HAVRE, Mont. (NMB) – Montana Congressman Greg Gianforte spoke with New Media Broadcasters about the St. Mary Canal failure and a bill in the works that may be changing how the canal repairs are funded.
Gianforte said this week they secured a hearing in the U.S. House Wednesday, June 24 to present a change to the canal’s monetary allotment.
“We have secured a hearing to change the funding formula so that the Federal Government will pick up 75 percent of the maintenance and repair costs.”
Gianforte said this funding change will benefit the communities who depend on the canal for domestic water and irrigation.
“When the project was originally initiated over a hundred years ago, the local irrigators were responsible for 75 percent of the costs and the Federal Government was responsible for 25 percent of the costs. Well, unfortunately that puts too much of a burden on local irrigators and local communities that depend on this for domestic water and irrigating over 140,000 acres. So, what my bill does is changes the funding formula and reverses it.”
Earlier this week The Milk River Joint Board of Control and the State of Montana Reclamation announced they will be replacing two drop structures on the St. Mary Canal. Gianforte said he thought this was a smart move and if this bill is passed it will apply to these summer repairs.
“I thought that was a smart move because we have a very short window here. We were going to do two this summer anyway. Drop 5 is the one that failed. So, getting after it is very very important. This is going to apply to these repairs and future repairs. Essentially this infrastructure, over a hundred years old, is failing, and it needs to be replaced. The state has already authorized funds to help match through bonds and now we need to get the Federal Government to do their part.”
The St. Mary Canal is located in Glacier National Park and crosses quite a few jurisdictions but Gianforte said because all participating parties have a common goal it can be done.
“From a negotiations perspective there are so many entities involved. The Department of Interior and Bureau of Reclamation, The Blackfeet Tribe, The Canadian Government, Rocky Boy, Fort Belknap, local municipalities and the irrigation district are all at the table. I think we can get this done because we have a common goal. We gotta get the St. Mary’s project fixed and brought up to modern standards so that the water can keep flowing.”
With a limited supply of water left in the reservoirs that surround the canal, Gianforte said the urgency to fix it couldn’t be higher.
“We have about 60 days of water in the reservoirs that are along the project. The Milk River, according to the experts that we talk with, goes dry six out of ten years if it wasn’t for the St. Mary’s diversion. Essentially what this project does is it diverts water out of the St. Mary’s river which runs out of Glacier through the Blackfeet up into Canada into the Milk River and many of our municipalities and our irrigators literally would not have water by the end of the summer – you’d turn on your spigot in Chinook or Harlem and nothing would come out.”
HDR Engineering and Sletten Construction Companies will be carrying out the replacement.
The replacements are scheduled to be completed by the end of summer 2020 and could potentially provide late water delivery to Fresno Reservoir for next season storage.
For more information visit usbr.gov.
