Max Baucus: Baucus Hails WRDA Victory

Senator Praises Senate For Giving St. Mary's Project The Green Light

November 8, 2007 -- (Washington, D.C.) – Montana Senator Max Baucus today helped get the game winning touchdown for the Senate’s vote to override the President’s veto on a bill that contains $153 million in funding authorization for the St. Mary’s Diversion.

Baucus included the authorization in the Water Resource Development Act, or WRDA, which President Bush vetoed last week. In order to override the veto, both the House and the Senate had to secure a 2/3 vote for the bill to become law. Earlier this week, the House successfully overrode the veto 361 to 54. Following today’s overwhelming vote in the Senate, 79 to 14, the water project authorization bill will now become law.

“Whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting – my colleagues and I fought like the dickens to get this bill done,” said Baucus, who is chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee, which has jurisdiction over the WRDA bill. “Folks along the Hi-line and in other areas of the state can breathe a sigh of relief – access to clean, reliable water for drinking, cooking and irrigation is on the way.”

Baucus inserted the St. Mary’s authorization language into the WRDA bill, which is the first move in a two-step process to get funds appropriated for the project. Now that the $153 million authorization is finalized, Baucus and Montana’s Congressional Delegation will work to secure the appropriate dollars.

The 85-year-old St. Mary’s diversion, which redirects the Milk River to provide water for municipal and irrigation use along the state’s northern border, is in bad disrepair.

The canal delivers water from the St. Mary River at Babb to Glasgow and Nashua, serving three municipalities – Malta, Conrad, and Havre. More than 17,000 Hi-Line residents get their water from the system, and about 150,000 acres of farmland are irrigated by it.

“Today’s vote is a major victory,” Baucus said. “It’s absurd that in this day and age folks don’t have access to safe, clean water. Now that we’ve cleared this hurdle, I’m committed to working together with my colleagues to get the funding needed to getting these projects underway.”

Baucus also included several other Montana projects in the WRDA Act:

· Missoula Riverfront Development: This authorization would go to the Army Corp of Engineers to restore a 45 acres section of land along the banks of the Clark Fork. The funds would go towards restoring the banks, as well as building recreational cites. This provision is authorized at $5 million.

· Yellowstone River Protection: This provision would allow the Corps to plan projects on the Yellowstone that are identified in the course of the Cumulative Impacts Study, without having to wait on specific authorization for each project. This provision is authorized at $30 million. Projects would include fish passage, irrigation improvements, bank stabilization, etc.

· Intake at Glendive, Montana: The Intake Project consists of two parts: (1) constructing a device which would prevent downstream entrainment of fish into the Lower Yellowstone Irrigation system and (2) enabling fish to bypass the irrigation diversion at Intake during upstream migration. Additionally, the Intake project would open the Yellowstone River just 70 miles upstream from its confluence with the Missouri, creating a 238 mile reach for sturgeon spawning and rearing, much greater than any remaining open reaches between dams on the Missouri main stem.

· Missouri River and Tributaries Recovery: This provision authorizes a study funded through the Missouri River Fish and Wildlife Mitigation Program to determine necessary actions to mitigate loss of habitat, recover endangered species, and restore the ecosystem along the Missouri.

Source: Senator Max Baucus

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