RONAN – After seven years of work and controversy, the Flathead Water Compact officially got in gear managing one of the Flathead Indian Reservation’s most valuable assets.
On Thursday, four new board members took their seats and outlined the rules for granting, managing and enforcing water rights on the 1.3-million-acre reservation. That includes drinking-water wells, irrigation water, river flows, wetlands, high-mountain lakes, and some of the reservoir behind Hungry Horse Dam.
“This is a landmark day for the tribes and the state,” board member Teresa Wall-McDonald said. “With continued cooperation, we can work through any challenge that presents itself.”
The CSKT Tribal Council appointed Wall-McDonald, head of the Tribal Lands Department, and Tribal Services Director Clayton Matt to the board, the Missoulian reported.
Gov. Greg Gianforte appointed geologist Roger Noble and attorney Ken Pitt. Their first job was to pick a fifth member, which they agreed to choose from a slate of five people put forth by the CSKT and governor’s office, at their next meeting. The U.S. Interior Department will also appoint a sixth, non-voting member to the board.
The second, and much larger, task is to set up staff to re-do all the previous water rights and get future allocations going. That includes hiring a lead water engineer and a team of five technicians, along with record-keepers and other staff.
“I look at this as the key individual to making this thing happen,” Noble said of the water engineer job. The reservation has several existing irrigation systems, extremely complex underground water networks and a wide mix of agricultural, wildlife, recreational and public water uses.
Lake County Commissioner Gale Decker asked the board to move quickly, because the county can’t give final approval to land divisions until the board is functioning.
“It is a hardship to have to say water rights are in limbo,” Decker said. “There’s no guarantee that a landowner has a water right on their property.”
The compact resolved a problem created by the Hellgate Treaty of 1855, which potentially granted the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes influence over a huge part of the Flathead, Clark Fork, Blackfoot and Kootenai river watersheds. Last December, Congress approved a $1.9-billion deal where the tribes dropped their claims on off-reservation waters in return for control of surface and groundwater on the reservation.