FJBC stand means litigation
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Editor,
The FJBC is trying to convince irrigators they do not want to litigate water rights, but the positions they are trying to sell will lead exactly to litigation.
First, they are trying to lay claim to the water right on a federal Indian irrigation project, located on a reservation, with trust lands intermingled with fee lands. They cannot cite a single case under these circumstances where state irrigation districts or individual landowners owned the irrigation project water right. This position means one thing: litigation.
But the Water Use Agreement (WUA) provides a legally secure right to use Project water for all water users, Indian and non-Indian. And the WUA doesn’t differentiate between allotted and homestead lands, thus solving another potential litigation problem.
Then the FJBC wants to verify on farm water deliveries using irrigation project records. One of the greatest shortcomings of the FIIP is that there is almost no way to measure on farm deliveries. This was to be addressed in the WUA, with the U.S. and the state of Montana providing millions to improve the irrigation project, starting with water measurement and repairs to a dilapidated project. All of this was to be done before any increase in instream flows was implemented.
The only accurate water measurements currently available are for major diversions, and the river diversion allowances in the WUA protect those diversions for the irrigation project. For example, the highest diversion ever recorded into the Moiese Valley is slightly over 18,000 acre feet of water. Under the Water Use Agreement, the FIIP can divert 20,000 acre feet of water to the Moiese Valley—an amount of water secured without litigation.
Finally, the FJBC argues that the six- person Water Management Board (WMB), of which the CSKT appoint two members, is somehow unfair to them, though the WMB will have very little to do with irrigation water, which remains under control of the FIIP. The FJBC wants to cut out the heart of the Compact, which means one thing: litigation.
Let’s pass the WUA and Compact and avoid all this litigation.
Ken McAlpin
Ronan
