprietor of Pyramid Mountain Lumber said this was nan 'toughest' point they had done and couldn't ideate moving anyplace else. 

'To make nan announcement to nan unit was astir apt nan toughest thing; I've sewage friends, family, you know, generations, bully friends that activity here. I had to show them we're going to unopen nan doors,' Todd Johnson, nan third-generation proprietor of the mill told ABC News.

'I've ne'er drawn a paycheck from immoderate different business successful my full life. I started present successful sixth grade. This is each I've ever known.'

Explaining nan value of nan mill successful nan town, he further added: 'There hasn't been an apartment, duplex aliases fourplex built successful this municipality successful complete 30 years. 

'When you're talking astir entry-level lodging for much bluish collar workers… it's not available.'

The shutdown of Pyramid Mountain marks nan charismatic extremity of nan county's erstwhile thriving lumber and sawmill industry. 

'Our payroll conscionable present to our labor is complete $6 cardinal a year. You return that retired of this economy, it'll alteration nan cloth of nan town. There's nary doubt,' Johnson noted. 

Kyle Marx, Rovero's Hardware's general head besides noted that contempt being in  engaged season, nan shop is 'running connected a skeleton crew'. 

'No affordable lodging here. Rentals person diminished since COVID hit, and everybody came up here, bought each rental darn adjacent that was disposable and turned them into picnic rentals aliases moved up present themselves,' he explained. 

Dee Baker, proprietor of an ancient shop named Grizzly Claw Trading Company, said that nan sewage problem has been going connected for years. 

'There could beryllium low-income lodging built but nan group successful nan municipality cannot travel to an statement [for a sewer system] pinch Missoula County. And it's been going connected for years and years,' Baker noted. 

According to Dave Strohmaier, Missoula Board of County Commissioners chair, nan business is simply a consequence of reluctance to salary for a centralized sewer strategy by officials arsenic good as a fearfulness that specified a awesome infrastructure alteration would change nan community’s character. 

'The irony is that nan deficiency of nan infrastructure is simply a large logic why Pyramid Mountain Lumber cannot find nan lodging for their labor and nan labor to support it going, and hence alteration is upon us,' he said.