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Editor,
I have consistently addressed water rights issues and flawed estimates regarding city water capacity whenever the Polson City Commission has addressed annexation and subdivision development in the past eight years. June 17, 2013 a proposal to rezone and annex a 157-acre parcel of land southeast of the city was on the City Commission agenda. I wrote a letter to the city documenting why I thought the city had not been transparent about water rights issues concerning four out of the six existing city wells and suggesting that it was important the issues be discussed and that citizens be given an opportunity to know how the recent Compact with the Salish Kootenai Tribes would affect the outcome of existing and future city wells. At the Commission meeting I read a letter addressed to me, February 12, 2007, in which Mayor Marchello wrote, “In response to the question you raised at the city council meeting Monday last, the City Attorney apprizes me that the legal status of the city’s existing and potential future public water supply well permits depends on the resolution of several direct and resulting questions now pending in connection with negotiations between the Tribes and the State of Montana ...” In my statement to the City Commission I said I was unable to get a clear picture as to how the city’s unique water rights issues were handled in the Compact submitted to the State Legislature in 2013. I suggested the city be clear about what was negotiated in the Compact concerning the city’s water rights before promising water service for development.
Water Superintendent Tony Porrazzo responded to my presentation saying, “The Compact does not control this. The city is in a whole different ball game. We came up with the Brueggeman Bill in 2003. The Compact that they’re doing is personal wells and irrigation wells.” However, an article in a local newspaper, dated March 6, 2003, quotes Mr. Brueggeman to say, “This is not a change to existing use, the bill should not affect the (water rights) negotiation process.”
Margie Hendricks
Polson
