Water-rights compact meeting Nov. 26 at Ponderosa Room
<p>Tribal attorney John Carter answers questions about the tribes’ role and motives in the water meeting in Polson in June.</p>
The Western News
New developments in the water-rights struggle between the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, State of Montana and the United States will have serious implications for Lincoln County and various water rights in Libby, Troy and Eureka.
A public meeting to address concerns will be held in Libby City Hall’s Ponderosa Room Monday, Nov. 26 at 7 p.m.
The interested parties, have been working for several years to develop a water rights settlement that will quantify the water rights of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes on and off the Flathead Indian Reservation.
On Nov. 8, the parties released a Proposed Water Rights Compact. The Nov. 8 document fills in all the sections that were under development in the Oct. 3 draft of the Compact.
The proposed Compact and Ordinance would:
• Protect valid existing water uses as those rights are ultimately decreed by the Montana Water Court or permitted by the DNRC.
• Provide for registration of previously undocumented water uses.
• Provide a streamlined application process for new domestic and stockwater wells.
• Quantify the Tribes’ water rights.
• Provide additional water from the Flathead River and Hungry Horse Dam to meet CSKT instream and consumptive water needs and provides a process to lease portions of this additional water.
• Establish a board to administer water use on the Reservation.
The differences between the parties lie in the 1855 Hellgate Treaty and how it respects Native rights to this day while trying to balance other agriculture and development.
While the legal basis of the Tribes’ claims to water rights is well established, the full extent of the Tribes’ rights have not yet been quantified.
The Montana General Stream Adjudication requires the quantification and legal determination of all pre-1973 claims to water rights in Montana, including aboriginal and federal reserved water rights claimed by the CSKT and the United States.
The Montana Legislature established the Reserved Water Rights Compact Commission to negotiate with Montana tribes and the U.S. to reach settlements of tribal water rights claims that could be decreed in the Adjudication. Settlement leads to a more comprehensive and more flexible outcome and avoids the time, expense, risk and uncertainty of litigation. Montana has finished compacts for Montana’s other six Indian reservations. The CSKT compact is the last one.
In the Hellgate Treaty, CSKT reserved off-reservation water rights to protect fishery resources. The proposed Compact includes instream water rights for the maintenance and enhancement of fish habitat in the Kootenai River (consistent with the fishery operations at Libby Dam under the Federal Columbia River Power System Biological Opinions and the Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program), the Swan River, and the Lower Clark Fork River.
The Compact would provide the Tribes co-ownership with Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks (MFWP) of water rights for instream flow and recreation purposes in the Clark Fork Basin, Bitterroot Basin, Kootenai Basin, and upper Flathead Basin.
Co-ownership means parallel ownership—one water right with two owners that each has the independent ability to exercise the right. The Compact would also make the Tribes and MFWP co-owners of a water right formerly associated with the Milltown Dam.
Ratification of the Compact by the Montana Legislature would change the purpose of that right from hydropower to instream fishery. The Tribes and MFWP would work to develop joint management plans for the exercise of these rights. The Compact would provide the Tribes with a beneficial interest in three contracts for the delivery of water from Painted Rocks Reservoir and Lake Como, both located in the Bitterroot Basin.