St. Mary Working Group to meet in Havre Tuesday

A group working to rehabilitate the system that provides much of the water in the Milk River every year will hold its April meeting in Havre Tuesday.

The St. Mary Working Group monthly meeting will start at 10 a. m. in the Havre City Hall Conference Room in the lower level of Havre City Hall.

The agenda for this month's meeting includes discusion of an engineering study for work planned on the diversion dam and the headworks of the St. Mary Diversion system, an update and review of agreement processes, and a presentation about the Missouri River Recovery Implementation Committee, a nearly 70-member committee authorized by Congresss in 2007 to make recommendations and provide guidance on a study of the Missouri River and its tributaries and on activities in the existing recovery and mitigation program for the river.

Work has been going on for more than a decade to find ways to rehabilitate and preserve the St. Mary Diversion, one of the first projects the newly created U. S. Bureau of Reclamation was authorized to build in 1903.

The diversion system supplies 70 percent of the water in the Milk River in most years, and more than 90 percent of the water in extremely dry years. The diversion was authorized in 1903 to provide water for irrigators, but also provides water for communities including Havre, Chinook, Harlem and Fort Belknap.

The system has been patched and repaired over the years, but Hi-Line residents and state agencies have said it could collapse in a catastrophic failure if it is not completely rehabilitated.

The diversion is part of the Milk River Project. The system diverts water from the St. Mary River, which starts in Montana at Glacier National Park and the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, into the North Fork of the Milk River. It then flows via the river through Canada before re-entering Montana.

The project was authorized with maintenance costs to be fully paid by the Montana irrigators using the water. Municipalities purchase water from the government for their use.

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 at that time authorized a price tag of $153 million.

Projects being considered for Sherburne Dam, the diversion dam and the headworks are not actually part of that project. Congress appropriated $3 million to study the diversion dam primarily in the context of how it impacts a threatened species, the bull trout.

A study of the bull trout in the St. Mary system has found the species to be in good shape in that watershed, but work to mitigate the impact still is ongoing.

The new diversion and intake dam being planned for construction would provide equipment to reduce the impact on the fish, and prevent it from being sent down the line to the Milk River.

The meeting Tuesday is scheduled to run until 3 p. m.