St. Mary dam reconstruction on track

If everything goes right, rebuilding the dam and intake structure that diverts much of the water flowing through the Milk River could begin within a couple of years.

A Bureau of Reclamation official made the prediction Wednesday in Havre.

Kelly Titensor said the bureau expects to start scoping meetings for National Environmental Policy Act requirements in August or September, with a goal to have the procedures to meet those requirements completed by Sept. 30, 2011.

"It is ambitious," Titensor said in response to a question about the schedule during a meeting of the St. Mary Working Group.

The construction would be the first step in a decade-long effort to rebuild the St. Mary Diversion, authorized by Congress in 1903 to provide water to irrigators in Montana's Milk River Valley.

The project diverts water from the St. Mary River, which starts at Glacier National Park and the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, into the North Fork of the Milk River. It then flows through Canada before re-entering Montana.

The project was authorized with maintenance costs to be fully paid by the Montana irrigators using the water, although the system also provides water for recreation and is purchased by cities including Havre for municipal water.

In 2007, Congress authorized rebuilding the system, which includes 29 miles of canals and siphons as well as the diversion dam and a dam creating Sherburne Reservoir. While no money was set aside for the project, Congress authorized a price tag of $153 million.

The plans for the diversion dam — and Sherburne Dam, which is proceeding on a separate time line — is not actually part of that project. A total of $3 million was appropriated and used to study how the diversion dam affects a threatened species, the bull trout.

Jim Mogen of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who has been studying the bull trout in the St. Mary watershed since 1997, said the initial ideas for the reconstruction will include a fish ladder on the new dam allowing migratory bull trout to move upstream, as well as traps to make sure the fish are not moving into the diversion canals and leaving the watershed.

Titensor said the work on Sherburne Dam, which is used to store water that then is used for the water diversion, is moving on a faster track. The design for those modifications is expected to be completed by December, he said.

"The next step will be to find out where the money is coming from to make those (modifications)," he said.

He said the hope is to have plans for the dam ready and required studies completed by Jan. 21, 2012. The bureau then would look for money for the project.

Larry Mires, executive director of the working group, said funding for that project has been requested, but political cycles could set that back.

Mires said the group requested $20 million from the next budget for the project, but it appears Congress will not fund budgets before the November election and will use a continuing funding resolution in the meantime.

That resolution would wipe the $20 million request clean, and Mires asked if the bureau could request construction money for the project before the environmental assessment is completed.

Mires said he believes the assessment must be completed before the bureau requests construction money, but that there may be precedents and ways to get around that requirement.

"What our logic was, by our requesting construction dollars for 2011, as soon as the EA was completed, the bureau could begin initial construction and turning dirt relatively soon by 2012," he said. "As it turns out now, that could be moved back considerably if we can't get that request in sooner."