Irrigation board to participate in water compact negotiations
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ST. IGNATIUS — The Flathead Joint Board of Control worked last week to create a document that will articulate exactly what its members want included in and excluded from the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes Water Compact.
The state attorney general and governor’s office have offered to listen to the concerns of the board that represent hundreds of irrigators impacted by the compact. The compact is currently being renegotiated between the state, federal and tribal governments ahead of next year’s legislative session.
“The governor has made clear to the compact commission that he wants the irrigators’ concerns to be met,” Assistant Attorney General Cory Swanson said. “The most difficult part of that is understanding exactly what those are and how to meet them, so as the negotiations move forward (the board’s) input is invaluable, certainly from our point of view, to make sure we understand as it comes together that we know whether it will meet (irrigators) needs for sufficient water and a guarantee for reliable water.”
The compact failed to make it to the floor of the legislature for ratification in 2013. The board was a party to the original compact negotiations and the commissioners were meant to be signers to the compact’s adjoining Water Use Agreement. The board disbanded in late 2013 and several lawsuits were filed that resulted in the board losing its spot at the negotiating table. The State of Montana is now acting on behalf of irrigator’s concerns.
“The joint board is not a formal party to the negations in my own personal view there has been a loss of expertise on irrigation matters in the conversations of negotiations,” Swanson said.
Swanson said the governor and attorney general’s office have no official authority in the negotiations save through the governor’s appointee to the negotiating team, but that both offices are closely following the process given its potential political ramifications for the 2015 legislative session. Swanson promised to listen to the board, but could make no guarantees that any of the board’s ideas would end up in the final compact.
“It is not any kind of way for us to re-scramble the negotiation, but to ensure that when it comes down to the nuts and bolts of making this work for farmers and irrigators on the reservation that your needs are fully understood,” Swanson said.
Since last year, the Flathead Joint Board of Control has had three main concerns that it has pushed to be addressed in the proposed Confederated Salish and Kootenai Water Compact. The board wants to have ownership of the bare legal title of water flowing through the Flathead Indian Irrigation Project and property owners to have the beneficial use title to the water.
The Flathead Joint Board of Control also wants to rework the structure of the Unitary Management Ordinance that would create a board of tribal and non-tribal members to handle certain water issues that arise on the Flathead Reservation in the future. This element of the compact is currently not within scope of the renegotiation process, which is narrowly focused on addressing concerns related to water rights of the Flathead Indian Irrigation Project.
In addition, the Flathead Joint Board of Control asks that delivery of water to be verified as equivalent to historic use.
“The Tribes have asserted and federal attorney Duane Mecham sat in this room and said ‘You will not lose a single drop of irrigation water,’” Flathead Joint Board of Control Attorney Jon Metropoulos said. “Now we don’t know that they are not right, but we don’t know that they are right either. We’re trying to verify it.”
A committee consisting of Metropoulos and another attorney, water expert Ed Everaert and Mission Irrigation Commissioner Jerry Laskody were expected to work over the weekend to come up with a proposed process that would verify and measure water distribution. Laskody was chosen to serve on the committee because he has spent much of the summer months scrutinizing the modeling systems the Tribes used to come up with the system of water distribution included in the current proposed compact. The state’s legislative Water Policy Interim Committee conducted a technical analysis this summer that found the Tribes’ modeling to be imperfect but sufficient for the compact negotiations to move forward.
Laskody was still unhappy with some elements of the models.
“We can’t accept a compact that doesn’t recognize our legitimate needs for consumptive use,” Laskody said.
Metropoulos said creating a proposed process of verification would be difficult because of the multiple interests involved in the compact, but not undoable. Time is of the essence in the process.
“Given the size and complexity of this issue, a compact that is not done by Christmas is a compact that has a diminished chance of success in the legislature,” Swanson said. “I think the ideal thing is to have a compact that is agreed upon in principle by Thanksgiving.”
