Flathead water compact talks might reopen

The chairman of the Montana Reserved Water Rights Compact Commission says discussions have been held on reopening negotiations for a water-rights compact with the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes to include protections for irrigators living on or near the Flathead reservation.

Public rancor over who controls the water and how much is allocated to farmers, ranchers and others through the Flathead Indian Irrigation Project has grown, and the water compact may be finally decided in court.

An interim legislative panel studying the proposed water-use agreement between the CSKT and irrigators on the Flathead Indian Reservation met on March 18.

The Montana Legislature last year rejected the proposed CSKT water compact, the product of years of negotiations, and four lawsuits have been filed since then over claims to the water flowing on or through the northwestern Montana reservation.

Efforts to salvage the compact and the water-use agreement are continuing, Commission chairman Chris Tweeten said. But the Flathead Joint Board of Control, which negotiated the water-use agreement with CSKT on behalf of three irrigation districts, disbanded after the Legislature rejected the proposed compact.

“If changes are needed in the compact, they need to be agreed to by both sides,” Tweeten said. “Whatever one side might want to go forward with ... can’t be dictated to the other.”

Commission staff and the tribes have had discussions on whether to narrowly reopen negotiations to incorporate the water-use agreement and its water allocations into the larger compact, he said.

It may be difficult to reach a deal. Ranchers like Jerry Laskody say they would get less water under the proposed compact, and the compact takes away a property right by giving the water rights to the tribes.

“This compact and the water-use agreement is a takeaway of the water we’re already getting, and I don’t understand why we’re even having this discussion,” Laskody said. “I’m not willing to give up my water right to anybody.”

The Flathead Irrigation District remains willing to negotiate a settlement, but resolving the matter through litigation may be necessary, John Metropoulos, the district’s attorney said.

Rhonda Swaney, an attorney for CSKT, said the tribes fully support the compact and acknowledge the need to amend it since the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs took control with the dissolution of the Flathead Joint Board of Control.

But CSKT does not intend to reopen negotiations fully or change what is in the agreement, Swaney said. CSKT recently filed a lawsuit asking a federal judge to declare that the tribes have the rights to all the water on the reservation and to block three other lawsuits in state courts involving water-rights claims.