Radio: Salish and Kootenai Tribes push for water compact again

The CSKT have been working on this agreement with the state and federal governments and private irrigators for at least a dozen years. It would settle disputes over how water is shared on the Flathead reservation.

The 2013 Legislature did not pass the Flathead compact--the first time that had happened. Agreements reached by Montana’s Reserved Water Rights Compact Commission on the state’s other six reservations passed their first time through. But, the Flathead Compact is the most complex and has proven to be the most controversial.

John Swenson has a small ranch near Ronan. He irrigates on fee land inside the Flathead Indian Reservation. He’s one of a large group of irrigators who feel they will lose water through the deal.

“I’m not willing to give my water right up to anybody,” he the Legislature’s Water Policy Interim Committee, which is looking at the compact to try to decide whether to recommend passage during the next Legislature.