Water saga continues

ST. IGNATIUS — On Monday, dozens of local irrigators attended the monthly meeting of the Flathead Joint Board of Control (FJBC) to have their questions and concerns addressed regarding the ongoing water rights negotiations on the Flathead Indian Reservation.

Rancher Everitt Foust of Moiese explained that he and his fellow irrigators are interested in the discussion because “water is our key issue to our survival.”

Foust wants to ensure that rainfall is properly taken into account, contending that the Western portion of the county is more arid than the East.

“If you want to make it equitable across the board, you’ve got to figure rainfall into it,” Foust said.

Like many others in the area, he is worried about the impact that the negotiations will bear on the value of his farm.

“We don’t want to be pitted tribal member against non-tribal member,” he said in his hope for a fair resolution. “We just want to get the value we paid for our property.”

Foust added that, “the sooner we can get this issue settled in a fair and equitable way, the sooner property values can return to normal.”

Dixon’s Ross Middlemist, who owns a 350-acre cattle ranch, shared Foust’s concern that it will be “devastating to property values. Absolutely devastating.”

Middlemist said that, generations ago, his homesteading ancestors “came here with the invitation of the government. They didn’t come here thinking that their water rights were any less here than they were anywhere else in America.”

Alan Mikkelsen, consultant to the FJBC, and Jon Metropoulos, an attorney for the regulatory irrigation board, were the two officials tasked with answering questions and allaying the fears of Middlemist, Foust and others in attendance.

Mikkelsen was adamant that the treaty does not harm property values in the slightest.

“What will diminish property values is thirty years of litigation at the rate of about $1 million or so per year,” Mikkelsen said, alluding to the costly alternative that could become reality if a water rights agreement is not met by the Montana Reserved Water Rights Compact Commission’s legally mandated “sunset date” of July 1, 2013.

Mikkelsen said that it would be a worst-case scenario if the fight for water devolves into a messy and interminable court case. Such an outcome would saddle irrigators with tens of millions of dollars in legal fees, while also costing them many millions more that the Federal and State government will contribute to the irrigation project if a negotiated settlement is reached.

At the heart of the negotiations is the proposed maximum farm turnout allowance (FTA) of 1.4 acre-feet per acre per year. This key number dictates the amount of water to which each irrigator will be entitled.

To help qualify that comparison, the proposed FTA of 1.4 is actually substantially higher that this year’s irrigation project quota which “was initially set at 0.75 acre-feet per acre” according to Mikkelsen.

In other words, “nobody’s going to be getting less water than what they have now,” Mikkelsen emphasized.

Unfortunately, a lot of misconceptions about the FTA remain embedded in the public.

“I read the definition of the FTA at least three times (Monday), and it’s a guarantee of water delivery to an individual farmer... but there are still people going around saying there are no guarantees in this (agreement) and that people could get zero water,” Mikkelsen said of some inaccurate statements being made about the compact.

Before proceeding in the negotiations, Mikkelsen said that the FJBC is still carefully “looking at in-stream flows.”

Metropoulos, the attorney representing the FJBC, added that the issue of “double-duty” and “triple-duty” lands — where farmers are allowed to use two or three times the irrigation allowance based on soil type — still needs to be ironed out.

“The agreement as it stands doesn’t have a provision for having any different type of FTA for different lands,” Metropoulos said.

On Aug. 20, at 6 p.m. there will be a public meeting at Ronan Middle School, primarily focused on explaining the basis of the FTA.