This photo released by the Bureau of Reclamation Missouri Basin Region, Montana Area Office, shows a breach in the St. Mary Canal siphon in Babb, Montana, on June 17, 2024.--Bureau of Reclamation Missouri Basin Region, Montana Area Office via AP
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Final construction is underway to repair a massive irrigation failure in Montana and should be complete later this month, one year after the breakdown severely limited water levels on the Milk River in southern Alberta.
That could restore flow through the town of Milk River by the start of July.
“It means we’ll get water finally,” said Larry Liebert, the mayor of the town of 824 residents, on Monday. “We’ve been dealing with water shortages and restrictions since it happened. The community got pretty dry last year, and there were a lot of unhappy residents.”
The Town of Milk River has been wrestling with historically low river levels for 12 months since a breakdown of the St. Mary Siphon at Babb, Mont.
It diverts water from the St. Mary’s River to the Milk River through an apportionment agreement between the two countries which evens outflow between the two rivers.
On June 17, 2024, the hundred-year-old water works collapsed, including huge pipes that convey the water into the Milk River that flows into Canada and then back south into eastern Montana.
The most recent update on reconstruction efforts from the Milk River Project states that the US$70-million repairs saw replaced piping and a bridge completed on April 12, backfilled in May and now the canal startup is set for July 1.
The town severely limited water use last summer, but currently isn’t limiting water supply after spring runoff filled reservoirs. All the same, contingency plans were drawn up over the winter, and a longer-term plan is to connect the area’s system with one near a reservoir in Warner County to the north.
“Rather than relying on the Americans for the water, it would be better for the Alberta government to help us out (on the permanent line to Warner),” said Liebert, who says an inter-basin transfer agreement is being discussed.
“A solution is the syphon is fixed and water flows as normal, but we are looking to get a permanent (supply) line.”
The latest Alberta Environment water supply forecast, released for June, predicts the Milk River basin will see the lowest or second lowest average river levels in 98 years of record keeping.
South of the border, officials in Havre, Mont., about 200 kilometres south of Medicine Hat, have said its water levels are expected to be low average but manageable this spring.
This month they called on residents to voluntarily reduce consumption with alternate day lawn watering.
About 18,000 Montanans rely on the Milk River for drinking water, and flow supports about 140,000 acres of irrigated farm land.
Members of that irrigation district had their allocation cut in half of traditional levels this spring.
The Alberta-based St. Mary’s River Irrigation District, which is supplied in part by the St. Mary’s River, announced it will keep its allocation at near normal levels this summer.
