Irrigators elect to hold off on Drop #2 rebuild

Last Tuesday, June 19 close to seventy irrigators, Joint Board of Control and the U.S. Department of the Interior Bureau of Reclamation met to come to a solution to a 1.5 million dollar issue concerning the Drop 2 in the Milk River Project . At the end of the two and a half hour meeting the Joint Board opted to postpone any fixes to the cement structure that has been the main source of water for irrigators and water users for nearly a century until the Board's next meeting in August.

"Were not doing the contract that was proposed for the $2.68 million," Joint Board of Control member Wade Jones told the PCN. "And now we're going forward with that next month to try and come up with a new plan that's affordable."

Steve Davies, of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, presented the meeting.

"Roughly, on an average year, about 50 percent of the water that is used by the Milk River irrigators on the Milk River Project is a trans-basin transfer of water from St. Mary over to Milk," Davies said. "On a dry year that's probably about 80 percent."

The drop two structure had a redesign completed in 2016. The redesign was to completely overhaul and rebuild the damaged cement walls of the Drop 2 basin, which which if not fixed presents serious safety concerns to farmers and livestock in the area.

The original government estimate for the project was 1.1 million dollars, an investment that irrigators had already paid for. However, there were only two investors interested in taking on the job throughout the winter. The lowest priced bid was 2.1 million but came with a high risk. The second was priced at 2.6 million and came with a lower risk.

"You could feel the emotion of the irrigators," Jones said. "They are to their wits end. You've heard that from everybody tonight. It's finally gotten beyond our means of paying for it."

It was presented that the board either use the 1.1 million dollars already credited towards a rebuild, patch the basin walls a lesser price with a bigger risk of the walls needing a repair, postpone for a possible rebuild in the summer months or petition with other districts to dissolve the Milk River Project as a whole, leaving local irrigators throughout Phillips and parts of Valley counties to rely on rain to water crops.

If a full rebuild were to happen this winter, the Bureau and the Joint Board of Control needed to okay the build at Monday's meeting. In order to reach the 1.5 million dollar difference, the Bureau presented irrigators with an option to take out a loan, which would have been a twenty year loan that would have cost every farmer, rancher and land owner that uses the irrigation system an additional $3 per acre in 2017 and extra $2 per acre in 2018. This didn't even include the inevitability of any other structure failing in the near future.

"In reality if we're going to entertain some type of loan, research and figure out aif this works then lets include these other projects and make sure the system is going to work because we're talking about eight dollars an acre over the next two years and if drop 5 (also) fails we're shut off and if the tubes fail, we're shut off," One board said. "We're talking a lot of money and we still may not have water over the next year or two."

After Joint Board Member Joel Pruttis presented the notion to cancel the pending 2.68 million dollar contract and postpone action on Drop 2 until their next meeting in August, the Joint Board unanimously agreed.