Hello and welcome to News Now, I’m your host Taylor Inman. We’re going over the biggest headlines this week for Northwest Montana.

Tribal leaders are again enforcing a decades-old closure of Chief Mountain after recent tourist activity disturbed cultural and spiritual practices there.

The Blackfeet Tribal Historic Preservation Office is enforcing Tribal Resolution 251-92, passed in the early 1980s and amended in 1992, according to Deputy Compliance Officer Gheri Hall. She said the original resolution was passed by Chief Earl Old Person and put in place after tourists interested in climbing the mountain disturbed …

Hello and welcome to News Now, I’m your host Taylor Inman. We’re going over the biggest headlines this week for Northwest Montana.

Tribal leaders are again enforcing a decades-old closure of Chief Mountain after recent tourist activity disturbed cultural and spiritual practices there.  

The Blackfeet Tribal Historic Preservation Office is enforcing Tribal Resolution 251-92, passed in the early 1980s and amended in 1992, according to Deputy Compliance Officer Gheri Hall. She said the original resolution was passed by Chief Earl Old Person and put in place after tourists interested in climbing the mountain disturbed traditional Blackfeet spiritual practices at the site.  

Hall said the restrictions have been loosened in the years since.  

Chief Mountain holds great significance for the Blackfeet people. In oral traditions it is a sacred site where the great Thunderbird lives, and it is also one of the areas where their ancestors held buffalo runs. Hall said the mountain is still the site of a four-day fasting ritual that the Blackfeet have taken part in for thousands of years.  

Disruptions to these rituals sparked the closure decades ago. Hall said a recent increase of tourism to the mountain has prompted the tribe to remind the public of the resolution, including with a proposed amendment that would increase fines on violators. 

The closure affects the one-mile radius from the base of Chief Mountain and is in effect for everyone except Blackfeet people who use the area for cultural and spiritual practices. 

Hall said the tribe started looking into the issue again after receiving concerns about increased disturbances in the area, particularly about an outfitter company allegedly giving tours of the Chief Mountain area for $300 per person.  

She said they also had reports of people desecrating and taking apart some of the offerings left on the mountain. 

Hall said they also reached out to Glacier National Park officials. The east side of Chief Mountain is accessible from the park, but park officials assured them that there were no permits granted for anybody to be touring that area.

As the tribe attempts to protect its important cultural resources, Hall said it can be tough to restrict access. She said because the order hinges on tribal members being allowed to visit the mountain for spiritual or cultural reasons, it relies on western ideas of what qualifies someone to be an enrolled member.

She said in addition to increased surveillance, personnel will also be putting up additional signage in the area to let people know of the closure. 

Thanks to a $26 million investment into the Forest Service’s Northern Region, rental cabin updates, road work and campground improvements are among the upcoming projects slated to occur in the Flathead Valley.  

The U.S. Department of Agriculture injected more than $26 million from the Great American Outdoors Act to enhance recreation opportunities across Northern Idaho, Montana and North Dakota, according to officials with the federal agency.  

A total of 41 projects in the Northern Region will receive funding, much of which will be used to provide needed maintenance on sites to meet public demands.

Eight rental cabins across the Flathead National Forest will receive upgrades with the funding, according to forest spokesperson Kira Powell. The updates will include new floors, windows and furniture. The project launched in 2021 with the construction of new roofs on cabins like Star Meadows Cabin, Anna Creek Cabin and Owl Packer Cabin. 

The Forest Service anticipates adding new roofs on Ben Rover, Schnaus and Challenge cabins this summer.  

Infrastructure efforts are also included in the newest round of funding. There are plans for Meadow Creek Road and Spotted Bear Road to receive road grading and reconditioning. Tiger Creek Road will see a bridge replacement and Hungry Horse Creek Road will get an aquatic organism passage to improve fish movement.  

Improving recreation site access is also a priority.  Projects will include the construction of boat ramps at Emery Bay, as well as improving parking, sanitation and accessibility.  

Tally Lake Campground will receive a water system replacement, an estimated $600,000 undertaking. The project is ongoing, according to Powell.

There will also be projects focusing on wild and scenic river site improvements and deferred trail maintenance on approximately 2,500 miles of trails throughout the Flathead National Forest, including in the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex.  

Projects not already underway are scheduled to begin this summer.  

Officials say the catastrophic failure of two siphons on the St. Mary Canal near Babb could create a ripple effect on Montana's agriculture industry this summer.

The siphons used to divert water from the St. Mary River to the Milk River outside of East Glacier burst Monday morning, causing significant flooding and damage to some businesses in the area. 

The Milk River Joint Board of Control said the initial failure occurred in the morning while U.S. Bureau of Reclamation personnel were monitoring a crack in a siphon. The canal was shut down prior to the failure, but a hillside and Hook’s Hide-Away bar and hotel were “significantly impacted by the water,” according to a social media post by the Milk River Project.

The second siphon failed later that afternoon. The powerful water flow caused the more than 100-year-old siphons to break apart, washing away the concrete structures holding the pipes underneath. 

According to Ryan Newman, the area manager for the Montana office for the Bureau of Reclamation, Bureau officials were not officially monitoring a crack, rather just making sure the site was working correctly — a day-to-day standard practice.  

Newman said the failure was not expected but noted that the Bureau has been working on a plan to replace the century-old infrastructure.  

People are advised to stay out of the area. The Blackfeet Business Council closed Camp 9 Road near Powell's roping arena and Hook’s Hide-Away, and all activities related to the canal and St. Mary River in the area until further notice. 

Aside from the immediate flooding impacts, Sen. Jon Tester is concerned about how the project failure will affect the hundreds of farmers and ranchers on the Hi-Line who depend on the water to irrigate their crops. The Milk River Project furnishes water for the irrigation of around 121,000 acres of land. 

David Spotted Eagle Jr., the aquatic lands protection coordinator for the Blackfeet Nation, said the event could also negatively affect downstream habitat and irrigation properties.  

The next steps, according to Spotted Eagle, will be cleanup work and mending the area and infrastructure. He said that will be up to the Bureau of Reclamation.

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, negotiated by Tester and signed into law in 2021 by President Biden, was designed to mitigate events like siphon failure by allocating $8.3 billion for the Bureau of Reclamation to repair aging water delivery systems, secure dams, complete rural water projects and protect aquatic ecosystems.  

Up to $100 million from the federal funding was allocated to repair the Milk River Project, and earlier this month an $88 million contract was awarded to Montana-based NW Construction to complete the St. Mary Diversion Dam Replacement project.

Newman said there are multiple avenues to explore for fixing the site, with funding possibly coming from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.  

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