Tester Secures over $30 million for water projects

U.S. Sen. Jon Tester announced this week that he secured over $30 million to provide clean, reliable drinking water to families in north-central and northeastern Montana. 

The Bureau of Reclamation funding will support Fort Peck’s Dry Prairie Rural Water Project and the Rocky Boy’s North Central Regional Water Project, which together would serve more than 60,000 Montanans.

“Every Montanan needs clean water — it’s that simple,” Tester, a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said in a release about the funding. “These vital resources will build healthier families, stronger farms and ranches, and boost small businesses along the Hi-Line.”

Work is proceeding on the Rocky Boy’s/North Central Montana Regional Water Project, which was created as an offshoot of the Rocky Boy Water Compact to provide drinking water to Rocky Boy’s Indian Reservation. The project also will provide treated water to communities off the reservation from Loma to Havre and the North Havre Water District in northeastern Hill County east to Sweet Grass and Cut Bank and South to Dutton.

The system will treat water from Lake Elwell at Tiber Dam south of Chester and transport it to Rocky Boy and the communities and water districts off the reservation.

The project has proceeded in a piecemeal fashion, with funding obtained used to build sections that can be added to the system once it is complete. Work on the water treatment plant at Tiber started last fall.

The funding announced this week comes just one month after Tester called on the Bureau of Reclamation to grant the two water projects additional resources.

“Based on (the Bureau’s) own analysis, it could take nearly 50 years to complete outstanding rural water projects. That is far too long for Montanans to wait for access to clean water,” Tester wrote to Brenda Burman, Commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation. “Prioritize these projects and provide the necessary funding to see them through in a timely fashion.”

Tester wrote the Authorized Rural Water Projects Completion Act, a bipartisan bill that will invest $80 million annually for the next 20 years to complete the construction of Montana’s rural water projects, as well as $35 million annually for 20 years for enacted and future Indian water rights settlement bills.

  Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., is a co-sponsor of the bill along with six other senators, all Democrats.

Since 1980, 11 rural water projects have been authorized across the western United States to increase access to clean drinking water in rural areas. Today, five of the 11 rural water infrastructure projects are still under construction due to inconsistent funding from the Bureau of Reclamation.