This week’s news brings us another story that’s starting to get very old — especially for Montana’s existing residents. Namely, the City of East Helena finds itself unable to “meet the demand” for water for the 6,250 new homes plus new businesses that theoretically will be built on former ASARCO lands the city annexed when the company went bankrupt.

But here’s the rub: The land the city annexed did not come with water rights. In Montana, no water means no new developments because we can barely provide water to existing residents. The rapidly changing climate’s longer, hotter, and drier summers combined with lower winter snowpacks and earlier, diminished runoff is simply a reality that municipalities and developers don’t want to acknowledge. But just because you don’t want to admit rea

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