Fort Belknap water compact passes Senate committee

An agreement more than a century in the making to settle water rights issues and provide water to Fort Belknap Indian Community — and to people all along the Milk River — Wednesday when the Fort Belknap Indian Community Water Rights Settlement Act passed out of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs.

The federal doctrine involving tribal water rights — The Winters Doctrine — started in Fort Belknap with the lawsuit Winters vx. United States, in which the U.S, Supreme Court established the doctrine that the federal government is obligated to ensure water is available on Native American reservations.

“Fort Belknap, in 1908, won a settlement in the U.S. Supreme Court that says you can’t have the land without the water,” Stiffarm testified last Wednesday. “It set the way for Indian nations across this country to get their fair share of water, and here we are today, a century later, finally Fort Belknap’s going to be able to settle their water.”

Montana Lt. Gov. Kristen Juris, a water rights attorney, who also testified at last Wednesday’s hearing, agreed that approving the compact is due.

“Yes, President Stiffarm, it is, after a century, time to close this circle and grant this tribe the water rights that were intended for them,” she said.

Several people, including Montana Sens. Jon Tester, a Democrat, and Steve Daines, a Republican, as well as committee ranking member Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, commented on the century between the Supreme Court decision and the Fort Belknap Water Compact nearing final approval.

The water compact, included in water rights settlement bill, S. 1987, is the final in a series of 18 compacts negotiated by the state of Montana and the last Montana tribal water compact awaiting federal approval.

If approved by Congress and signed into law, the compact must then be approved by a simple majority of the members of the Fort Belknap Indian Community and then submitted to the Montana Water Court and be entered into the Montana Water Court as a final decree.

In a release from the office Tester, a member of the Committee on Indian Affairs, said The Fort Belknap Indian Community Water Rights Settlement Act will provide $1.3 billion to improve infrastructure and economic development for the Fort Belknap Indian Community and improve the efficiency of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Milk River Project, which furnishes water for the irrigation of about 121,000 acres of tribal and non-tribal land. The bill will also restore tribal management to 37,582 acres of state and federal land for the FBIC.

It provides for rehabilitation of the St. Mary Diversion and Conveyance Works of the irrigation-based Milk River Project. The St. Mary’s Diversion provides much of the water in the Milk River each year, and the bill’s rehabilitation of the system is to ensure water is available for Fort Belknap Indian Community, while also benefitting all of the other users of the Milk River.

The release said the bipartisan bill is supported by the Fort Belknap Indian Community, the Rocky Mountain Tribal Leaders Council, and conservation groups across the state. The water rights settlement is also supported by local irrigators.

In his opening statement, Tester noted that the bill has support from a wide variety of groups, and he entered into the record multiple letters of support from stakeholders, as did Daines.

Supporters of the bill include Rocky Mountain Tribal Leaders Council, Hill County, Phillips County, Blaine County, Valley County, St. Mary Rehabilitation Working Group, Milk River Joint Board of Control, Blaine County Conservation District, Montana Farmers Union, Montana Farm Bureau, Montana Stockgrowers Association, Bear Paw Development Corp., state Rep.Paul Tuss, D-Havre, and The Wilderness Society.

Daines commented on the wide-ranging support for the bill, including when, even a year ago or even just months ago, the issue was still in contention.

“It is hard to ever get that group aligned on about anything, and yet here we are today,” he said. “Again, President Stiffarm, I commend you for your leadership and vision.”

Years of work and compromise

In his testimony, Stiffarm said the bill would provide a more certain future for Fort Belknap.

“What this water settlement is going to mean for the people in Fort Belknap and in surrounding communities is clean drinking water, water for the future, like we talked about, for our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren” Fort Belkap Indian Community Council President Jeffrey Stiffarm testified in last Wednesday’s hearing. “You know, that’s what we’re all here for.”

Murkowski said in her opening remarks in last week’s hearing that the committee discussed this bill nearly two years, in October 2021, talking about the need to get all the parties to get together to make a real push to reach agreement.

“So, I’m pleased that we’re here with an agreement with broad support including from the governor of Montana,” she said. “That demonstrates great work, so congratulations on that.”

Tester — who noted he was a state senator in 2001 when the compact was ratified by Montana — said the bill the committee was looking at was the results of years of of negotiations between the tribes, local elected officials, irrigators, state legislators, federal agencies and other stakeholders.

“(The work was) to hammer out a fair compromise that honors our trust and treaty responsibilities while guaranteeing water certainty to all water users in north-central Montana through the rehabilitation of the Milk River Project,” Tester said.

He added that finishing the push to pass the bill is crucial.

“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, because my Native American friends taught me this. Water is life,” Tester said. “Water is necessary for crops, for our businesses, for our homes, for life,” he said. “ … We’ve got to get this done because, in Montana, we make good on our promises and we work together to get things done and find that common ground, and that is exactly what has happened with this settlement. For years we have talked about moving this settlement forward and, this Congress, we’ve got a real shot.”

Daines said that he has been working on this basically since he was elected to Congress.

“When I was first elected to the House 2012 over a decade ago, this is one of the first issues I heard about.” Daines said. “I heard about it from the tribe. I heard about it from the county commissioners, Phillips County, Blaine County. Both sides wanted to set me straight on their strong opinions on this compact.

“Less than just a year ago, this settlement still had opposition from numerous groups, and here’s the truth of the matter,” Daines added. “It was going nowhere. It was going nowhere. And, as President Stiffarm so well-articulated, I think we had to put aside the concerns for only ourselves and think about future generations. As he said it’s been a century-long battle.”

Providing the water for the compact

The Milk River Project, one of the first projects the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation was authorized to work on when it was created at the start of the last century, includes a system of dams, dikes, and 29 miles of canals, siphons and drop structures that transports water from the St. Mary River, on the edge of Glacier National Park, across the Blackfeet Indian Reservation and into the North Fork of the Milk River.

The project typically provides half or more of the water in the Milk River, and, in drought years, as much as 90 percent of the water in the river. Before it was built, the Milk River dried up by fall in 6 out of 10 years.

More than 20 years ago, a push to rehabilitate the falling-apart system was started, leading to the creation of the St. Mary Working Group, which Juris co-chairs.

A first step in that project, the rehabilitation of the dam that diverts water from St. Mary River to the conveyance works, is underway. Funding for that was provided through the bipartisan infrastructure bill passed in 2021.

To ensure the Milk River supplies the water guaranteed to the Fort Belknap Indian Community, the water settlement bill also provides for rehabilitation of the diversion and conveyance works.

Juris testified that the rehabilitation is crucial.

“In water circles, we talk about paper water, the tribe’s water rights as described in the compact, versus wet water, the tribe’s ability to actually put the water to use on their fields and in their homes,” she said. “… This bill transforms paper water into wet water, and, quite frankly, without it, significant portions of the tribe’s water rights will remain on paper.”

Wide-ranging support

Stiffarm said it has been a long road getting to where the bill is at today, and took many difficult decisions. He thanked Daines and Tester and all who have worked on the compact, noting that his predecessor, former Fort Belknap President Andrew Werk, worked very hard on getting the compact where it is today.

“A lot of the things we wanted in this bill are not in here, but we’re willing to do that to provide this water for our community members, for our elders, our children,” he said.

Stiffarm said that Fort Belknap has a high rate of suicide — including that of his own son — and a lot of that is because people in the Fort Belknap Indian Community don’t always have necessities that people in places like Washington might take for granted, things like water and homes.

“What this bill is going to provide for our people is hope,” he said, “something to fight for, something to stand for.”

Stiffarm testified that the bill would provide water for residents and agriculture on both ends of the reservation, from the Milk River on the north and from the Missouri River on the south, near Hays and Lodge Pole where people still lack water due to the contamination from the Zortman-Landusky mines abandoned by the Pegasus Gold Corp.

“You know, back home, we got two or three generations living in one home, and with some of the money that we’re going to use and be able to dig some wells and build homes further out from the communities and, like I said, provide better clean drinking water and irrigation systems for farmers and ranchers up and down Hi-Line, and, it’s going to, like I said, provide hope where there was no hope before.”