Tester 'Disappointed' Trump Administration opposes St. Mary's Reinvestment Act

U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., expressed his disappointment in a press release Wedensday after the Trump Administration announced its opposition to his bipartisan St. Mary’s Reinvestment Act, which would boost critical investments in the Milk River Infrastructure Project that thousands of Montana farmers rely on for access to reliable irrigation water.

The St. Mary’s Reinvestment Act, introduced by Tester along with Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., and Rep. Greg Gianforte, R-Mont., would require the federal government to cover 75 percent of the costs for upgrades to the century-old water project. Currently, the federal government only funds 26 percent of the project, sticking local users with the rest of the tab.

“This bill is a responsible investment that’ll help farmers and ranchers across the Hi-Line, without sticking local irrigators with an out-of-control bill,” Tester said. “I’m disappointed the Trump Administration can’t see that, but we’ll keep working hard to secure these critical investments in Montana’s water infrastructure.”

Daines pushed for support of the bill in a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Subcommittee on Water and Power hearing Wednesday.

He said the St. Mary Diversion that supplies much of the water that flows through the Milk River each year, one of the first authorized for the Bureau of Reclamation to work on when it was created in 1903, is in dire need of repair.

“Agriculture is our No. 1 economic driver in Montana,” Daines told Department of the Interior Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Water and Science Kiel Weaver. “A reliable water supply for irrigation is absolutely critical for our farmers and ranchers. Without water we don’t have an ag industry in Montana.”

The delegation’s bill will cover 75 percent of the cost of upgrading and operating the Sherburne Dam and Reservoir, Swift Current Creek Dike, Lower St. Mary Lake, St. Mary Canal Diversion Dam, and the St. Mary Canal.

The Milk River Water Project provides water to 18,000 Montanans and irrigates enough cropland to feed one million people.

The diversion, which is part of the Milk River Project, uses the dams, diversions, canals and siphons to transfer water from the St. Mary River to the North Fork of the Milk River, which then flows into Canada before coming back into Montana north of Rudyard and Hingham. Before the diversion was built, the Milk River dried up by fall in many years.

Cost of maintaining and operating the system was put on the users when it was created, with the irrigators in the Milk River paying most of the cost.

The system has been patched for decades, but is in need of major rehabilitation or rebuilding.