Letters to the editor - Jan. 30
Thank you to all who helped ‘Share the Spirit’
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 2013 Christmas season we served a record number of Lake County children - 1,436. In our 16 years of operation we have served more than 13,000 children in Lake County with your help and the help of many volunteers.
A huge thanks to the businesses that 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. 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. A special thanks to all of our wonderful volunteers who donate thousands of hours, especially this year when my husband was so sick. They all stepped up and donated even more hours than ever before so I could be home. I am deeply humbled and honored by their commitment to this project.
This year Share the Spirit headquarters were fortunate to have our workspace donated in the old DRS building, providing our electricity and heat.
Share the Spirit is a 501(c) 3 non-profit group registered with the Internal Revenue Service. We also provide personal care bags to all of the county agencies twice each year.
Toni Krebsbach Young,
Share the Spirit
Board of Directors
Thank you, FLIC!
We had a fabulous experience and we encourage those of you who missed this event to be sure to put it on your calendar next year. From the opening night party tribute to The Great Gatsby on Friday to the “Best Of” Awards closing on Sunday, no one left disappointed. The whole event was classy and well organized and the movie selections were fascinating. Thank you again for bringing this event to our community and showing how proud we can be of our little town of Polson, Montana.
Dorothy Ashcraft
Polson
Fear versus facts?
A curious thing happened in Helena on January 6 at the meeting of the Water Policy Interim Committee (WPIC): proponents of the Compact could only offer fear, while Compact opponents offered facts. Let me explain.
Instead of proclaiming the benefits of this Compact, the proponents repeated over and over again that they were fearful of litigation, and that we should all be afraid of lawsuits if the compact is not passed as it is. Each Compact proponent got up and either threatened litigation or was fearful of it without providing any evidence, paperwork, or documents to back up their case. They could not tell the WPIC what was good about the Compact.
The opponents of the Compact talked about why they were opposed to the Compact, and offered documents, compact disks of information, and other proof of the harm that the proposed CSKT Compact would cause them personally and its effect on property values, real estate, agriculture, and stock growing operations. All facts.
If this proposed CSKT Compact is so good, why is it that those who like it can only use the threat of litigation to promote it? See the hearing for yourself at the state legislature’s website on interim committees.
I’d rather make my decision on facts, not fear.
Will Fry
St. Ignatius
Time to step up
In 1979 the Reserved Water Rights Commission was formed by the legislature in order to negotiate not litigate the federal reserved water rights. They did this after seeing the results of years of litigation over federal reserved rights.
Seventeen compacts have been ratified by the Montana Legislature. Many of the opponents claim that the CSKT compact was killed by the legislature. The truth is legislative leadership made sure it did not make it out of committee. They sent it to the house judiciary where bills are sent to die. One cannot say that was totally unjustified. The compact negotiation was not completed until January; at that point “Western Montana Water Users” filed a suit to prevent the Flathead Joint Board of Control from voting to approve the Water Use Agreement, which provided security for the irrigators. The suit went to the Supreme Court who then vacated (voided) a ruling made by C.B. McNeil. This caused the bill to be introduced very late. The full house and senate never saw the bill.
Opponents claim fear of litigation is all that drives proponents.
Most reservation irrigators realize that they will have less water for irrigation with no compact, they will lose a $300,000 low cost block of power, expensive work for the endangered bull trout will begin immediately and no there will be no money for improving the project. Other proponents, property owners with non-permitted wells (about 3,000 in number) may never have a legal water right without a compact. Municipalities will not be able to get water for expansion. They also realize that instead of their claims going through the state adjudication like all other water claims without the tribe filing a senior right they will instead be objecting to the tribes extensive claims both on and off the reservation.
The opposition is loud, well-funded, well-organized and spreading fear.
Don’t watch from the sidelines quietly supporting the compact. It is time to step up. This is our future in the balance. Don’t wait and wish you had done something.
Susan Lake
Ronan
Well…that’s a deep subject!
Did you know that the loudest and most outspoken proponents of the CSKT Compact, who favor giving away their neighbor’s water rights, actually use more ground water from wells than surface water they are giving away? Some of these compact proponents have wells that pump more water on a per gallon basis than the city of Polson’s wells.
The proposed Compact calls for the regulation of all irrigation wells greater than 100 gallons per minute. Yet Compact proponents whose irrigation wells pump more than 1,000 gallons per minute don’t seem to be worried. Why is that? Do they have one of those Compact ‘consensual agreements’ with the Tribe that doesn’t require them to follow the rules like others have to?
Does it make sense for compact proponents who rely on unregulated ground water withdrawal to force their neighbors to give up their surface water rights?
I guess it’s easy to give away other people’s water when you don’t have to give up your own.
Heather Rush
St. Ignatius
Water Right Claims are not Water Rights
Mr. Passieri’s response (Leader, Jan. 23, 2014) to my letter mixes up two different things: a water right and a water right claim. In my letter I said that no one has a state water right for project irrigation water. The purpose of the State water adjudication process started decades ago is to determine who has a project water right.
The FJBC has a water right claim on project water filed with Montana DNRC, but the FJBC does not have a state water right for project water.
The Department of Interior (DOI) also has a water right claim on project water filed with the DNRC but the DOI does not have a state water right for project water.
Apparently there also are a few landowners who directly filed a water right claim on project water but they do not have a state water right on project water.
The Tribes have said that if the Compact is not approved they will file a claim for project water.
It will then be up to the Montana Water Court to decide who has a project water right, the quantity of the project water right and the priority date of the project water right relative to the priority date of any Tribal instream water right (1855 or earlier) granted by the Water Court.
Dick Erb
Moiese