St. Mary Working Group holds meeting in Havre

The St. Mary Working Group met in Havre in March, discussing work on repairs to catastrophic failure in 2024 to the system that provides much of the water in the Milk River, work to rehabilitate the diversion dam that shunts water from the St. Mary River through 29 miles of canals, siphons and drop structures, and the need to push through the water compact for the Fort Belknap Indian Community, already approved by the state of Montana, that includes significant funding to repair and upgrade the system.

Work proceeding on siphons, diversion dam

Archie Lind of U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which oversees and operates the St. Mary Diversion as part of The Milk River Project, one of the first irrigation projects approved for the bureau to oversee when it was created the start of the last century, said work is going well on the Hall's Coulee Siphon and the bureau hopes to have the system diverting water soon.

A set of the 8-foot-tall siphons outside of Babb, put in place more than 100 years ago, suffered catastrophic failure June 17, 2024, when one sprung a major leak and washed out the land under the siphons.

The failure shut down the diversion, which generally supplies 60 percent, to some 90 percent during drought years, of the water that runs through the Milk River. Before the diversion was completed, the Milk River often dried up in the fall.

Montana's congressional delegation, the administration of President Joe Biden and Montana state agencies, the legislature and irrigation groups succeeded in rushing funding through for the replacement of that siphon and another siphon in Hall's Coulee.

Companies including NW Construction out of Bozeman, Pro-Pipe Construction out of Frenchtown, Easton Companies, Northwest Pipe out of Oregon and architectural and engineering company HDR rushed to complete the work, including during below-zero temperatures through the winter, and the canal was reopened in July 2025. "That's all buttoned up," Lind said.

The conveyance system was shut down last fall and work started on the Hall's Coulee Siphon, which Lind said is in the final stages of completion.

He said work also is progressing well on the Diversion Dam, which previously was funded in a St. Mary rehabilitation project not connected to the catastrophic failure in 2024.

Preferred alternative for canal rehabilitation

Jennifer Patrick of the Joint Board of Control of the Milk River Project said the preferred alternative of a Milk River Irrigation Watershed environmental impact study the board commissioned will be to reshape and and clean up the canals to improve water flow through the system.

She said the original intent was to look at putting a lining in the canals, to prevent erosion and water loss, but numerous groups including the Blackfeet Tribe, the town of Babb and landowners opposed that idea because the canal has changed the water outlook in the area, creating wetlands, providing water for wells, and creating habitat for plants and wildlife.

Fort Belknap water compact

But a major discussion at the meeting was passing the legislation in Congress to approve the Water Compact for Fort Belknap, the latest version of which is called The Northern Montana Water Security Act of 2025, introduced Jan 24, 2025, by Montana's Sens. Steve Daines and Tim Sheehy and Reps. Ryan Zinke and Troy Downing, H.R. 907 in the House and S. 241 in the Senate.

The settlement includes significant funding for the rehabilitation of the conveyance works.

Fort Belknap Indian Community Tribal Council President Randall Werk and Fort Belknap Indian Community Water Resource Department manager Krystal Fox said hearings on the bills were held last month.

They said the Montana congressional delegates and the state have been strongly supportive of the bill, including working group co-chair Lt. Gov. Kristen Juras testifying in favor of it before Congress, but it needs to be passed soon.

They said that is especially important because two members of the congressional delegation, Daines and Zinke, are not running for re-election and their replacements may have to be educated about the whole situation.

Werk said passing the water compact will benefit more than just the Fort Belknap Indian Community, it will benefit everyone along the Milk River.

"There's 300 million dollars earmarked in that specifically for the rehabilitation of the Saint Mary's project, " he said, "and you guys are all aware, you know, the Milk River is the lifeline of North Central Montana, Northern Montana, really all the way down to the Missouri River."

Work to fix a 100-year-old system

The diversion and conveyance works was one of the first projects BOR was authorized to build after the bureau was established in 1902.

The system of dams, canals, siphons and drop structures was built over a couple of decades, starting on the edge of Glacier National Park and then crossing the Blackfeet Indian Reservation until 29 miles of the conveyance works drops the water into the North Fork of the Milk River, which then flows into Canada before returning to Montana.

The system was built using construction equipment drawn by teams of horses, and was completed more than 100 years ago.

The system also includes a number of reservoirs including Fresno Reservoir west of Havre and Nelson Reservoir near Malta.

The system, created to provide irrigation water, originally was billed completely to the irrigators - and to towns charged for water withdrawals, although primarily to the irrigators -  for operation and maintenance.

That was shifted in the past two decades with the federal government taking up part of the cost, but the lack of funds for major repairs and upgrades left the diversion and conveyance works band-aided together for most of the last half-century or more.

The irrigation authority started issuing warnings some three decades ago that major repairs and upgrades were needed or the system that supplies most of the water in the Milk - the river ran dry six out of 10 years before the diversion and conveyance works were completed - could suffer a catastrophic failure and shut down.

The state formed a working group, with the lieutenant governor a statutory co-chair, shortly after the turn of this century and the group has been working ever since to find funding for the rehabilitation.

And the warnings of catastrophic failure first came true in 2020, when a concrete drop structure in the system at the end of the conveyance works right where it is dropped into the North Fork of the Milk River washed out and collapsed. That shut down the system supplying the water to the milk.

Local, state, tribal and federal partners along with Montana's congressional delegation scrambled to get funding and get repairs started almost immediately. That failure - including replacing another of the five drop structures that already had been scheduled for replacement -was repaired by fall and the system was back in operation.

Then in June of this year, one of the massive siphons that carry water over hills in the conveyance works failed, and the water rushing from the failure washed out the second siphon in the pair taught carry water through that part of the system.

The system once again was shut down and soon the Milk River west of Fresno Reservoir was dry.

Those repairs are nearing completion, but significant work on the system, and other parts of the Milk River Project, still need to be funded and completed to bring it anywhere near full capacity.