Water compact deserves close scrutiny

After more than 10 years of talks, a proposed water rights compact for the Flathead Indian Reservation has been rolled out for a series of meetings and, most likely, an introduction to next year’s Montana Legislature for approval.

Certainly, there’s no way the Inter Lake can give a rubber-stamp endorsement to a document that is at least 1,400 pages, including appendices, and chock full of details that can be understood by only a very limited number of people in Montana. The arcane nature of the water-rights world alone is reason enough for people to at the very least be guarded about the compact settlement that will quantify water rights for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes on and off the Flathead Reservation.

Conversely, there is no reason to believe negotiators for the state of Montana, the tribes and the federal government have not been working in good faith to hammer through some of the most difficult potential issues involved for so many years. We do not believe the compact will turn Western Montana upside down or even give it a serious shaking when it comes to water availability.

For starters, the tribes have relinquished the right to “make call” on non-irrigation uses upstream from the reservation, meaning those uses are protected. It is also unlikely that some irrigation water rights upstream will ever be impacted just because of the  sheer abundance of flows in the Flathead River system.

Put simply, this is not a tribal “water grab” where water will be taken or coerced from upstream users. By comparison, we’d like to point out a very real water grab that went on for years in Northwest Montana that most people don’t recall. Through much of the 1990s and into the last decade, downstream states and tribes invoked the Endangered Species Act to transport enormous volumes of water from Lake Koocanusa and Hungry Horse Reservoir to benefit threatened salmon species in the Columbia River Basin. These annual “flow augmentation” releases never caused any memorable water shortages but they did have highly measurable adverse impacts on native species and aquatic ecosystems directly above and below Libby and Hungry Horse dams.

Montana fought back through litigation and continuously producing sound science to demonstrate real impacts in Montana vs. highly questionable and barely measurable benefits for salmon hundreds of miles away. This resulted in significant changes in operations at the two dams to Montana’s benefit.

Montana survived, and it was largely due to water abundance. One of the most difficult things about the proposed compact is predicting its future impacts years or decades away. What happens when there are dry years? Skeptics or outright opponents of it are concerned that future water uses, and therefore economic development, could be limited.

But compact defenders turn that argument right around. The Flathead compact, they say, will do away with a cloud of uncertainty that currently hangs over all water uses that would be quantified, settled and protected if the compact is approved. Without it, they add, the potential for water conflicts and legal battles is higher with potential economic impacts.

Yet, the compact has potential for pitfalls and it deserves every bit of scrutiny it gets. The way it could treat on-reservation irrigators, for instance, is getting valid attention.

There was a proposal for a “one-size-fits-all” water allocation for irrigators, some of which would be at risk of not having the amount of water they’ve had in the past or having to pay for that amount of water — scenarios that would devalue agricultural lands, particularly in drier areas. This understandably caused a rift that led to  separate negotiations intended to produce an agreement that will be folded into the compact. Hopefully, that agreement will satisfy all interests.

Optimally, the compact will be more beneficial than harmful, as its proponents suggest.