Letters to the Editor - Feb. 7
Reasons to support the compact
I am an irrigator in the Jocko Valley and I want to state my reasons for voting FOR the water compact as presented by the Flathead Joint Board of Control.
I acknowledge that the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes have first water rights through the Hellgate Treaty and the Supreme Court case of Winters decision of 1907
I believe the establishment of minimum stream flows is a good idea and I am proud to live in a place that acknowledges the rights of all living things as equal. We have been operating with minimum stream flow restrictions for at least 7 to 10 years.
Increasing the efficiency of water use by irrigators is imperative with the coming climate changes of less snow pack in a drier warmer West. I approve the use of metering and understand that the Farm Turnout Allowances will be phased in as farm water use efficiencies occur. I understand that we will be allowed up to 1.4acre-feet per acre As an irrigator I can apply for up to 2 acre feet per acre if I have proven efficient use of water and lack of soil moisture. I understand that there is a audit process for establishing the need for the extra water use.
This agreement allows for pumping of water up to 65,000 acre feet through the existing FIIP’s pumps. This is more than historical use.
Montana -Funded Settlement Implementation Fund will put 140 Million dollars to improve FIIP structures. It will also put 6 Million is a cost share program that will help farmers improve their water delivery systems. The Tribes will pick up the $300,000 power tab that FIIP is paying now to run the water pumps on the river.
I would predict that the legal costs for fighting against this agreement will take millions of dollars, many years and no guarantee that the outcome would be any better than this proposed plan. This is the most equitable way to go.
Mary Stranahan
Arlee
Great time at FLIC
I was so excited when I read that the first Flathead Lake International Cinemafest (FLIC)) was coming to our Polson theater. I bought tickets for all three days, and I was amazed at the full house on the opening evening last Friday.
It was fun to meet and listen to the two filmmakers who presented their films. One of the two has settled in Polson !!! All films were fun to watch, and many were also educational.
Thanks to the volunteers who started a year ago and believed they could get this show on the road. Thanks, too, to Becky and Gary Dupuis for the open doors of their business.
For those of you who missed this, I hope to see you next year for the second bigger and better FLIC !!
I am proud to be a Polson supporter.
Blanche Rohrenbach
Polson
School pride
I have to brag about the school I work in: K William Harvey Elementary. My work in the last four years included making visits 2-3 times a month to the school and spending a couple hours there. I found the staff to be very kind, caring, and concerned about success of the students there. But the thing I want to brag about is the kids. Invariably, when I would head for the door and someone (students or staff) was ahead of me, they would hold the door open for me! I thought…sure…they must be doing that because they get a reward or something for it. But it continued to happen, whether someone was watching or not, and I didn’t see them getting rewards for it, just my thank you. I started working full-time at K William Harvey a year ago and it is still happening! When I walk up to the door, often a student is holding it open for me. That says a lot about the student and staff population in the school. When people ask me how I like the school, It says everything when I tell them, “They hold the door open for you.”
Joy Hansen White,
KWH Elementary
Correct information, please
There is a lot of misinformation being circulated as to why the proposed Flathead Water Use Agreement and Compact should be rejected. Unfortunately, this includes the misinformation being promoted by three FJBC commissioners last week. Here are the facts regarding the claims they made in their letter:
1) The idea that the FWUA “gives away” water to the Tribes is wrong. As the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has made clear, the water rights associated with the FIIP are junior to the Tribes’ instream flow rights. The Adjudication is coming whether people like it or not, which means that the Tribes’ rights – including their instream flow rights – will be quantified, either through these negotiations or through litigation. Rather than taking water “away” from irrigation, the FWUA in fact protects FIIP users’ continued access to irrigation water despite the seniority of the Tribes’ instream flow water rights.
2) Instream flows only increase above the interim levels at such time as operations and rehabilitation and betterment improvements occur to make additional water available capable of satisfying both the new minimum enforceable instream flows and the Farm Turnout Allowance. Prior to that time, current practice will remain in place.
3) The United States is under no obligation to continue to deliver extra duty water, and has indicated that if the settlement is not approved it would revisit its trust obligation to deliver instream flow water to the Tribes ahead of irrigation water. On the other hand, the FWUA contains a process by which irrigators with a demonstrable need can continue to receive water over and above the FTA.
4) The FWUA changes nothing in terms of day-to-day control of the Project, which remains with the Project Operator under the terms of the transfer agreement. Control on the Project will be the same the day after the settlement goes into effect as it was on the day before the settlement went into effect. Nor does the FWUA alter the legal relationship between irrigators and either the FJBC or the Project Operator.
5) The FWUA recognizes that some irrigators are quite efficient in their use of water and contains provisions allowing irrigators with efficient systems and a demonstrable need to access water above the FTA amount. But the Project as a whole diverts much more water from streams than is actually put to use growing crops, and one of the major ways to ensure that there is enough water to go around both to keep irrigators whole and to satisfy the Tribes’ senior instream flow rights is to improve Project efficiency. The FWUA addresses these efficiencies, including the use of substantial federal and State dollars to bring them about.
6) Senator Jackson is simply wrong in his description of what the proposed settlement does. It does not “place non-Indians under tribal jurisdiction, separate water rights from private property and give senior water rights to all of Western Montana’s major lakes and rivers to the tribes.” Each of those claims is false.
a. On the Reservation, in place of the regulatory void that currently exists and that means that there is no legal way to obtain a new use of water, the settlement proposes a joint State-Tribal entity (not dissimilar from the CME) to regulate all of the water rights on the Reservation under a uniform body of law. This is not tribal control of non-Indian water.
b. Off the Reservation, jurisdiction over the administration and enforcement of water rights remains with the DNRC and state district courts. Nothing in the proposed settlement changes that for anyone off the Reservation.
c. The proposed settlement does recognize the Tribes’ legal entitlement to instream flow rights in certain rivers and in Flathead Lake, but also imposes conditions on the exercise of each of those rights to essentially eliminate any impact on existing users that those legally valid rights will have.
d. The proposed settlement also does not affect the validity of anyone’s private water rights. Each individual water rights claim that was filed in the Adjudication remains to be determined by the Water Court through the Adjudication process. Nothing in the proposed settlement terminates or eliminates anyone’s private water rights.
Alan Mikkelsen
St. Ignatius
Trouble in paradise
Western Montana - the waters in our mountains, subsurface, and flowing through our streams and rivers, the crystal gleam of our lakes and reservoirs are gifts of God to our residents and citizens of Western Montana.
One cannot help but marvel how our ranchers, farmers and other settlers, including our orchard owners, have exploited and developed this wonderful natural resource which each of us enjoy.
We have created a virtual paradise in the Swans, Flathead, Flathead Lake shoreline, the Mission, Jocko, Moiese, Missoula, Hellgate, Clark Fork and Bitterroot Valleys.
We are now confronted with a plot drafted for the benefit of the crafty, calculating CSKT Tribal Council known as the Flathead Indian Water Compact.
This compact, if adopted, can only be interpreted as an illegal grabbing of the white settlers’ legal use and control of this invaluable natural resource by the so-called sovereignty called the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes.
This compact, if adopted, will result in the slashing of land values of white citizens to pre-Homesteading values. Oppose it!
Lloyd Ingraham
Ronan
Court would be costly
Can there be any happy outcome to going to court against the tribe for our water rights?
Being an adversary to the tribe assures us of no cooperation to improve the irrigation project. To start out with we have a long, ugly and protracted fight with our friends and neighbors.
Millions will be spent in litigation. That takes away from family farms and project improvements. If the law suit costs $60,000,000 that means every fee owner on the reservation could pay $600 per acre. That would make our farm share around $300,000. It could cost much more. The tribe is starting out with $80,000,000 as an estimate of their litigation costs. No one can predict the outcome.
The project would still have to deal with costs associated endangered bull trout.
We would lose the low block of power. That would add an additional $325,000 a year in cost to the project users.
The project will have to go to the state water adjudication court and prove its beneficial use. Expensive measurement and quantification will have to take place and it will be competing with the tribe. Under Montana water court law no water in state will go unmeasured.
In the negotiated Water Use agreement irrigators get a priority use. The low cost block of power remains in place. The tribe has already done extensive water measurement. Millions of dollars will be available for improvements to the project. Irrigator’s water is protected.
Water users on the reservation are protected under the current water compact negotiated by the state, tribe and federal government. If we have to go to court we have no idea what the outcome will be but we do know it will be expensive.
Susan Lake, Lake Farms
Ronan
Lots of spirit was shared
Share the Spirit Holiday Assistance Program has been providing toys, clothes and Christmas gifts to Lake County children from needy families since 1998. We are fortunate enough to partner with Hellroaring Marine Contingent and the Marine Corps Toys for Tots program which helps us manage the daunting task of providing for these children. During the 2012 Christmas season we served 1,045 children in Lake County. In our 15 years of operation we have served more than 12,000 children in Lake County with your help and the help of many volunteers.
A huge thanks to the businesses who agreed to be our tree locations and to the local churches who gave so generously. Thanks also to the school kids from St. Ignatius and Polson who adopted many of our tags and shopped carefully and wisely. We truly appreciate their help. Kim Liebenguth spearheaded the Lake County Sheriff’s program to adopt 175 of our kids and challenged Polson High School classes to collect toys for them. Thank you very much to all the people who so generously picked up Share the Spirit tags from our trees filled with children’s Christmas requests, with help from everyone we were able to help make their holiday brighter.
Volunteers make this program a success; they donate hundreds of hours throughout the Christmas holiday season when most people would rather spend time with their families. Special thanks to all of our wonderful volunteers who donate thousands of hours.
This year Share the Spirit headquarters were fortunate to have our work space donated in the old True Value building, owned by Brian Mahugh. Local Soroptimists provided funding for food certificates, and donors provided funding for electricity and heat. All of these donations add up to a very successful year for our community in spite of the economic downturn for our all volunteer organization.
Share the Spirit is a 501(c) 3 non-profit group registered with the Internal Revenue Service. We also provide school supplies to Lake County Elementary schools in August and personal care bags to all of the county agencies twice each year. Donations can be mailed any time to Share the Spirit at P.O. Box 1341, Polson, MT 59860. Thank you and God Bless!
Toni Krebsbach Young,
Share the Spirit Board of Directors
Bulldogs basketball
My name is Nikko Alexander and I am a senior basketball player at St. Ignatius High School. I would like to take this opportunity to express sincere concern with regards to the article posted in the Lake County Leader, January 31, 2013, Page B5 by Chris Officer. The Article states that our team was “...buried by No. 1 Bigfork.” I take extreme offense to this statement as there are extenuating circumstances revolving around our performance for that game. If Mr. Officer had any knowledge whatsoever of our team dynamics he would have known that we lost a key player early Saturday morning to an unfortunate incident with his son and was pulled away to Seattle. Also two other key members of our team were battling illness. Not to mention the fact that our entire community was walking on pins and needles awaiting information regarding a situation that impacted our entire community. With that said, our team was not at 100%. Therefore Mr. Officer’s statement that sensationalized the Bigfork Vikings and degraded the Mission Bulldogs was completely inappropriate in my opinion. The comment referencing the Mission Bulldogs as not being in Bigfork’s league was hurtful in my opinion. I am not trying to make an excuse for my team as when we lose, we lose as a team, but I feel that Mr. Officer belittled our team without just cause. In the future perhaps Mr. Officer should review and analyze his stories before he posts them for the public to read. I feel this article was damaging to the Mission Bulldogs and doesn’t truly define who we are as a team.
Nikko Alexander
St. Ignatius