Public meetings set on next phase of St. Mary Diversion rehab

Meetings are set to begin planning for the next phase of rehabilitating the system that provides much — almost all in some years — of the water in the Milk River: the St. Mary Diversion and Conveyance Works.

The Milk River Joint Board of Control, in partnership with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and Natural Resources Conservation Service, proposes to rehabilitate and modernize the St. Mary Canal and associated infrastructure along its existing alignment to improve agricultural water management.

The agencies have set three public meetings in July for people to provide input and help guide planning efforts, in Babb near the diversion and conveyance works and in Havre and Malta.

Milk River Joint Board of Control Program Manager Jennifer Patrick said this is the next phase in the project separate from work on the diversion dam, planning for which is already underway.

Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., was able to include funding that can be used for work on the diversion dam in the bipartisan infrastructure bill he helped draft in 2021.

Patrick said this is to plan other work on the system and to prepare to request funding for it.

Rehabilitating a century-old system

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 by the fall in 6 of 10 years.

The system starts with Sherburne Dam, which stores water in Lake Sherburne on Swift Current Creek; a dike that diverts the water into St. Mary River, the diversion dam that diverts water into the conveyance works, then 29 miles of canals, gigantic metal siphons and the concrete drop structures that drop the water into the North Fork of the Milk River. Most of the system is on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation.

The system took years to complete, often using heavy equipment drawn by teams of horses. Much of the conveyance works was completed by 1915.

The water flows through the North Fork of the Milk into Canada before returning to Montana and eventually flowing into the Missouri River near Nashua below Fort Peck Reservoir. It provides water for irrigators in the Milk River Valley as well as municipal water for communities along the river including Havre, Chinook and Harlem along with providing water to the northern part of Fort Belknap Indian Reservation.

The project was authorized as an irrigation system with funding for its operation and maintenance primarily coming from the irrigators using it.

As repair costs rose, the system was patched together for decades, and, more than 20 years 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.

Before the diversion was built, the Milk River dried up by the fall in 6 of 10 years.

The system has been patched together for decades. Because the Milk River Project was authorized as an irrigation project, irrigators using the water had to pay for most of the upkeep and repairs. Major repairs and rehabilitation usually could not be funded.

More than 20 years ago, a coalition of Milk River water users started pushing for repairs to the project before catastrophic failure occurred. The state formed the St. Mary Rehabilitation Working Group in 2003 to push for repairs and rehabilitation of the system.

That catastrophic failure that occurred in 2020, when the last concrete drop structure where the conveyance works flows into the Milk River collapsed, required shutting the system down. A major — highly successful — effort to get the structure done by fall was added to scheduled work on other drop structures that had problems.

That failure may have helped include parameters that included the project in funding in 221s bipartisan infrastructure bill.

New work in the works

The scoping meetings are for work outside of the diversion dam projects now being planned.

The project is sponsored by the Milk River Joint Board of Control, a release about the meetings said, with funding and technical support from NRCS in Montana. Reclamation has been identified as a cooperating agency. It is anticipated the Blackfeet Nation will fulfill responsibilities typically associated with the role of a participating agency. Farmers Conservation Alliance and HDR are assisting with the planning process as contractors.

The project may include lining and/or reshaping select sections of the St. Mary Canal, stabilizing slide areas, and modernizing existing siphons, drop structures, wasteways, and underdrains. These measures would improve water delivery reliability, restore historic flows in the St. Mary’s Canal, and mitigate the risk of infrastructure failure.

The proposed project is regionally significant, with water diverted comprising 70 percent to 95 percent of the total flow of the Milk River, the release said, and is used by irrigators, municipalities and recreators.

Water conveyed through the St. Mary Canal comprises more than half of the Milk River Project’s water supply for irrigation in an average year.

The planned public scoping meetings are:

Babb Public Meeting

July 13, 2023

Noon to 1:30 p.m.

Hooks Hideaway Motel,

291 Camp Nine Rd., Babb, MT 59411

Lunch will be provided at 11:30 a.m. prior to the meeting start time at noon. An RSVP is requested if joining for lunch, at [email protected] or (541) 716-6085.

Havre Public Meeting

July 18, 2023

11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.

Best Western Plus Havre Inn & Suites

1425 U.S. Highway 2 W., Havre, MT 59501

Malta Public Meeting

July 18, 2023

4:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.

Great Northern Hotel

2 S. 1st St. E., Malta, MT 59538

Participants will have an opportunity to learn more about the proposed infrastructure improvements and submit their comments, ideas and concerns. A recorded presentation will be uploaded to https://www.milkriverproject.com/projects/watershed .

Public comments may be submitted from June 21, 2023, through Aug. 7, 2023. Comments may be emailed to [email protected], submitted online at http://www.milkriverproject.com/projects/watershed, left as a voice message at 406-587-6712, or mailed to: USDA NRCS, Alyssa Fellow, Environmental Compliance Specialist, 10 East Babcock Street, Room 443, Bozeman, MT 59715.

Following the public scoping period, project partners will develop a draft Watershed Plan — Environmental Impact Statement. The public will have an opportunity to review the draft plan and provide additional input.

If a Record of Decision is reached and the Final Watershed Plan-EIS is authorized, the Milk River Joint Board of Control would be able to apply for funding to construct infrastructure improvements through NRCS’s Watershed Protection and Flood Prevention program, authorized by Public Law 83-566. Through this program, NRCS provides technical and financial assistance to local organizations — project sponsors — for planning and carrying out watershed projects for the purpose of watershed protection, flood prevention, agricultural water management, erosion and sediment control, water supply, water quality, and fish and wildlife habitat enhancement.

Additional information is available online at http://www.milkriverproject.com/projects/watershed or the NRCS Montana web page at nrcs.usda.gov/montana.

The meeting locations are accessible to persons with disabilities. A request for an interpreter for the hearing impaired or for other accommodations for persons with disabilities should be made at least 48 hours before the meeting to Preston Brown at 541-716-6085 or [email protected].