Look to history for answers
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Editor,
I attended a meeting in St. Ignatius Oct. 15 with Congressional documents to help our Flathead Joint Board of Control elected board members understand the laws of the west, in the homestead days. Congress and the presidents made law to be followed forever; look to your land patents.
General Land Office records were to be followed by all in the 17 western states. When we look at them, it’s clear that Congress had no intention of the farmers and ranchers in the west failing to feed America.
Congress opened up this reservation. Tribal allotments came first, having their pick of the land and water; homesteading came afterwards.
The problems may have started on April 3, 1920, when J.E. Bell filed a water right for all the water in the Flathead River at Dixon. How was that possible? It was sold 20 days later to Rocky Mountain Power for $1.
On record in the courthouse in Missoula: Aug 24, 1912, Congress had reserved and appropriated the top nine feet of water in Flathead Lake, above the high water mark of 1909, “for uses and purposes connected with storage for irrigation or development of water power and all Patents hereafter issued for any such lands shall recite such reservation.”
Congress had no intention of this being a deficit irrigation project. The water right books (pages 50, 51, 53, 54) recite irrigation water for 100,000 acres and power production for the benefit of the project in townships 17 to 19 and ranges 19 to 24.
Now we know why the “Copper Kings,” U.S. Dept. of the Interior (BIA), the State of Montana and the DNRC have not adjudicated the water — it has been easier to take the funds and run the irrigation projects into the ground while placing the blame on “We The People.”
Gene Erb
Dixon
