Irrigating woes,with miles to go...

This month marks the end of the irrigation season and according to Gordon Wind, project manager for the Flathead Indian Irrigation Project, there will be no more water orders approved from now on. As things wind down, Wind and assistant project manager Pete Plant will begin to ramp up on an ongoing list of maintenance projects and repairs.

"There's an endless supply of things to be done, we have a shopping list of activities," Wind said. "Some we can't take on until we get funded in January. We are kind of running on a lower than average budget right now."

The Cooperative Management Entity (CME) of the FIIP had a special meeting on July 7 for state representative Congressman Denny Rehberg, who visited Lake County. The new organization, to which project management was transferred from the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) on April 9, sought to update the congressman on the status of several pressing maintenance issues.

The CME recently funded the purchase of maintenance equipment and put its 41 employees and operators to work right away cleaning and maintaining ditches, but according to Wind, "we're playing catch-up."

The largest irrigation project in the state of Montana, the FIIP serves approximately 3,000 water users spread across 128,000 acres, with 17 dams and 1,300 miles of canals and laterals. Started in 1908, the project's distribution facilities and control structures are deteriorated, currently rated at poor or failed condition.

"We have many challenges ahead," Wind said to the congressman. "We've been here about three months and are finding a lot of deteriorated facilities in bad need of repair. The entire distribution system needs it, quite honestly."

According to Wind, miles of canal banks have been tromped down, bridges are crumbling away, sprinklers and fences have been built across the irrigation channels. Above-average spring rains have seriously added to the problem, specifically at Crow Dam and reservoir, which has been under restriction since 2005.

"We've been having difficulty with Crow," Wind said.

A summer rainfall event in 2005 caused water to run up over the spillway and eroded out the floors of the spillway. At the bottom of the shoot, there are holes extending roughly two-feet below the bottom of the spillway. Sound on the concrete is hollow all the way up. There are trees growing up around and underneath it.

"This spring, again, we got all kinds of water," Wind said. "Crow Creek, the stream that flows into Crow Reservoir, flooded this spring and the gates failed. Nobody has inspected it for five years; we were pulling up the gate with one stem (without knowing it), and it all of a sudden, the other stem broke and we didn't have a gate to operate the dam."

Apparently, in 1980, the same thing happened at Crow Dam, and the story goes, the operators were inside the building, working on the gate when it slammed shut, water came up, and blew them off the floor. Since that event, the gates have been operated from the outside.

"Everyone thought that we could just continue to manage this, and then the gates broke. Now, if water were to run over it with all these holes and everything, there's a chance that you could lose the spillway and lose the dam," Wind said.

The board's main road block with federal funding to repair Crow Dam is that it sits 3/4 of a mile above the Flathead River, so if it were to go, there is no loss of life and what they consider "little property damage."

"It's received a lot lower ranking nationally than a lot of other dams," Wind said. "We're somewhere around 19 to 20 out of 46 to 48."

However, there are life-threatening issues regarding operation of the dam, said board member Alan Mikkelsen, of Alpine Research. To patch the spillway, which would buy time until the project can secure federal funding, would cost an estimated $50,000 to $60,000.

Understanding the difficult task ahead, which he equates to "finding the pot of gold," Rehberg asked the board, "Can you pay for it yourself until you make the list?"

To which Mikkelsen responded, "It's not in the budget."

According to the board's chairman, Steve Hughes, irrigators are starting to demonstrate a willingness to make investments now. They put up $500,000 in the past few months for the CME to buy new equipment.

"[The irrigation system] has an economic impact of 25 to 30 million dollars in crop protection," he said. "It's a real lynch-pin for this area. All the parties here are really working toward some common and commendable goals."

"When we started these talks, the joint board and the tribe, I bet 90 percent of the people in the valley thought "this will never happen," Hughes said. "We hung tough. We respected each other and we got the job done. In the process, [the senators] said privately, that if you guys can get this done, we'll get you the money. Today's the day. We're going to try to hold the foot to the fire with these guys, because we did get it done."

At the Sept. 9 meeting of the CME, the board adopted its first official policy since the transfer. It dealt with access to the 1,300 miles of canals for maintenance, spurring debate amongst the public about the need for open access roads and the installation of cattle guards versus swinging gates.

"Pete said he had to open and close 30 gates to go down Pablo's main canal," Wind said. "It's up to the board whether they want to pay for that kind of time."

Several irrigators expressed concern for having to pay $1,000 to install a cattle guard when they would be just fine with a swinging gate.

"You have to understand that this is not going to happen next spring," Hughes responded. "There's been difficulties in the past that are causing us big problems. Over the next 20 years, we will be where we want to be with a modern project."

The board has plans to pick away at the lengthy list of policies they will need to implement in the upcoming years.

First priority is the personnel policy, which was tabled for next month's Oct. 7 meeting. In addition, they will work to outline policies dealing with adding and removing property from the project's control, leasing and moving water between properties, and the processes of doing so legally.

"We will have to schedule a sit-down, and go through the policies one at a time," Hughes said. "Then, by March or April of next year, the project will know what policies it can and can not enforce."