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Compact supported by multi-generational irrigators

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Editor,

The opponents of the Flathead Reservation Compact and the FIIP Water Use Agreement have been attacking those who support the Compact and Agreement in the most vicious ways. These opponents have gone out of their way to deliver personal attacks on those people supporting common sense solutions to difficult water resource issues. 

Who are the opponents? They are largely led by anti-government activists who have arrived in the reservation community in the last five to 10 years. We have a couple of retired Boeing employees from Seattle, an anti-government activist from Wyoming, another from Arizona, a convicted felon, and realtors and others who own absolutely no irrigated land, but are using the Compact and Water Use Agreement to stir up anti-government sentiments. 

Who are the supporters of the Flathead Compact and the FIIP Water Use Agreement? They are multi-generational farmers and ranchers who have been making their living from their land for generations, some dating back to 1910. They have written letters to Governor Bullock and Attorney General Fox signed by hundreds of irrigators all supporting the Compact and Water Use Agreement and opposing litigation. 

These signatures represent nearly half the irrigated lands in the Jocko Valley and Mission Irrigation Districts and are approaching half the irrigated lands in the Flathead Irrigation District. These signatures have been gathered without any concerted signature-gathering drive, but by neighbors talking to neighbors and deciding they do not like the direction the Flathead Joint Board of Control is going. 

And what of the direction the FJBC and Western Montana Water Users, L.L.C., which is the front for these new arrivals that are creating this controversy? They are suing the two small irrigation districts, using irrigator money to sue other irrigators and paying attorneys tens of thousands of dollars each month. Not a single dollar of the legal expenses being generated by these two organizations is doing anything to improve water deliveries or fix the irrigation project but is instead simply dividing communities, at the instigation of out-of-state, anti-government activists. What is being created by these two entities is an “Attorney Stimulus Package.” 

Harley Coleman
Charlo

 

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