Compact doesn’t protect beneficial use
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Editor,
This is in response to Senator Bruce Tutvedt’s opinion column, published the Jan. 28 issue.
Your principles (rules or standards) dealing with the CSKT Compact are not working better nor show accountable treatment of all Montanans. Conscience is the state of being aware and you have been so misguided. By definition you could be labeled the extremist: holding political views that deviate drastically and fundamentally from convention, traditional belief or law.
The CSKT Compact transfers state waters to the U.S. government and gives control of said waters to the CSKT Tribal government.
The Reserved Water Rights Compact Commission touts to protect water rights but it doesn’t protect water rights or the beneficial use of the water. The historical allotted farm use of water on the Flathead Reservation will be reduced by 70 percent, devastating non-tribal agriculture endeavors. The CSKT Compact has not quantified the water needed to support agricultural land owned by tribal and/or nontribal land owners ensuring sufficient water to maintain northwest Montana agriculture.
Negotiations: a dialog between two or more parties intended to reach an understanding and resolve. The RWRCC as one group collectively crafted a compact for the sole benefit of the CSKT. Approximately 90 percent of the reserved irrigable land is privately owned by non-native Montanans, not the CSKT. Private land owners were not represented or included during the decade-long negotiations. Public input or comment was not solicited until private negotiations with the CSKT were finished on April of 2012. The public was then solicited to review and was granted only two weeks to comment. Article III of the Treaty of Hellgate secures “the right to take fish ... in common with citizens of the territory” has been incorrectly claimed by CSKT as an off-reservation water right. The following site, https://westernmontanawaterrights, will provide the reader insight to the negative impact and overreach of the CSKT Compact as related to the Hellgate Treaty, Stevens Treaty, Dawes Act, Winters Doctrine, state laws and federal laws. Our state representatives need to be fully informed before approving this ill-conceived 1,400 page CSKT compact.
Richard Coleman
Hamilton
