Biden announces water funding including for St. Mary Diversion, Fresno Reservoir

Funding to finish three major water infrastructure projects vital to this region was announced Tuesday, with money to finish funding the replacement of siphons in the St. Mary Diversion and Conveyance Works, funding to guarantee completion of the diversion dam and headwaters project and funding to remove and replace joints on the spillway at Fresno Dam west of Havre.

The funding for those projects are part of an $849 million investment from President Joe Biden’s Investing in America agenda to revitalize aging water delivery systems across the West, a press release Tuesday said.

“President Biden’s Investing in America agenda provides transformational resources to safeguard clean, reliable water for families, farmers and Tribes,” said Acting Deputy Interior Secretary Laura Daniel-Davis. “As we work to address record drought and changing climate conditions in the Colorado River Basin and throughout the West, these investments in our aging water infrastructure will conserve community water supplies and revitalize water delivery systems.”

“Reclamation is committed to utilizing these historic investments from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to revitalize our infrastructure for continued reliability and sustainability for the next generation,” said Bureau of Reclamation Deputy Commissioner Roque Sanchez. “These facilities are essential to the West as they provide water for families, farms and Tribal communities, while also and producing hydropower and recreation opportunities for communities throughout the Basin.

The funding includes the last portion of federal dollars to replace the St. Mary River Siphon and Halls Coulee Siphon in the St. Mary Diversion and Conveyance Works.

The system, which provides most of the water in the Milk River each year, has been shut down since the St. Mary River Siphon suffered catastrophic failure in June.

Money has been found from various sources to start work on the project, which began in the summer, and this should finish the necessary funding.

The Diversion Dam Project, which received funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, was set before the siphon failure and also began this summer. Reclamation will receive an additional $10 million for the project to remove and replace the St. Mary Diversion Dam and Headworks with an ESA compliant facility. Funding is provided for implementation.

And Reclamation will receive $4 million for the Fresno Dam project, scheduled to start in 2026 and running in conjunction with an ongoing safety of dams project. The spillway project will remove and replace concrete activities combined with the ongoing

safety of dams project to replace the joints on the spillway. Funding is provided for

design and implementation.

Some funding for the siphon repairs had been found so work could begin over the summer, and the state recently announced an agreement with the Milk River Irrigation Joint Board of Control to release a $26 million loan for the project, with interest for the loan going into a maintenance fund for the Milk River Project, one of the first irrigation projects BOR was authorized to do after it was created in 1902.

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.

A problem more than 100 years in the making

The system, which typically provides 60 percent or more of the water in the Milk River — close to 90 percent or more in drought years — is more than 100 years old. It was one of the first projects BOR was authorized to build after the bureau was established in 1902.

The system of dams, canals, siphons and drop structures was built over a couple of decades, starting on the edge of Glacier National Park and then crossing the Blackfeet Indian Reservation until 29 miles of the conveyance works drops the water into the North Fork of the Milk River, which then flows into Canada before returning to Montana.

The system was built using construction equipment drawn by teams of horses, and was completed more than 100 years ago.

The system also includes a number of reservoirs including Fresno Reservoir west of Havre and Nelson Reservoir near Malta.

The system, created to provide irrigation water, originally was billed completely to the irrigators — and to towns charged for water withdrawals, although primarily to the irrigators — for operation and maintenance.

That was shifted in the past two decades with the federal government taking up a small part of the cost, but the lack of funds for major repairs and upgrades left the diversion and conveyance works band-aided together for most of the last half-century or more.

The irrigation authority started issuing warnings some three decades ago that major repairs and upgrades were needed or the system that supplies most of the water in the Milk — the river ran dry six out of 10 years before the diversion and conveyance works were completed — could suffer a catastrophic failure and shut down.

The state formed a working group, with the lieutenant governor a statutory co-chair, shortly after the turn of this century and the group has been working ever since to find funding for the rehabilitation.

And the warnings of catastrophic failure first came true in 2020, when a concrete drop structure in the system at the end of the conveyance works right where it is dropped into the North Fork of the Milk River washed out and collapsed. That shut down the system supplying the water to the milk.

Local, state, tribal and federal partners along with Montana’s congressional delegation scrambled to get funding and get repairs started almost immediately. That failure — including replacing another of the five drop structures that already had been scheduled for replacement — was repaired by fall and the system was back in operation.

Then in June of this year, one of the massive siphons that carry water over hills in the conveyance works failed, and the water rushing from the failure washed out the second siphon in the pair taught carry water through that part of the system.

The system once again was shut down and soon the Milk River west of Fresno Reservoir was dry.

Work underway while funding was sought

Work began on the siphons, looking at the damage and what needed to be done almost immediately. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., pushed for emergency funding to be used for the initial stages, and a bill he sponsored, co-sponsored by Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., that would have provided funding for the complete repair of the system, was quickly passed out of the Senate.

That bill, the Fort Belknap Indian Community Water Rights Settlements Act, includes funding to repair the diversion and conveyances works, which also provide water to residents on the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation.

It had been including in an appropriations bill before the siphons failed, but was stripped out of the bill by the Republican majority in the House.

The bill that passed the Senate, which has a companion bill by Rep. Matt Rosendale, R-Mont., that was heard in a committee, has languished in the House.

Another project, to replace the diversion dam that diverts water from the St. Mary River into the conveyance system that takes it to the Milk River, is underway. Tester included funding for that project in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act he helped negotiate and an $85 million project to replace the dam was awarded to a Montana company, which has begun the work. The additional funding announced Tuesday is to guarantee completion.

The recent funding from the state for the siphon replacement set up in the agreement between the state Department of Natural Resources and Conservation and the Milk River Joint Board of Control is set up as a loan, with no payments required at the moment on the principal.

Interest payments, set up at $3 per irrigated acre, will go into a fund that will be used to provide maintenance and repairs on the system. The fee means that every $1,000 acres irrigated will require an additional payment of $3,000 from the irrigator into the maintenance fund.

That loan fulfills the irrigator’s obligation on the repair project.

Loan versus grant

Sen. Mike Lang, R-Malta, and Rep. Paul Tuss, D-Havre, wrote the original bill in the last Legislature that provided the funding.

The original bill provided the state funding as a grant to make repairs on the system. Tuss said that, when it came back out of the Senate, it had been modified to make the disbursal a loan. He said he would have preferred a grant to reduce expense to the irrigators, but having the interest payments go back to the maintenance fund will help fund the project for decades.

“It’s wonderful to see things progressing, and I have to give all the credit in the world to the folks working on this project right now,” he said.

Jennifer Patrick, project manager for the Milk River Joint Board of Control, said that, while the current mechanism isn’t as straightforward as the proposed grant, it provides long-term benefits for the irrigation districts by setting aside the $3 per acre into a dedicated Milk River Maintenance Account.