Coordination necessary for legal water compact
Letter to the Editor:
The State of Montana has existing water laws. Those laws were enacted to protect the people of Montana and also to resolve their differences. The very reason the state exists is to protect and ensure the rights of the people of Montana. The very reason we elect our representatives to the Legislature is to protect the people and their rights. Consequently, it goes without saying that our water laws matter and are not to be lightly swept aside. In that light, please consider the following.
MCA 85-1-101 is policy considerations. It lines out what state policy is for waters of the state of Montana. It states that “it is necessary to coordinate local, state, and federal water resource(s); the greatest economic benefit to the people of Montana can be secured only by the sound coordination of development and utilization of water resources; any attempt to gain control of or speculated on large quantities of ground water of the State of Montana is not in the interest of the people and is to be restricted; finally, to achieve these objectives and to protect the waters of Montana from diversion to other areas of the nation, it is essential that a comprehensive, coordinated multiple-use water resource plan be progressively formulated, to be known as the “state water plan.”
It is obvious that the language the Legislature used to craft this portion of statute is plain, not vague. The courts have determined that the language legislators use is what they mean. Therefore, it is obvious that the Legislature intended a key policy in regards to water and water resources was, and is, coordination. Coordination, by definition is government-to-government communications; it is derived through federal statutes.
Did the Reserve Water Rights Compact Commission use government-to-government negotiations as required by statute? Absolutely not. Local government (municipal and county) was shut out of the process and not included as the law requires and coordination was not used, thereby yielding an unacceptable compact.
— Jim Johnson, Troy