Need to represent all water users

Sen. Bruce Tutvedt, R-Kalispell, objects to being censured by the Flathead County Republican Central Committee. He believes his actions with respect to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes’ Reserved Water Rights Compact “best represent the majority of my constituents needs.” And he says he’s got “skin in the game” because he’s the “largest irrigator in Flathead Valley.”

Are “the majority of his constituents” in Montana Senate District 3 irrigators? I don’t think so. I’d bet the only irrigating most of them do is watering their lawns in summer. However, I suspect most of his constituents desire a healthy and improving economic future for the Flathead Valley — one that includes new businesses and job opportunities.

Many businesses require a significant amount of water. The CSKT Reserved Water Rights Compact as currently written gives the CSKT the water rights to the only remaining unallocated water in Hungry Horse Reservoir. They can do with it as they wish, to include selling the water to a firm that wants to establish a future operation in the valley and requires a significant amount of water.

But the right to that water is not required by the tribes to accomplish the purposes for which the Flathead Indian Reservation was established. Thus “reserving” it for them goes beyond the scope of what a reserved water rights compact — by definition — is supposed to accomplish.

However, that currently unallocated water, and the right to put it to beneficial use, has a great deal to do with our valley’s economic future. If the right to use it is available, locating a business or developing property here is far more attractive than if that business or property owner has to purchase the water they require from the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes.  

What Sen. Tutvedt and most other people in business desire is the removal of uncertainty. When he acts to give the CSKT the rights to all unallocated Hungry Horse Reservoir water, he is clearly removing uncertainty. The rights to that water will no longer be available. But is he actually doing as he claims, “working to find solutions that help the majority of people in his district”? I don’t think so.

If he wants to help “the majority of people in his district,” he ought to be working to keep the rights to that unallocated Hungry Horse water available to enhance the economic future of the Flathead Valley.

Frank Johnson

Kalispell