Court Opinion

ID: 9508348
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-06 21:30:56.108835+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:07:31.442229
License: Public Domain

MR. JUSTICE SHEEHY,
dissenting:
I dissent.
A 35,000 barrel tank sitting in the middle of a moat is exactly akin to any storage tank at any tank farm at any refinery in Montana. It mocks the zoning plan to assume such a tank is merely a part of a pipeline.
I cannot accept the purported logic of the majority that the primary purpose of the tank is not storage but the transportation Pf fuel. The primary purpose is indeed storage — storage until the fuel can be taken through a lesser pipeline to another location. In that use, again the storage tank is akin to any fuel storage tank.
These are strange days. The federal government names nuclear arms as peacemakers. Grocery stores sell turkey as ham. In Mon*157tana, a 35,000 barrel surface fuel tank is a buried pipeline. The law is a farce when words mean nothing and everything.
MR. JUSTICE HUNT concurs in the foregoing dissent of MR. JUSTICE SHEEHY.

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