St. Mary Working Group talks impact of government deadlock

The St. Mary’s Working Group heard a presentation on the coming century’s water availability projections as well as updates from the group’s various associated organizations at its regular meeting Wednesday at City Hall.

Among the subjects talked about at the meeting was ongoing work developing the group’s strategic plan, including a discussion about the group’s purpose and goals.

Montana Lt. Gov. Kristen Juras, a co-chair of the group, said the current draft has a list of the group’s priorities, including, in descending order, funding comprehensive rehabilitation of the St. Mary’s Diversion and Conveyance Works, flipping the cost share for local irrigators, who currently pay for 75 percent of the system’s upkeep, supporting the completion of work on the dam and providing information about siphon replacement project, assisting the International Joint Commission St. Mary and Milk River Study Board, and the development of a communication outreach plan.

Juras said this list was created based on the assumption that the Fort Belknap Water Compact, which will provide more than $1.3 billion in funding for badly needed work on the area’s water infrastructure, would be passed without incident.

She said the compact was attached to this year’s Defense Authorization Act, which was assumed to be the easiest way for it to pass.

However, she said, congress is currently deadlocked on these bills as a government shutdown looms, so she’s not sure they should vote to adopt the plan until that matter is sorted out, and they know if they need to adjust their priority list.

Juras suggested that the matter be put on the agenda for their next meeting and members consider the matter in the meantime, a course of action Rep. Paul Tuss, D-Havre., who is a member of the group representing economic developers, agreed was sensible.

The group also had a discussion about flipping the cost share of the St. Mary system’s maintenance, which currently requires 75 percent of costs to be paid by local irrigators and most of the remaining money to be paid by the federal government.

Irrigators have argued for decades that they cannot pay as much as they are required — originally, as it is part of an irrigation system approved in 1903, irrigators had to pay all expenses — amount and the result of this cost share has been a lack of upkeep on the system. Indeed, in 2020 a drop structure that was part of the system critically failed which required almost unprecedented coordination between governments and organizations to minimize the damage.

For some time the group and its supporters have tried to get that cost share flipped, and part of those efforts has been the commissioning of an ability to pay study to validate their claims about the unviability of the current arrangement, a study that was recently completed, and did conclude that local irrigators had absolutely no way of paying their share.

Juras said this study is a tool they can use to convince the federal government to flip the ratio, but those efforts are stalled.

A representative from the office of U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, d-Mont., said the biggest issue, as far as she understands, is concerns raised that changing this ratio could set a precedent.

The group also talked about the Fresno Safety of Dams project, which will address 10 feet of settlement of the more than 100-year-old structure, and ensure that cracks observed in the structure do not evolve into safety hazards.

Representatives of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation have said that there is no danger of the structure failing at present, but rather that this project is meant to prevent such risks from ever developing in the first place.

BOR Project Manager Steve Darlinton said work on the project has begun, but it will be a three to four year undertaking, one that will inevitably present some disruptions for the local community.

Darlinton said access to the tailwater fishing area nearby will be restricted throughout the project, but access on the north side of the dam should remain open.

He said the second year of construction will be when the most disruptive work will take place, with access to the road crossing the dam being fully restricted for a considerable length of time next fall.

He said the earliest this work could begin is Aug. 15, but that is not by any means a guaranteed start date.

Whatever the date ends up being, he said, the public will be given at least 30 days of notice.

Working Group Coordinator Dave Peterson asked if some kind of arrangement would be possible to allow local ag producers to get at least some equipment over the road during that time, but Darlinton said that is impossible.

He said they have to dig deep into the dam and it just isn’t possible that they could allow vehicles across, unfortunately.

During the meeting the group was also presented a breakdown of the St. Mary’s Rehabilitation project’s budget by Bear Paw Development Corp. Director of Operations Stefnie Redding who answered group members’ questions about various expenditures and funding mechanisms.

Tuss, who is also Bear Paw Development’s executive director, said he wanted to take a moment to thank his fellow legislator, Montana Sen. Mike Lang R-Malta., who he said was instrumental in getting the state to support the project, and that he’s glad they could work together across parties and houses to get funding from the state.

Lang was not at the meeting Wednesday but members of the group agreed with Tuss and extended their thanks as well.

The group also heard updates on other local activity, including from Milk River Joint Board of Control Program Manager Jen Patrick, who said this year’s irrigation is over, and it was, by all accounts, a very good year.

Patrick said they were able to do a full irrigation and projects in the area are proceeding apace.

Darlinton also gave an update on the water levels of local reservoirs saying that while Nelson Reservoir is looking great at the moment, and Fresno is about normal, Sherburne Reservoir is pretty empty.

He said they are working on getting all their ducks in a row on the St. Mary Diversion Dam project, which is costly and requires some additional steps to approve because of it, but this shouldn’t delay the project’s overall schedule.

He said the project has drawn the attention of some big firms that have expressed interest in taking it on, which is a great sign.

Darlinton also said they have been able to award a contract for cultural and paleontological studies around the rim of Fresno Reservoir and he hopes those studies can help address some of the frustrations expressed by local walleye fishers.

He said they are pushing to have some of the ramp areas prioritized for examination, as those are some of the biggest problem areas he’s been told about.

Members of the working group also heard a presentation from Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation Water Resources Regional Office Hydrologist Mike Dailey, a presentation which included a hydrology model for the Milk River Basin, a projection of future water supplies and demands, an evaluation of water supply risks under a number of possible climate scenarios, and potential strategies to address them.

Dailey said the study used paleohydrology, the study of pre-modern water movement, distribution and quality, to examine the trends of the past, how they have changed and using that, along with modern data, to make predictions about general trends in the coming century.

He said tree rings are one of the primary methods they use to track what water year’s looked like in time before records were taken, and using this, and other indirect methods of study they have compiled reliable data stretching from 1018 to 1999.

Using this data they have created a number of possible models predicting what water years will look like through the 2080s, and the effect climate change will have on them.

Dailey said they have examined a number of possible courses the climate could take, with varying temperatures and moisture levels, but temperatures overall are guaranteed to rise for every month of the year.

He said based on their models it seems like the area will actually see increased precipitation in the cooler months - September to May - but during the hottest months there will be a major decrease.

During those cooler months, he said, they predict that reservoirs will fill quicker than they do now, but will draw down much more quickly and hit minimum storage earlier in the season because of it.

He said this is due to a number of factors including a predicted increase in demand and increased evaporation, both a result of the rising temperatures.

The predicted shortage, based on the data they have, is around 80,000 acre-feet of storage, a 9,000 acre-feet increase from the estimate found in a similar 2012 study.

Dailey said they have proposed some possible solutions, many of which involve increasing the capacity of facilities like Fresno Reservoir and the St. Mary Canal, as well as things like pumping water from the Milk River into Nelson Reservoir, which they said will allow them to capture more water.

Regardless of which of their models turns out to be the closest, he said, it is all but guaranteed that if something isn’t done to address storage the area will not be able to keep up with demand.

He said the full report still needs to be finalized and go through review before it is publicly released, and he’s not sure he can give a timeline for that process at this point.

During the meeting the working group was also given a presentation by Peterson, who said it was designed for all the group’s associated entities, like cities, towns, counties, agencies and so forth, and give them an update on the various activities and projects associated with the group.

He said he wanted to give people in the working group a chance to look at it and provide suggestions for how to improve it.

After hearing the presentation the group suggested that it include more referrals to various members of the group that can provide more information.

Another suggestion was to make clear that while the St. Mary’s Rehabilitation Project will address a great deal of the system’s problems, there are facilities in it that have needs that will not be addressed.

Darlinton said every irrigation district has at least one old facility that is in need, that isn’t going to be addressed by this project and he wants to make sure that people watching the presentation are aware of that.

The group approved the presentation with those additions.