What is Flathead Joint Board of Control doing?
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Editor,
Recently a divided Flathead Joint Board of Control hired a new law firm and at its last meeting discussed hiring a lobbyist. Private property legal expertise was the overriding criteria. No need to have water litigation experience and definitely no need to have experience with this irrigation project. Better to hire a lobbyist to spend the next two months learning – paid for by farmers and ranchers courtesy of the FJBC.
This would be funny if it weren’t so serious. Nothing was said about how a litigation-lobbying initiative based on private property law would secure farmers and ranchers sustained water deliveries. Nor was there any discussion of some of the crucial differences between a water right and other forms of property. For example, one can have a surface or subsurface water right but be cut off if another user has a water right with an earlier priority date.
Meanwhile, back on planet earth, the state and the tribes continue a limited but intense negotiation to incorporate project irrigation water directly into the compact agreement. The mutually agreed objective: to maintain historical based water flows to farms and ranches and increase over time instream flows where the tribes have an earlier priority date. To achieve that objective is a major water management challenge, given that natural water flows vary so much from year to year. As with other compact agreements, it also requires state and federal funding to improve project operations.
Based on what I have seen in recent negotiating sessions I am optimistic about the future of irrigation water deliveries, but I await the final outcome of the negotiation.
Meanwhile those who favor litigation need to go beyond private property slogans and explain just how such litigation would maintain water deliveries to farmers and ranchers.
Dick Erb
Moiese
