St. Mary Working Group moving forward among growing infrastructure needs

The St. Mary Rehabilitation Working Group continues moving forward with state legislative funding. The mission remains as it was in 2003 when the group started, to find a workable solution to rehabilitating an irrigation project before it sustains catastrophic failure.

In recent activity, the Working Group lost its long standing basin co-chair, Randy Reed. Since the inception of the Working Group Reed had represented the basin members as co-chair. Reed recently lost his battle with cancer in October. The Working Group approved Marko Manoukian, who had served as an interim since 2014, as the new basin co-chair.

Additionally, the Working Group had its fiscal partner Bear Paw Development sign a contract with the State of Montana. This contract will allow the Working Group to hire a water consultant to advocate for repairing the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) structure. The consultant is Water Strategies LLC, operated by Kris Polly. Polly has extensive knowledge of water issue specifically in the western US and is familiar with the process of the BOR.

This irrigation structure is part of the larger aging infrastructure in the US. The American Society of Civil Engineers prepares a report card for infrastructure for the nation every four years. Their last report in 2013 gave the country a D+ for infrastructure maintenance and called for congress to invest $3.6 trillion by 2020 to maintain the US global competitiveness in a globally connected world (http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/).

The BOR did provide the Working Group a video demonstration of the diversion structure, a 1/12 working model of the new diversion structure. It showed how bull trout, an endangered species would be kept from entering into the canal system by a fish screen. Yet fish swimming up the river system would not be attracted into the diversion structure. The diversion structure and fish screen is estimated to cost $40 million and one of the focuses of the Working Group is to offset this unmanageable cost through appropriations form congress.

The Blackfeet Tribe has now received a Senate number, S 1125 as their water compact legislation moves forward in congress. They anticipate that the “markup” of the legislation in committee will be in December. The Fort Belknap Tribe is getting a federal team together in anticipation of negotiating with the Interior Department over their water compact.

The next meeting of the St. Mary rehabilitation Working Group will be January 17, 2016 in the basement conference room, Havre City Hall.