FIIP crews prepare for fall maintenance and repairs
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ST. IGNATIUS — The Flathead Indian Irrigation Project is looking ahead to maintenance and repair as the summer ends and the flooding season subsides.
“The streams are finally starting to slow down,” hydrologist Pete Plant said. “But they are still high.” Plant added that the slow down is in part due to recent hot, dry weather.
“These creeks keep producing because we still have snow high up (in the mountains),” he explained.
As a result of the low precipitation, manager Gordon Wind said his crews are now able to start cleaning and clearing ditches. His office has received a number of complaints concerning clogged ditches. According to Wind, crews unclogged about 60 miles of ditches last fall but still have many more to finish.
They will also begin work to remove rock sediment that washed onto the banks of the Jocko River after it flooded earlier this summer. Wind explained that these crews couldn’t put the sediment back into the river because it could adversely affect nearby bull trout, a protected, endangered species of fish.
Other maintenance projects FIIP crews are working on include the K canal of the Jocko River and the Crow Dam.
In 2009, FIIP received two grants worth $1,000 a piece from the Montana Legislature’s Renewable Resources loan and grant program. Some of that money has gone toward lining the bottom of the Jocko River’s K Canal so that water does not leak into the ground. According to program guidelines, the project must be completed by the end of the year. So fa,r crews have completed 1,500 of the 6,000 total feet.
“Around mid-September people (in that area) should expect stock water to be delayed,” Secretary Alan Mikkelsen said. “It’s a huge project.”
Wind also gave an update on the Crow Dam project the FIIP started in June. In five days FIIP crews fixed a deteriorating spillway at Crow Dam by removing and replacing 65 feet of concrete, which was funded by the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes’ Safety of Dams program. The Bureau of Indian Affairs Safety of Dams program in turn funded CSKT’s program.
In addition to the spillway, FIIP crews have also made repairs to the upper gate of the dam but were not able to replace the bottom gate. Both gates release water from the dam and at this time, only the top one works.
Wind doubts the project will receive further funding.
“(But) We were told money was going to be made available,” he said. Wind estimates the repair will cost $100,000. He and FIIP board members are currently drafting a letter to Director Stan Speak of the Northwest BIA in Portland requesting money to fund the gate repair.
Wind also shared with the FIIP board that he was notified of a formal complaint against the FIIP filed with the Environmental Protection Agency. According to Wind, the complaint was filed by residents in the Charlo area of the Jocko water system concerning use of herbicides Garlon 3 and 4.
“The CME (or FIIP) has Garlon 3 but has never used it,” Mikkelsen said. He also explained that the FIIP has not determined whether it needs to be used and that up until this point all removal of trees or weeds has been done mechanically.
“The BIA has used it in the past. We (FIIP) have never used Garlon 4.”
“We are being accused before we even start,” Wind said of the complaint. He also said they have not been able to read the particulars of the case because it is still under EPA investigation.
