Protection from terrorism affects far reaches of Montana
When you think of terrorism and preparations for terrorist attacks, you think of big cities; the remote precincts of Montana, however, are not exempt; the local inhabitants, who foot the bill for local homeland security, want to know whether rural dams are really terrorist targets
Watching for terrorists and looking for signs which would tell of impending terrorist attacks are things which we now see not only in New York City and Washington , D.C., but also in the remote reaches of the United States. The farmers and ranchers who inhabit the Big Sky State’s plains want to know whether this is truly necessary.
Every day since the 9/11 attacks, a deputy or a federal employee patrols Montana’s Hi-Line reservoirs searching for terrorists. Until now, Bureau of Reclamation employees did much of the work themselves and paid the Hill, Phillips, and Liberty County Sheriff’s offices to do the checks on weekends and federal holidays. Starting this fall, the bill for those security precautions will be shifted to the 660 family farms spanning the Milk River corridor.
Great Falls Tribune’s Kim Skornogoski writes that the Bureau of Reclamation was given $5.19 million at first for the security checks and guards but the amount has dropped each year and is now less than one-third of what it was immediately after the attacks. “We’re a little unhappy to be paying so much to satisfy the demands of Washington,” said Fort Belknap Irrigation District President Kay Blatter. “If someone wanted to bomb one of the dams, it would cause flooding. The (dams) are pretty low profile. But it’s mandated by Washington that this must be done.”
Already irrigators are shouldering the burden of roughly $1 million in annual maintenance to the St. Mary Diversion and also pay their water districts to operate and maintain the smaller dams along the Milk River. Jennifer Brandon, who handles the finances for the Milk River Joint Board of Control, said fees were raised as much as possible to cover the roughly $50,000 in security fees, but most of the money will be diverted from planned maintenance work.
“The (federal government) set the requirements, and we’re stuck footing the bill,” she said. “We wonder whether it does any good or not. It’s a pretty high price tag, and the risk of loss of life is very low.”
The Bureau of Reclamation oversees 11 storage dams and 10 smaller diversion dams in Montana. Buck Feist, the spokesman for the department’s Great Plains Region, which consists of nine states including Montana, said each dam has different requirements of security based on the risks and the potential fallout from an attack. “After 9-11, things changed rather drastically on the security front,” he said. “Things like
