By Josh Margolis
HAVRE, Mont. (NMB) – Currently, the sole source of water to Havre comes from the Milk River, just downstream of Fresno Reservoir.
However, according to Public Works Director Dave Peterson, that may change.
Peterson says the North Central Montana Regional Water Authority is currently working on the design of a pipeline to bring water to the city from Tiber Reservoir.
“Once completed and once the water plant is running out at Tiber, that will give the city about 6.3 million gallons of water that we can use for distribution within the city. That project has been going on, it’s been over 20 years since that project first got looked at. Because we were looking at that when the city was doing the plant upgrades in 2000 … We joined (NCMRWA) back then, and it’s been 20 years, basically, to get to this point. So they’re hoping probably in the next year or two that the water line will be to the city, to our west tank. And again, once that plant gets up and running, we can use water from that system to supply the city’s system.”
Peterson says once the project is completed, the benefits to Havre will be significant, as they could double the amount of water they receive per day if needed.
“Our plant that we have that runs gets the water off the Milk River, that is a six million gallon a day plant. So the water that we bring in from the NCRW, we can get up to 6.3 million. That doesn’t mean that we have to take all of it. By contract, we’re only required to take a third. We’ll probably take a little bit more than that from the regional water, just by the way the systems will have to work together. It does allow us, if something were to happen to our plant or to say, our allocation from the Milk River, we could get 6.3 million gallons from the North Central Regional Water System.”
More information about the system can be found at NCMRWA.com.
