Gianforte talks about St. Mary Diversion repairs

Rep. Greg Gianforte R-Mont., hosted a roundtable Wednesday at Fresno Beach with irrigators, members of the Milk River Joint Board of Control and of the St. Mary Rehabilitation Working Group to discuss the work that's been going on at the St. Mary Diversion.

The meeting came in the week after a meeting of the St. Mary Rehabilitation Working Group Friday.

Gianforte is leaving his office in a bid for Montana governor, and faces Lt. Gov. and Co-Chair of the St. Mary working group Mike Cooney and Libertarian candidate Lyman Bishop in the November election.

Milk River Joint Board of Control Project Manager Jennifer Patrick said Wednesday they cannot afford to rehabilitate the project under the current funding.

The system is part of the irrigation system the Milk River Project, and is primarily funded by its users, mostly irrigators and also municipalities - like Havre, Chinook and Harlem - that use it for city water.

Gianforte and Sens. Jon Tester, D-Mont., and Steve Daines R-Mont., are trying to shift the funding for the system from about 75 percent provided by the users and 25 percent by the federal government so the federal government picks up about 75 percent of the cost of operation and maintenance.

"There is no way for us to go up and fix projects like we're doing right now, after the state has come forward with some bonding - a big lift through Reclamation," Patrick told Gianforte Wednesday. "At the end of the day, there's still $200 million in projects up there, so that's why we want to work with you through that process. We just want to be on your radar as we move forward in whatever position."

The St. Mary Diversion was one of the first projects authorized for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to work on when it was created at the start of the last century. The diversion and conveyance works, a 29-mile system of dams, canals, metal siphons and drop structures, transfers water from the St. Mary River into the North Fork of the Milk River, where it flows into Canada and then back into Montana.

The diversion has been band-aided together for decades, with most of the funding coming from the users of the system.

The St. Mary Rehabilitation Working Group was created in 2003 to plan for the system's rehabilitation and how to fund that rehabilitation.

After several decades of Milk River irrigators and other users warning that the system was facing catastrophic failure, May 17 that happened when the last part of the conveyance works, Drop 5, collapsed.

Work on Drop 2, which was expected to fail, already was planned and the work on Drop 5 was added to the project and work is ongoing on their rehabilitation.

The discussion Wednesday reiterated some of the talking points from the St. Mary Rehabilitation Working Group meeting Friday.

Gianforte said, normally, government and fast don't go in the same sentence together.

"It's been remarkable how much progress has been made and I don't have to tell you how important this project is," he said. "I've been saying for years that this is the number one infrastructure project in the state in need of repair. We knew it was along the tooth. We had the failure in May. We're close to turning it back on in October."

He said he understands the impact for the irrigators as it provides water to irrigate about 140,000 acres.  

Patrick said it also provides water for five city municipalities, reservoirs and recreation.

At Fresno Reservoir, she said, it is a lot better than they thought.

"We are about five years higher than we were in 2017, when we had the shutdown and drought conditions," she said.

Gianforte said he understands the St. Mary's Diversion is the lifeline of the Hi-Line, and without water one doesn't get production.

Fort Belknap and Rocky Boy Indian Reservation, he said, also depend on the domestic water.

Rocky Boy generally does not use water from the Milk River.

"It's critically important, and we've been taking steps and we've made some progress," Gianforte said. "We need to get the funding formula fixed, so we flip it. It's the earliest BOR project - other projects in the state it is 75 percent fed match and 25 percent local. This was just done early and done incorrectly, so we need to fix it."

He said he has gotten a good audience in the Natural Resources Committee for this and been in front of the committee a number of times, advocating and keeping pushing that bill. 

There may be an opportunity in some of the year-end appropriation bills to get that included, he said, adding that he will continue to work on that.

"That status of that bill it passed out of committee, it passed out of the House - it is attached to one of the major appropriations bills - the House is done, it's off in the Senate's hands now," Gianforte said. "Given there is an election this year, we'll probably have a continuing resolution and these appropriations bills will be considered in the lame duck of Congress between Election Day and the first of the year."

He said he's been encouraged by the progress that has been made.

Milk River Joint Board of Control President Wade Jones said he appreciates the irrigators are driving this project, but without the water and before the St. Mary work started many years ago, it was known that this system was a dry system six out 10 years.

"With that factor, I think we're also losing the fact that human life is in jeopardy without the water," he said. "I really think that has to be stressed. This system is also part of the Blackfeet Reservation who has also been a real partner in this endeavor that we're under and again, we've got to give kudos to Jennifer for what is getting accomplished up there. It's remarkable. (Bureau of Reclamation Montana Area Manager Steve Davies) has made a statement too. Any help we can get it's thoroughly appreciated."

Gianforte said it's been a real collaborative effort.

"There's been a lot of teamwork here to make this happen and it's been very impressive," he said. "... In Montana, when the tractor is broke you don't form committee, you don't call a consultant, you just get her done."

Patrick said that the Bureau of Reclamation, Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation and all Montana's delegation were on a phone call after the Drop 5 failure.

Everyone, no matter what, was on that initial call, saying, "How can we help" - that's huge for the board and the users of the system, she said.

She added that it is setting a template on how they move forward on these projects.

Five years ago, they kind of thought they'd be here and working toward this, she said, Nelson Reservoir was transferred to the Joint Board for them to do the work.

"We need to keep doing that, but we need to be able to figure out how to come around and pay for that," Patrick said.

Gianforte said that's why they need to get the funding formula fixed to flip it 75/25.

Patrick said they aren't receiving any money from Canada for the project, at this point. 

The North Fork of the Milk River flows into Canada after the water is transferred by the diversion, and agricultural producers and communities in Alberta rely the North Fork of the Milk River for their water.

She said they are having conversations on total rehabilitation. 

Sweet Grass and Coutts in Alberta are 100 percent reliant on the Milk River, and so they are 100 percent reliant on the system without paying for it, she added.

"I think that has also brought a big exclamation and a question mark, so the International Joint Commission (that oversees and resolves water disputes between the U.S. and Canada), they have been having the conversations both ways," Patrick said. "There has not been a dollar sent down."

BOR manager Davies said every Reclamation project is uniquely authorized by Congress.

Every project has its own allocation percentages, he said. 

Milk River was authorized in 1905, where 100 percent was funded by the irrigators, he added. 

Patrick said there isn't really a recreation component included in the Milk River Project.

Right now, Drop 2 is 85 percent done, she said, they've got one wall that needs concrete and then are waiting on the liners, which come in Monday, Sept 21.

After that the sprayed concrete will come in, and do the inlets and slopes and everything - Drop 2 is done, she said.

"Drop 5 ,we've got some pretty heft pours coming this week," she said. "One kind of got pushed back, but the liner we've moved from the bottom as you've seen in pictures we've moved them from the bottom to the top to get the liner to coincide and the shotcrete together. We'll pour the second to last floor in Drop 5 (today) should be about 160 yards in the floor, so it's a good pour then we'll move down and focus on the walls coming up. We've kind of made some decisions to put height early in there and be able backfill earlier, but we're seeing compression testing - we thought 28 days, we're seeing it between seven and 14."

She said they are looking at doing some backfilling and doing reclamation on that structure.

They might have come in next year and see things like that, she said, but they are hoping to be done by middle October - it is weather-dependent.

Davies said they normally don't operate in October, but they are on borrowed time up there and it is weather-dependent.

He said that they're holding water in anticipation they can operate in three weeks into October. 

Phillips County Extension Agent and St. Mary Rehabilitation Working Group Co-Chair Marko Manoukian said the next thing possible in terms of how it is going to be paid is the siphons, which are more than 100 years old.

He said it might be costing them $13 million more since they first studied them in 2006.

"Time has not helped us in delaying this," he said. "I think if we can get the 75/25 changed, I think the next challenge you'd have as a governor is how do you fund the 25? Alberta, Canada St. Mary has figured out they provide about $50 million to their irrigators in grants to work on infrastructure, we may have $100,000 per irrigation district funding across the state."

Gianforte said this is the most infrastructure project in the state in terms of importance to the community and potential of a failure, which now has been seen.

"It is both for irrigation and domestic water, recreation - it is the lifeline of the Hi-Line," he said.