State approves $26 Million for St. Mary Canal Repair

Havre Weekly Chronicle staff

Gov Greg Gianforte announced Tuesday that the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation recently entered into a $26 million loan agreement with the Milk River Joint Board of Control to help fund repairs on the St. Mary Canal.

  June 17, a catastrophic failure of siphons in the St. Mary Diversion and Conveyance works shut down the diversion that supplies much of the water in the Milk River each year. The river where it enters into Fresno Reservoir has been dry for most of the summer.

U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has said the storage should provide enough water for the towns that use the Milk River for their municipal water supply — Havre, Chinook and Harlem — but the shut down cut the irrigation season short for Milk River Valley agriculture producers and means the irrigation season will be very short next year.

Work began on repairs this summer, but completion is not expected until next summer.

Earlier this week, DNRC Director Amanda Kaster finalized the loan agreement with the MRJBOC. The DNRC loan, funded through House Bill 6, provides funding for the repairs and only requires repayment of the interest. Interest repayments will be deposited into an operating and maintenance account designated for future repairs.

Watch for more in upcoming editions of Havre Weekly Chronicle.