© 2023 Concerned Citizens of Western Montana
Note: Since the article below was posted, we received a comment from a reader that we felt was important enough to address with another article. You can find that article at this link: Response to a Commenter.
The media have been reporting that the levels of Flathead Lake are one foot below normal and are expected to fall by another foot within the next two weeks.
With this in mind, we’d like to ask you which of the two scenarios below might be a reasonable depiction of the real cause of the reduced levels of Flathead Lake?
Scenario 1:
The CEO of Kerr Dam claims that climate change is responsible for the shortage.
“We can point directly to climate change, and the scary part about this is it’s just the tip of the iceberg,” he said. “Climatologists have forecasted that it will get much worse before things will get better. We’re going to see much hotter and drier and much colder and wetter seasons — both extremes going forward.”
Two members of Montana’s U.S. Congressional Delegation (Steve Daines and Ryan Zinke) quickly get on top of this crisis and immediately prepare a letter to the Bureau of Reclamation asking for water to be released from Hungry Horse Dam to stabilize Flathead Lake levels so that businesses and recreationalists will be “saved” from the devastating effects of the eventual two-foot shortfall in Flathead Lake.
Many of the media outlets put out what almost appears to be canned news, making the same points, and linking to the same information. The “crisis” will be averted quickly thanks to our quick acting Senator Daines and Representative Zinke.
Scenario 2:
At a May 15, 2023 Flathead Irrigation Project meeting, Flathead Project management told irrigators that it is no longer an irrigation project, it was a fishery. Management also said they will have a 60 day flush of water down the creeks, even if they have to use stored irrigation water.
While irrigators braced for the worst, the BIA quickly shifted gears. The reservoirs mysteriously filled and irrigators started getting their water. What appeared to be an irrigation crisis was quickly averted.
(Perhaps this directional shift had to do with the Compacting parties not wanting to draw the attention of the Water Court to the implementation of the Compact during its review of the Flathead Water Compact.)
Notwithstanding the fact that irrigators are getting water at least for now, the tribe has already been reducing lake levels by sending more water downstream than what has been flowing into the lake for an extended period of time.
Unfortunately flows into Flathead Lake began to decline rather significantly, but rather than decreasing lake outflow though Kerr Dam, the tribes ask their “Congressional Lap Dogs” to push the Bureau of Reclamation to release Hungry Horse water to “stabilize” the lake because of “climate change” what the CSKT released from it.
So again we ask, which scenario do you think is likely closer to the real truth of reduced Flathead Lake levels?
The Numbers Don’t Lie
The table below was compiled using the USGS streamflow and Reservoir level data for the last 19 days between June 13th and July 1, 2023. Click on it to see a larger PDF copy.
It shows how much water went into the lake, how much went out, and the difference between the two. It also shows the change in lake levels during the same period of time from full pool at 2,893 ft.
Over this 19 day period the CSKT released more water downstream than the amount of water that flowed into the lake from the Swan River and the north and south forks of the Flathead River, resulting in lower lake levels. The reduced lake level crisis clearly appears to be a direct result of those releases and failure to store water, or ‘stabilize the lake levels’.
The CSKT FERC (Federal Energy Regulation Commission) license for Kerr Dam provides a range of permissible releases from the dam in each month that range from 4,000 cfs to above the current 12,300 cfs. The license shows that as of July 1, the amounts being sent downstream from Kerr can be cut in half, which would thus stabilize lake levels. So why didn’t Daines and Zinke ask the CSKT to cut down their releases from Kerr according to their FERC license, instead of going after Hungry Horse?
Was the decision to send the extra water downstream made to maximize Kerr Dam profits in lieu of Flathead Lake levels, or was this done for some other reason?
Could it also be possible that this shortage was set up now, so that the BIA / tribes could cut off Flathead Project irrigation water, say as early as August? After all the more water released earlier in the season the less there will be to retain in reservoirs for irrigation use.
While we can’t know for certain the specifics of everything that happened to reduce Flathead Lake levels, we are certain that we can’t trust anything that the compacting parties do and say. We also cannot trust the media to figure any of this out.
A word about weather, aka “climate change”. The water supply situation for most of western Montana in March and April showed snowpack well above normal (see NRCS Water Supply Outlook Reports March-June 2023). However, in mid-April warm temperatures caused an “early melt” and runoff, as you may have noticed streams already in flood stage in late April and early May. Most of the lower snowpack was gone. While some of this runoff was stored, the CSKT chose to release most of it so that Flathead Lake never reached its full pool in 2023 even though it has in other years with similar conditions to 2023.
The high level snowpack, which would have filled reservoirs, was lost due to sustained high winds in May which literally evaporated the snow. Water managers in Montana have experienced this before and have planned accordingly. This year, the CSKT releases related to the Compact exacerbated the known region-wide changes to water supply within a one month period.
Even in the context of these issues, were these shortages intentional or were they due to the mismanagement by the CSKT?
Daines and Zinke, knowingly or not, gladly took the role of covering for what could be the Compact, CSKT malfeasance, or complete incompetence. I guess that’s what Congressionals do when they also participated with our state in creating the Flathead Water Compact mess in the first place.
What we don’t understand is why the CSKT didn’t bother to hide their intentions from the public this year. Had the tribe slightly tapered down the volume coming out of Kerr Dam, they could have prevented the Flathead Lake level shortfall, and no one would have been the wiser. No one would be diving into the numbers to see what really might have happened.
Concerning adjusting the flows out of Kerr Dam, Brian Lipscomb, the CEO of Energy Keepers said this:
“We’re not looking for that [outflow] minimum to be modified at all,” Lipscomb said. “That would mean sacrificing fish and other resources for a situation that is created because of climate change. This is going to become more of the norm going forward.”
We believe this realistically has nothing to do with fisheries, fish, or climate change, but instead has everything to do with the manipulation of our water supply to maximize tribal profit and the hardship that can be inflicted upon others. And that is exactly what the compact promises to do.
Does this Have Anything to Do With the Tribes’ Flathead System Compact Water?
Is it possible that the lake level “crisis” was used to give Daines and Zinke the excuse they needed to give the tribe the Hungry Horse water they were awarded in the compact?
The CSKT have the 229,000 acre feet of Flathead System Compact Water that was awarded to them in the compact. This water consists of 129,000 acre feet of Flathead Lake (approximately 1 foot of Flathead Lake) and 90,000 acre-feet from Hungry Horse Reservoir annually.
For the 90,000 acre feet of water from Hungry Horse Dam, the Daines legislation provides that there will be no carryover storage of Hungry Horse water from year to year. This means that if the water does not get used by the CSKT in a given year, it cannot be carried over or added to next year’s 90,000 acre feet.
As of this writing we think it’s likely they have already “unofficially” used their 1 foot of Flathead Lake– and are now working on the 90,000 acre feet from Hungry Horse.
The Flathead System Compact water abstract allows that the water can be used for any purpose. The compact provides that 11,000 acre feet of it can be leased. Realistically however, the rest could easily be sold downstream.
But Wait, It Really Does Get Worse
Pictures and charts can often tell a story far better than a long drawn-out article, but sometimes just good old critical thinking and common sense is also necessary.
We also need to look at this situation in the context of the water compact. A few questions arise in this inquiry:
- If the CSKT are able to manipulate lake levels for profit or perhaps even downstream water marketing purposes, why couldn’t they also manipulate water volumes in such a way that they are able to trigger water calls in the future?
- Does the tribe have all of the means necessary to create shortages via manipulation of Kerr Dam flows that could put farmers and ranchers and possibly others out of business?
- Why would the compacting parties allow the tribe, an adversarial party to all state based water rights holders in western Montana, to have control over the ability to manipulate water flows and lake levels for their own benefit and to the detriment of everyone else?
- Does the tribe’s ownership of Kerr Dam present a significant conflict of interest that needs to be addressed, or at a minimum, voids the compact?
- Was this result intentional by the compacting parties, or is Montana’s leadership simply too incompetent and ignorant to have considered the possibility of tribal manipulation of water levels in the Flathead River region and perhaps even the Clark Fork River through Kerr Dam?
- If the tribe is able to manipulate the water supply to any extent, how can anyone really know whether the tribes’ water rights are fulfilled, or if they are using water in excess of compact levels by possible double dipping?
- Was this whole media blitz about the Flathead Lake levels crisis meant to introduce climate change into the mix so as to condition people into accepting less water due to “uncontrollable climate change?”
If the compacting parties are able to successfully propagandize people concerning water shortages, and deflect the focus to climate change as the cause, folks will be less likely to connect future water shortages to the compact, or the possibility of a man made manipulation of water levels to create shortages.
Something fishy is going on in Montana and it has nothing to do with fish.
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