Irrigators: Vote against retaining FJBC as united rep
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Irrigators: when your referendum ballot comes, vote against retaining the Flathead Joint Board of Control as the united representative of all fee land irrigators.
Be wary of the positions they are taking on the referendum. They lead to litigation. The water right filing of the joint board with the DNRC has 469 issue remarks on 93 claims (issue remarks are issues that need to be rectified before a water right can be established) These issue remarks will likely be difficult to resolve. Another is in the Water Court Adjudication; duplicate right issues are often resolved by the Court, terminating one of the rights. Nearly all of these claims have a duplicate as the BIA filed nearly identical claims in trust for the Tribes. Both the BIA and the Joint Board claim for the project are seriously deficient.
If there is no compact the tribes will also file for the water right.
Going through the adjudication process with no compact leaves irrigators in serious peril. There will be no money for repairs, no agreement for a low cost block of power, less water for irrigators and after all of that the United States may ultimately hold the water right for the project in trust for the tribe anyway. The tribe will also have the right to file for another 40,000 acres of land to be put under the project to fulfill the purposes of the reservation.
In the compact the tribes have agreed to protect the irrigators. The low-cost block of power stays in place, a fund goes in to help pay for pumping costs, higher instream flows are not put into place until improvements are made to support both the fisheries and the irrigation project and the irrigation project gets an 1855 priority date.
Is it worth trading the certainty of the compact and bet on the seriously deficient claim of the Flathead Joint Board of Control?
When the referendum ballot comes take the time to vote against retaining the FJBC as the united representative of all fee land irrigators.
