Fish Screens Installed on St. Mary Diversion Dam

MISSOULA, Mont. (NMB) – Temporary fish screens have been installed on the St. Mary Diversion as current repairs to the System near completion.

The Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Friends of the Wild Swan, and Save the Bull Trout filed a lawsuit last year in U.S. District Court in Missoula against U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services and the Department of the Interior to force fish screens to be installed on the system.

The lawsuit cited the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of bull trout, a threatened species, every year due to poor dam design and operation, unscreened diversions into irrigation ditches and river dewatering.

Both sides of the lawsuit now agree that the request for injunction relief is moot, but Alliance for the Wild Rockies Executive Director Mike Garrity says they are still asking the Court for “Declaratory Relief.”

“That essentially (would say) we won our lawsuit, to establish the fact that the government broke the law. So the reason we’re doing that the take permit from the Fish and Wildlife Service only lasts five years. So we don’t want to have to be forced to sue them again. So if we get a Court order, that’s a stronger measure to force the Bureau of Reclamation to regularly consult with Fish and Wildlife Service on impact of the St. Mary Diversion on bull trout and to have effective fish screens.”

A response provided from the Bureau of Reclamation to New Media Broadcasters disputes Garrity’s claim that the lawsuit led to the temporary fish screens being installed. The statement says that the temporary fish screens, which cost between $15,000-$20,000, were installed, “in accordance with the Biological Opinion released by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on September 4th…in anticipation of operating the canal in October.”

The Bureau added that permanent fish screens could cost approximately $40 million.

The St. Mary diversion system supplies the Milk River with much of its water.

Drop 5 of the system collapsed in mid-May, cutting off the flow of water from the system to the Milk River. A project to repair Drops 2 and 5 is nearing completion, and water is expected to flow through the system again within the next 10 days, weather permitting.

The canal will be shut back off on November 1st to allow for a late season fish salvage.

This story has been updated to inlcude a response from the Bureau of Reclamation