Daines, Sheehy, Zinke, Downing Send Letter to Bureau of Reclamation Requesting Funds to Repair St. Mary Diversion Dam and Canal

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senators Steve Daines and Tim Sheehy, as well as Congressmen Ryan Zinke (MT-01) and Troy Downing (MT-02) today sent a letter to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation requesting funding to repair the St. Mary Diversion Dam and Canal.

“We write to urge full and fair consideration of the St. Mary Diversion Dam and Canal of the Milk River Project (Project) in northwestern Montana to be an authorized recipient of funding as appropriated in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, titled under “Water Conveyance and Surface Water Storage Enhancement.”

 When the Canal was originally constructed in 1915, it had the capacity to divert up to 850 cubic feet per second (cfs). However, due to its age, capacity has declined to only 600 cfs. This reduction in capacity is leading to a loss of more than 100-million-acre feet that’s flowing across the border into Canada every day…

 …While two out of the five Drops have been successfully replaced, failure of the remaining three is imminent. As you may know, Drop 5 failed in 2020 and the Siphon failed in 2025, leading to the complete loss of the irrigation season for local and regional producers, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars lost. The failure of any three remaining Drops could once again lead to catastrophic failure and severe economic loss.

 Funding under “Water Conveyance and Surface Water Storage Enhancement” was designated specifically for “construction and associated activities that restore or increase the capacity or use of existing conveyance facilities constructed by the Bureau of Reclamation.” The current fragility of the system speaks to the dire need to restore this key infrastructure to protect our precious water resources,” they wrote in the letter.

Read the full letter HERE.