Water rights negotiations progress
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PABLO — Negotiating teams from the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, the State of Montana and the United States, acting as trustee for CSKT, gathered at the CSKT Council chamber on Sept. 29, in order to continue work on a Reserved Water Rights Compact.
Duane Mecham, head of the U.S. team at the Water Rights Compact Commission, thanked the Tribes and Chuck Courville for the day-and-a-half tour of Kerr Dam and the Flathead Indian Irrigation Project.
“I got a sense of the plumbing here,” Mecham said.
Mecham called on Mary Price, CSKT staff scientist, for an update after Price’s August presentation on wetlands on the reservation. Price said the last step on wetland and riparian mapping is quality control, to make sure the mapping is accurate. Both the federal and the state technical teams have agreed the wetland/riparian mapping is acceptable and will be the data set used as negotiations progress.
Mecham also said each of the three negotiating teams had take the draft compact to their decision makers after the August meeting and that review of the draft is ongoing.
In other business, John Carter, CSKT attorney, was encouraged by a resolution issued by the Flathead Joint Board of Control on Sept. 13. The Flathead Indian Irrigation Project is co-managed by the Flathead Joint board of Control and the CSKT in the form of the Cooperative Management Entity.
The resolution reads: “The Flathead Joint Board of Control … recognize the close relationship between the operations of the project and the administration and use of water rights, have informally discussed resolving water rights issues related to project delivery of irrigation water.”
The resolution basically means what the tribes need to do is work with the FJBC to develop a plan for implementation.
The resolution did state the FJBC was not agreeing to any partial aspect of the proposal at this time.
“… Things work in small steps, but this (invitation to talk) is a very big step,” Carter said.
“One of key driving issues,” he explained, is that the irrigation project was never designed to serve on a priority basis.
This means that water going down the ditch or canal needs to be evenly distributed; one property owner cannot get more than another.
Of the 95 percent of irrigation use, about 5 percent is not controlled by the irrigation district, Carter added.
“ … If the public has any ideas on how to address the 5 percent, we’d certainly like to hear those ideas,” he said.
Chris Tweeten, head of the State of Montana negotiators, said the FJBC also urges that all members of the governing board be residents of the reservation. Tweeten said the state negotiators are visiting with lawmakers on the issue.
Mecham echoed Carter’s open invitation and said, “Water rights settlement needs to be comprehensive … and resolve all the water rights issues on and perhaps off the reservation.”
Mecham and Jay Weiner, attorney for the State of Montana negotiating team, updated the negotiators on a case before the Oregon Federal District Court.
Judge Retton will either sustain the environmental plan or strike it down by the end of the year or in January of 2011.
The goal, Weiner said, is keeping as much of that water up here as possible, “make sure it remains in Western Montana.”
The next negotiation session was scheduled for Nov. 3 at the KwaTaqNuk Resort and Casino.
