Obstacles in future for FIIP

ST. IGNATIUS — A presentation Monday night at the St. Ignatius Community Center illustrated the tough challenges ahead for the entity now managing the Flathead Indian Irrigation Project.

Serving approximately 3,000 water users, the FIIP has undergone major changes since early April when control of the project was turned over to a local entity. Originally managed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, a branch of the U.S. Department of Interior, the signing agreement turned control over to the Cooperative Management Entity. The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes appoint four members to the CME board, while the Flathead Joint Board of Control appoints four. The hope is that local control will lead to better results, CSKT Chairman Bud Moran said during the signing agreement in April.

“I have every confidence that the cooperative entity we have created will continue to do a good job running this project while protecting the Tribes’ interest and those who irrigate lands to make a living,” he said.

But the severe state of disrepair of the project has raised concern from ranchers and farmers whose land is crisscrossed by the massive project that has more than 1,300 miles of canals and laterals. Several were in attendance Monday to hear what Gordon Wind, the project manager of the FIIP, had to say about changes and improvements.

Originally constructed 100 years ago, the project underwent upgrades that were few and far between through the duration of control under the BIA, Wind said. Of the 10,000 structures and 17 major storage reservoirs the project encompasses, Wind said little has been done to improve even the most important “arteries” of the project. If they fail, he said, major sections of the 128,000 acres the project serves could be in jeopardy of flooding or not receiving water in the spring.

“Where we’re at is fixing what’s broken,” he said. “It’s failing as fast as we can keep up with it.”

Other major concerns are the safety of the project. Many of the dams, pump houses, gates and bridges have issues that could jeopardize the safety of the workers, something Wind said the CME hopes to remedy and avoid.

“There are many challenges ahead and we need to repair and replace deteriorated facilities,” he said.

Some of the basic issues include repairing and maintaining canals and laterals that have become overgrown or flooded. Obstructions like fences sometimes pose issues, he said, but the basic problem reverts to non-maintenance of the waterways.

“We’ve really fallen behind with the weed control and vegetation control,” Wind said. “There hasn’t been an adequate budget for weed control.”

Budget was another topic Wind discussed, and water users could see a nine percent increase in their per acre fees. The change would increase the fee from $23.45 to $25.50 per acre, and though it is more money, Wind said that there hasn’t been an increase in years.

“What this shows is it’s not an increase but getting back to even,” he said, noting that other costs, including fuel, have increased.

Wind said this year’s budget reflects a new approach: more money into materials and less for personnel and administrators. But, he said, employees will be kept with a job year round, rather than having some laid off for five months, as was the policy when the BIA controlled the project.

“We’ll have plenty of work for them year round,” Wind said. “It’s 100 miles per hour at work most every day. It doesn’t get too cold here in Western Montana, so we’ll put on our Carhartt’s and work all year.”

The project employs 41 people, Wind said, including about 22 ditch riders, who monitor and perform maintenance on the canals and laterals. The project received 13 new pickup trucks from stimulus money and Wind said equipment costs would be low because of excavators and other machinery that the BIA transferred over in April. The total preliminary budget he showed totaled $3.37 million.

“The major costs will be in materials, personnel and diesel fuel,” Wind said.

Despite having control of the project for only four months, Wind said the CME is getting right to work, though the going may be slow at first.

“Give us a year or two to get our new culture in place, the new direction we’re going in,” he said. “We’ve got lots of things which are not improvements but fixing things that are broken.”