News you can use
News you can use
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St. Mary rehabilitation meeting set for Tuesday A meeting of a group working to find funds to rebuild the system that supplies much of the water in the Milk River each year is meeting in Havre next week, with an agenda that includes a moment of remembrance of one of the driving forces behind the group. St. Mary Rehabilitation Working Group will meet in the basement meeting room of Havre City Hall Tuesday starting at 10 a.m. The agenda lists a moment of remembrance for Blaine County agricultural producer Randy Reed, one of...
Staff and wire report The St. Mary Rehabilitation Working Group will meet in Havre Sept. 15 from 10 a.m. to noon in the Havre City Hall meeting room. The public is invited to attend the meeting of the group, which is pushing to find a way to rehabilitate the St. Mary Diversion and Conveyance Works. The project, which diverts water from the St. Mary River into the North Fork of the Milk River, was one of the first projects authorized for the Bureau of Reclamation to construct after the bureau was created in 1902. It is part...
The Bureau of Reclamation is going to conduct geotechnical investigations at Fresno Dam from later this month to early October. According to a press release from BOR, the investigation is part of their Safety of Dams Program, which is designed "to help determine embankment and foundation characteristics for use in verifying the continued safe operation of the facility." When the investigations are conducted, they will drill several "exploratory" holes into the dam embankment...
One of the people indicted during the Guardians Project investigation of Rocky Boy’s Indian Reservation was scheduled to be sentenced today, but the hearing has been moved to March. Shad James Huston, who lives in Havre and is a former Havre Public School District Board of Trustees chair, has had his sentencing pushed back to March 12. Huston pleaded guilty Aug. 25 to three charges: theft from an Indian tribal organization, failure to file currency transaction reports and bribery of a tribal official. He and others i...
Correction: The U.S. Department of the Interior has determined that Ken St. Blatt Marks was illegally removed as chair of the Chippewa Cree Business Committee, but has not ordered he be reinstated, his attorney, Martha King said. St. Marks and his attorneys will have 15 days to present the relief they would like to see implemented, she said. The tribe will then have 15 days to respond. The Department of the Interior solicitor said she would like to see the two sides come to an agreement, but if that isn’t successful, the d...
GREAT FALLS (AP) — The Chippewa Cree Tribe is being required to pay up front for work on a $361 million water project after several tribal officials and companies were convicted on corruption charges related to the project, according to a federal official and the head of the tribal corporation building the project. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation typically would release money annually for federally-funded projects such as the pipeline on Montana's Rocky Boy's Indian Reservation. That changed about eight months ago in r...
HELENA, Mont. (AP) — This week, candidates have been busy introducing legislation and laying out their campaign platforms. Here's a look at the week's most interesting and important developments in Montana's election campaigns: BILLIONS FOR COAL: Democratic U.S. Sen. John Walsh, who is trying to keep the seat he was appointed to earlier this year, gave a lukewarm reception to President Barack Obama's plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants. Now he wants the federal government to spend at least $...
Montana’s Sen. Jon Tester said Thursday he hopes several important bills will move forward quickly but is not so sure after what he called political gamesmanship stalled an outdoors bill he said was a “slam-dunk.” At the start of a press conference with Montana reporters about 11:30 Thursday morning, Tester said a bill sponsored by both a Republican and a Democrat, with nearly half of the Senate co-sponsoring it, failed to go to a vote. “I had a similar bill back in 2012,” Tester added. “It fell victim to political g...
Montana’s sole U.S. representative joined colleagues from the Dakotas Wednesday in shifting money to regional rural water projects including in north-central Montana. A press release from Rep. Steve Daines, R-Mont., said the congressman joined Reps. Kristi Noem, R-S.D., and Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., in sponsoring an amendment to shift $6 million from solar energy programs and another $6 million from the U.S. Department of Energy’s administrative budget, putting $10 million to water projects and $2 million to deficit reduction. Th...
Montana's freshman member of the U.S. House of Representatives - also a candidate for the Senate - has joined the Montana U.S. senators in calling for a permanent fund to help complete regional water projects including in north-central Montana. Rep. Steve Daines, R-Mont., announced in a press release he has sponsored a bill to create a fund to build water projects that Congress already has approved. "Water supplies will be the key to the future of northern Montana, and we are...
The federal government filed documents showing what facts it was prepared to prove in court against Tony Belcourt, 42, and Hunter Burns, 48. The two entered guilty pleas in some of six indictments — four of which involving Tony Belcourt and Rocky Boy’s Indian Reservation psychologist James Howard Eastlick Jr. Two other cases indict Tony Belcourt and his wife, Hailey, on tax and bank fraud. Tony Belcourt pleading guilty to tax fraud Wednesday as well as to theft and two counts of bribery. Burns pleaded guilty to filing false c...
U.S. Rep. Steve Daines, R-Mont., passed a bill out of the House Tuesday that would add another dimension to a hundred-year-old project in north-central Montana — adding hydropower generation to the Milk River Project. Daines’ bill, H.R. 1963, the Bureau of Reclamation Conduit Hydropower Development Equity and Jobs Act, removes prohibitions from irrigation districts in Montana and other western states from developing hydropower on Bureau of Reclamation canals, ditches, and conduits. It passed from the House without opp...
Anyone wondering if the weather at Fresno Reservoir is nice enough to go there to play can now get online for their answer, thanks to the Fresno Chapter of Walleyes Unlimited. The group mounted a webcam and a weather station on a pole at Fresno Walleyes campground above the public beach at the southeast end of Fresno Reservoir 15 miles west of Havre. At a link accessed from the Fresno Walleye’s website at http://www.fresnowalleyes.com, video of the lake conditions streams l...
A Havre man will spend four years on probation and was ordered to pay nearly $90,000 in fines and restitution for defrauding the federal government through the mail. U.S. Chief District Judge Dana Christensen sentenced William Szudera, 76, in federal District Court in Great Falls. Szudera previously pleaded guilty to mail fraud. Along with the probation, Christensen ordered Szudera to pay $83,700.59 in restitution and imposed a $3,000 fine. The U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a press release that Szudera — who was injured in...
HELENA — Federal officials this week lifted their temporary hold on funding for a $361 million water pipeline for a Native American reservation in northern Montana after Chippewa Cree tribal officials demonstrated they were addressing conflicts and accounting problems. The Bureau of Reclamation notified tribal leaders in March there would be no additional funding for the 50-mile pipeline project until the tribe showed action had been taken. The federal agency found problems that included missing money, a conflict of i...
Laurel — U.S. Rep. Steve Daines has a good idea that is worth looking into. He would let the Bureau of Reclamation allow hydropower dams be built on streams canals and ditches. That would provide jobs and create cheap, renewable energy for Montana. Dart — We have no idea if the people arrested on methamphetamine sale are guilty or not. The courts will make that decision. But the arrest reinforces the feeling that there is a lot more to do in the war on meth. It appeared for a while that progress was being made, and that fewer...
The Chippewa Cree Tribal Election Board of Rocky Boy’s Indian Reservation has removed the former chair of the tribal council as a candidate for the chair, three days after it certified him as a candidate. The Election Board issued a press release Thursday saying Ken Blatt St. Marks is ineligible as a candidate in the May 21 election being held to fill the spot, vacated when the other board members removed him from office. He was listed as one of the certified candidates authorized by the board Monday. The other candidates ann...
BILLINGS (AP) — Federal lawmakers are seeking to lift restrictions on hydropower development so more local irrigation districts could use water flowing through government-sponsored agricultural canals and pipelines to generate electricity. Proponents say hundreds of irrigation systems, the bulk of them in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains, would be able to pursue small power projects under proposals from Western lawmakers. The measures seek to change laws that block or restrict hydropower projects on systems built by t...
AP Photo/Matt Volz Kenneth Blatt St. Marks sits at his home in Box Elder. St. Marks, the former chairman of the Chippewa Cree tribe, is participating in a federal investigation into corruption on the reservation that includes money missing from a $361 million pipeline project to bring fresh drinking water to the reservation and parts of north-central Montana. BOX ELDER — Federal officials temporarily stopped funding a $361 million water pipeline for Rocky Boy's Indian Reservation and parts of north-central Montana after l...
A badly needed water system that would have brought potable water to all parts of Rocky Boy's Indian Reservation has been put on hold. It appears the the books for the project are in a shambles, there are allegations of conflicts of interest and charges that substantial amounts of money are missing. So the federal government has put the project on ice. In an all-too-familiar response, tribal officials and those involved in the mess say they are not authorized to respond and refer questions to people who say they, too, are...
The federal agency that administers Fresno Dam and Fresno Reservoir has decided to increase recreation access at the spillway below the dam, the agency said in a press release Tuesday. Mike LaFrentz, Bureau of Reclamation Marias-Milk Rivers Division Manager, said that the bureau has an obligation to provide safety at and security for its facilities, but, "after listening to comments from the public and evaluating the situation, Reclamation has determined that our safety and security needs can be met while accommodating...
The Bureau of Reclamation said Tuesday that it will increase access to the popular fishing site on Milk River near Fresno Dam. Access was cut off after the Sept. 11 attacks. "After listening to comments from the public and evaluating the situation, Reclamation has determined that our safety and security needs can be met while accommodating additional public access." said Mike LaFrentz, BOR's Marias-Milk Rivers division manager. Fencing will be installed as part of the changes in security, he said. Construction should be...
A day after the tribal government at Rocky Boy's Indian Reservation issued a press release denouncing allegations of misuse of federal money, the federal government unsealed indictments on six people including two prominent tribal officials. The indictments allege embezzlement of hundreds of thousands of dollars of federal stimulus money for a regional water project. Chippewa Cree Business Committee member and former chair John "Chance" Houle, 47, who is also vice chairman of the Chippewa Cree Construction Corp. and...
The Chippewa Cree Tribe of Rocky Boy's Indian Reservation has issued a release saying work on a regional water project is proceeding and that an article reporting that the Bureau of Reclamation had temporarily halted funding on the project contained comments that were "not only taken out of context but untrue." "The numbers reported by the local newspapers don't match the facts," Richard "Ricky" Morsette, acting chair of the tribe's Business Committee, said in the release. A March 21 Associated Press article reported BOR had...
GREAT FALLS (AP) — A Chippewa Cree tribal leader, a former state lawmaker and three others used a fake billing system and a shell company to pocket hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal stimulus aid meant for the Montana tribe, federal prosecutors said Tuesday. The Chippewa Cree Tribe received $33 million in federal funding between 2009 and 2010 for construction of a $361 million pipeline to supply fresh drinking water for the Rocky Boy's Indian Reservation and surrounding counties in northern Montana. Most of that $...
