A Pressing Need in Northern Montana

By Kris Polly

In this month’s cover story, we bring you an on-the-ground update from the Milk River Project in Montana’s Hi-Line. On June 17, the St. Mary Siphon, a key piece of project infrastructure, suffered a catastrophic failure, shutting down the flow of water from the St. Mary Unit to Fresno Reservoir. Federal, state, county, and tribal authorities have reacted quickly to the disaster. In our cover interview, Jennifer Patrick, the project manager at the Milk River Joint Board of Control, tells us why replacing the structure before next year is critical for the irrigation districts and municipalities that rely on the water.

Then, we turn to Wyoming with an interview with State Senator Cheri Steinmetz. Her engagement with agriculture and water issues has involved her directly in significant infrastructure issues such as the efforts to fund the reconstruction of Goshen Irrigation District’s irrigation tunnel and to replace the aging LaPrele Dam.

The rest of this issue is dedicated to conversations with members of irrigation district boards of directors. In the past, Irrigation Leader has published multiple managers’ issues that have been dedicated to profiling and interviewing the managers of irrigation districts across the country. This month, we bring you a directors’ issue, featuring members of boards of directors from 14 states and a foreign country.

Directors are foundational to the successful operation of an irrigation district. Bringing their own professional experience and their connections in and knowledge of their communities, they inform the overall direction of the district, help advise the manager, represent stakeholders, and help communicate the organization’s mission. We ask our directors why they chose this leadership position, what they’ve learned, and what their advice is for new managers.

I’d also like to call your attention to an upcoming initiative of Irrigation Leader magazine. We are working to put together an irrigation district directors’ handbook, drawing on the insights of many current board members from across the West. Our working title is simply the Board Members’ Guide. Our intention is include any and all information that may be helpful for a board member to be successful. We’d love to have our readers involved in the creation of this resource so that we can ensure that it’s the most informative and powerful resource it can be. In the near future, we will be reaching out to irrigation districts to see whether they want to participate in the development of this guide. All who participate will have access to it.

Whether you are a member of a board of directors yourself, are considering joining a board, or are simply curious about what a director does, I am certain that you’ll find much of interest in this insiders’ look into their work.

Kris Polly is the editor-in-chief of Irrigation Leader magazine and the president of Water Strategies LLC, a government relations firm he began in February 2009 for the purpose of representing and guiding water, power, and agricultural entities in their dealings with Congress, the Bureau of Reclamation, and other federal government agencies. He may be contacted at kris.polly@waterstrategies.com.