Irrigation situation improving but still dire

Precipitation in the last few months has raised the level of water available to the St. Mary Diversion and Conveyance Works that supplies water in the Milk River, but the co-chair of the St. Mary Working Group said the amounts available this year probably still will be low.

Co-chair Marko Manoukian, also a Phillips County extension agent, said recent precipitation in the area has marginally improved things for local agriculture producers in general, but it hasn't had much of an effect on irrigators who have been dealt a huge blow in the past few years.

"It's gonna be significant," he said. " ... We're better off than we were for precipitation, but not from an irrigation standpoint, it doesn't replace that."

At the start of June, Lake Sherburne on the edge of Glacier National Park was filled at 57 percent of average. By June 30, the reservoir was at 114 percent of average, and water being discharged, which is diverted into a system of canals, dikes and metal siphons that transports it 29 miles into the North Fork of the Milk River, was up to more than 669 cubic-feet-per-second discharged.

June 1, the discharge was at 53.25 CFS.

By Sunday evening, Sherburne was down to 111 percent of average with discharges up to more than 801 CFS.

At the start of June, Fresno Reservoir west of Havre was filled to 50 percent of average with more than 1,100 cfs of water being released. At that time, the inflow was about 636 cfs, about 77 precent of average

By mid-June, the reservoir was down to 43 percent of average, with the inflow less than 100 cfs most days and the discharge about 600 cfs. The inflow kept spiking, with high levels corresponding to rain events.

By Sunday, the level of Fresno Reservoir had risen to 67 percent of average, with the inflow at more than 603 cfs, more than 107 percent of average inflow for that date. Dsicharges at that point were being held to about 300 cfs.

Manoukian said it will be a difficult year for irrigators.

At the best of times, he said, the diversion isn't giving irrigators the amount of water they're entitled to, and with the drop failure in 2020 and the subsequent drought, these are not the best of times.

He said, due to the compounding issues faced by the diversion and the recent weather, only a third of the normal number of acre-feet released to the basin's will go out in the next irrigation.

As for livestock producers, he said, they were already short on forage and the situation has been terrible for them as well.

He said he frankly doesn't know how irrigators are going to deal with the situation and pay the bills, and unfortunately he doesn't really see any short-term remedies for these problems.

Manoukian said his group will keep pushing for investment and action on improving the diversion.

He said work will hopefully start soon on the project to rehabilitate the diversion and conveyance works, which will help get the water transported to the Milk. Now, with leaks and evaporation, only a portion of the water diverted actually gets to the irrigators.

Manoukian said that, during last week's meeting, the group mainly spoke about the two active projects going on, the efforts to rehabilitate the diversion and conveyance works, and updates being made to the Fresno Dam.

Manoukian said the representatives from the U.S Bureau of Reclamation during the meeting held by the working group last week said the Fresno project will be going out to a 60-day bid in August of this year and they hope to award a bid in late winter or early spring of 2023, with construction beginning later that year.

As for the rehabilitation project, Manoukian said, shovels won't be in the ground until 2024, but there is plenty to be done before then, from environmental assessments to bid selections and more, so progress is being made.

A recent investment in the more-than-$200 million project was made through the bipartisan infrastructure bill passed by Congress which made almost $100 million available to the project, a number he said he and his fellow group members are very satisfied with.

Despite this investment, he said, there is still lingering frustration that it took so long to see a serious investment in the project from the federal government.

A history of warnings

The St. Mary Diversion was one of the first projects the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation was authorized to build after its creation in 1902, with the project authorized in 1903. It diverts water from the St. Mary River on the border of Glacier National Park through a system of dams, dikes, siphons and canals across the Blackfeet Indian Reservation into the North Fork of the Milk River. The water then flows into Canada before returning to Montana.

The system, built to provide water for irrigation, often provides half or more of the water that flows through the Milk River each year, as much as 90 percent in some drought years. Before it was built, the river dried up in the fall of 6 of 10 years.

However, over its long history, its infrastructure has needed more and more repairs and in recent decades Manoukian and others like him have been pushing hard for reinvestment in the system.

The system was patched together over the years, but over two decades ago users began to warn that if major rehabilitation wasn't done soon, the system would fail, which would be catastrophic to the region.

That failure came in May 2020 when Drop 5 all but disintegrated, which prompted organizations at the local, state and federal levels, to spend the next few months getting the drop repaired relying on emergency funding.

The project was considered a massive success due to the short time in which it was completed, an accomplishment credited to effective communication and coordination between the organizations involved.

However, Manoukian said it really shouldn't have taken two decades of warnings followed by a catastrophic failure to prompt investment in the system, and his group does have lingering frustrations about that as they approach their 20 year anniversary.

"20 years is time enough," he said.

Beyond the need to prevent failures like that of 2020, the system is so old and antiquated it doesn't even allow irrigators to divert the amount of water that they're legally entitled to.

A more recent frustration is the fact that despite the project's obvious importance it was ineligible for American Rescue Plan Act funding, he said.

However, he said, they are continuing to champion the St. Mary Reinvestment Act at the federal level, which could provide another $52 million for the project.

Manoukian said he's also speaking with legislators to request their support on a state investment in the project.

He said going into the next legislative session the state will have around a $1.4-billion surplus, and the group is looking to ask for $100 million of that for the rehabilitation.

He said at the group's May meeting in 2019, Gov. Greg Gianforte, who then occupied Montana's sole seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, said he will work to rehabilitate the system that provides much of the water in the Milk River each year.

"I've got my marching orders," Gianforte said at the time. " ... You have my commitment."

Manoukian said Gianforte regarded it as the most important infrastructure project in the state and he means to ask him to make good on his promises and remind him and his colleagues what a drain the state of the diversion is on the local economy.

"I'd like to hold him to that," he said.