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Farmers’ land dries up without water

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CHARLO – Water flows through the Flathead Indian Irrigation Project for farmers to water fields and keep their crops growing until harvest time.

The water system is a complicated structure centered on storage and pumping that eventually moves through miles of ditches across the reservation. The project is about 100 years old, and it often breaks.

Farmers faced one of the largest breaks in the history of the project in June. Many irrigators in Charlo were left without water for the better part of the month. Crops started to dry up and the grasshoppers started to move in before the water came back.

“We have an enormous amount of aged, deteriorating structures and they fail every year,” said Pete Plant, FIIP assistant manager.

The problem started in Charlo at Willow Creek Campground just off U.S. Highway 212. There was no indication the ditch would wash out, but it did.

Plant isn’t sure exactly what caused the problem. He said the willow trees were not a factor. The aging system had an empty concrete space that the water flows through and it could have broken and caused the ditch to washout.

“We examined the rubble from the original structure and there were a couple layers on top of it,” he said. One of the original structures was covered up. It was a Band-Aid fix that lasted for a long time. It finally collapsed on itself.”

And it took time to figure out how to fix it.

“We analyzed six different alternative designs,” he said. “We could have done a quick-fix with rocks but we would have had to restrict water through it to keep that from failing.”

Plant said the team decided to utilize a permanent fix. The water was turned off in that ditch, and heavy equipment was brought in to rebuild with new concrete drop structures that keep the ditch from eroding.

“I understand these guys were upset that they didn’t have water,” he said, adding that he sympathized with the situation.

Irrigators got together to talk about what to do once the water was turned on. They worried that farmers at the front of the line would end up with more water and leave the folks at the end of the line, like Keith Krantz, dry for a longer amount of time.

“I lost a crop of hay,” Krantz said.

“I will have to buy hay. Grass hay is about $125 a ton, delivered. And the price of cows is down. This is just another one of those things. Last year, we had a drought.”

Farming has been in his family for generations, and although he has had to seek work elsewhere in the past to make a living, he continues to love farming.

“You scrape by to make a couple bucks and hold it together,” he said. “It isn’t easy but I was born and raised in it.”

Adrian Roylance was also one of the farmers without water. He said he thinks his calves will each be 50 pounds lighter when it’s time to sell.

“It’s the difference between everything you can eat and having half of that,” he said, explaining that without water his fields didn’t produce as much pasture for the cows. He said the fields are so dry in some areas that the grasshoppers have taken over.

“Three weeks into the farming season, we lost the water,” he said. “This is a huge deal. It was right in the prime of the growing season and it was hot and dry.”

He commends the work the FIIP and the FIIP maintenance crew did to repair the washout. He also said the washout isn’t a good reason to increase irrigation tax for future repairs.

“We are already paying enough,” he said.

He believes an emergency crew is needed to fix problems immediately without having to get approval from officials higher up in the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

“Anything could break at any time,” he said. “We need money to be allocated to the right place in an emergency so things get fixed faster.”

He said it would also be better for the project if it were back under local control. Farmer Wade Shepard agrees.

“The BIA is not running the system how it should be run,” he said. “This break shouldn’t have taken so long.”

Getting the project back under local control is one thing that many irrigators agree about. The project was taken over by the BIA after the FJBC experienced internal disputes.

“We need to get it back,” Janette Rosman said. “We need to work together to do that.”

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