Water use agreement based on falsehood
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Editor,
The former “stipulation agreement,” now re-branded the “water use agreement,” is not an integral part of the Federal Reserved Water Rights Compact for the Flathead Indian Reservation – as clearly stated many times by our state commission. It was never part of any negotiations in which our state commission engaged in with the federal government or the CSKT for the federally reserved water right to fulfill the purpose of this reservation.
The WUA was a somewhat shrewd product of the false-flag claim that the CSKT owns all the water within the boundaries of the reservation, a concept finally agreed to by our state commission in 2005 (after Gov. Schweitzer’s election to office) to afford a continuation in the negotiation process that had stagnated in 2003 – prompting a two-year attempt at an “interim agreement,” which also failed.
If the federal reserved water rights were quantified per the 1908 Winters Decision, as previously accomplished on the other six reservations in Montana, everyone would have all the water we need, without all of the coercion and threats of lengthy litigation costs, need to lawyer-up, ad naseum. The WUA is a farce, satisfying an invented need, or problem, to justify control of water on the reservation by the CSKT to fulfill the Tribal Council’s demand that they own all the water, as continually stated in public meetings by Pat Pierre, spokesman for the CSKT. Accept and pass the WUA, and you acknowledge that claim.
Giving up your right to water within the Flathead Irrigation Project, created by the Federal Bureau of Reclamation (and subsequently paid for by the irrigators themselves) is not a decision to be made lightly.
The WUA is only necessary if you agree that the CSKT has total ownership of all water within the boundaries of the original reservation — underground, above ground and falling on the ground – and, are willing to ignore the 1908 Winters Decision and the Montana State Constitution. Accepting this unnecessary agreement is presumptuous, at best; it is based on a fantasy that exists nowhere else on earth – what gives it valid form here?
Michael Gale
Ronan
