"Ditch rider" let go after 30 years with irrigation district

By DAVID REESE

Lake County Leader

The home where Wade Shepard grew up is a simple, one-story affair on a knoll overlooking Kicking Horse Reservoir.

Just down the rutted dirt road from the family home is where Shepard’s grandparents homesteaded. Shepard knows every pothole, backroad and ditch in this neck of the woods on the eastern flank of the Mission Valley near St. Ignatius.

He also knows every mile of the nearly 1,300 miles of irrigation canals and waterworks that wind their way from the southern end of the Mission Valley to Pablo Reservoir.

The waterways are part of the Flathead Irrigation Project, a federal irrigation system built in 1914 that is still in use today.

The system draws water from nearly every creek, pond and gulch along the west side of the Mission Mountains. All of this water is gathered and fed north, to Pablo Reservoir, where it is stored and distributed. Some of the water, along the way, is used by farmers and ranchers.

While the system is over 100 years old it still gets the job done, says Shepard, who worked on the Flathead Irrigation Project for 30 years.

Shepard lost his job last year when the Bureau of Indian Affairs assumed control of the irrigation project. The BIA took over the project because the previous manager — the Flathead Joint Board of Control — temporarily disbanded. The board of control represents irrigators in the Mission and Jocko valleys.

When the Flathead Joint Board of Control temporarily disbanded in 2014, its bylaws dictated that management of the Flathead Irrigation Project goes to the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Since losing his job of 30 years, Shepard has gone back to ranching on about 1,000 acres of leased land near Moiese. He’s glad he had ranching to fall back on; other workers at the irrigation project weren’t so lucky, he said.

“It wasn’t so much that I lost my job,” he said. “It was how I lost it … over tribal hiring preferences.”

The irrigation project is a mix of concrete channels, causeways and ditches. The project carries water from the south end of the Flathead Indian Reservation to Pablo Reservoir, and points in between. Some of the water is carried from the southernmost end of the Mission Mountains, where Placid Lake gives water to the system. Slowly that water makes its way north.

But the project is in tough shape, Shepard said.

In areas where the ditches are in clay, they don’t lose much water, Shepard said. But in areas where the water runs through gravelly soil, the ditches are not as efficient, he said.

As part of the negotiated compact with the tribes, $55 million has been allocated to make the Flathead Irrigation Project more efficient; Shepard, though, says the specifics of those improvements have not been spelled out.

“It’s going to take money and time”  to fix the project, he said.

The Flathead Irrigation Project is fairly unscientific.

The system of channels and ditches are run by hand, and a “ditch rider” with a “weir gauge and a book” delivers water and monitors storage, Shepard said.

“In most cases that’s a best guess,” he said.

Farmers and ranchers are billed on operation and management fees for their water usage. Shepard said those fees are $29 an acre. “When he wants water, the ditch rider delivers it,” Shepard said.

Ranchers now are able to use “nonquota” water; that’s water that is accumulated and distributed when all of the irrigation project’s reservoirs are full. That water is not counted against a farmer’s allowable water. The quota is set by the BIA at .7 acre feet of water per acre. That means a farmer with 100 acres to irrigate may potentially use seven acre feet of water throughout the irrigating season.

At the north end of the Flathead Irrigation Project near Polson, water is drawn into Pablo Reservoir from three large intake pumps off of the Flathead River.

From Pablo Reservoir, one of the largest storage facilities in the Mission Valley, the water is carried by gravity to points south, irrigating about 38,000 acres. Mission Reservoir and other reservoirs serve about 75 percent of the irrigation project on the south end of the valley.

Farmers and ranchers in the Jocko Valley operate on a separate system.

They get their water from the Jocko River and Black Lake, and other small reservoirs. In good water years the Jocko River has enough water to satisfy mandatory in-stream flows. But when water runs out of the storage reservoirs, and no more water can be drawn from the Jocko River, irrigators are out of water unless they have wells.

The Flathead Irrigation Project is allowed to use 11 percent of the water that is stored in the Mission Mountains. That water is measured and calculated with backcountry monitoring systems.

That water is watched closely. “There is no water on this reservation that is not managed,” Shepard said.

Shepard is seeking a seat on the board of control in the May elections. He said he wants to get on the board so he can represent irrigators, many of whom are opposed to the negotiated water compact between the state and Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes.

Shepard said part of the compact addresses forming a technical team that will oversee daily management of the irrigation project — in effect eliminating the Joint Board of Control, he said.

At the south end of the irrigation system, Mission Reservoir sits in a long, deep draw below the Mission Mountains. A 100-foot tall dike keeps and stores water, which is distributed through two main channels below.

Irrigators closely watch the mountain snowpack— and how fast it melts. A warm, wet spring means the snow melts too fast and can’t be captured.

That’s why it’s important for ranchers like Shepard to get non-quota water before the irrigation season kicks in. “We rely on non-quota water for one to 1 ½ irrigations,” Shepard said. “I need to start irrigating by mid-April, or I’m playing catch up all year.”