Repairs to the broken St. Mary Canal pipes that are part of the Milk River Project can begin immediately through an emergency authorization with the Bureau of Reclamation, U.S. Sen. Jon Tester’s office announced Friday.

The St. Mary Canal near Babb diverts water from the St. Mary River to the Milk River. The river provides 18,000 people with municipal drinking water and feeds one million people annually, according to the Milk River Joint Board of Control.

It also supports industrial uses, according to the Bureau of Reclamation.

Without the canal, the Milk River would run dry six out of 10 years, according to the Joint Board of Control, made up of eight irrigation districts.

The river runs into Canada and then back into Montana near Havre.

On June 17, a couple of the canal’s aging siphons failed, and Montana’s political leaders, including its Congressional delegation, have been advocating for urgent action from the Biden Administration.

In a news release, Tester said the Bureau of Reclamation agreed Friday to fund the repairs through its emergency authority.

“This is an important step forward for north-central Montana water users who rely on the Milk River Project to support their farm operations that feed the world and to keep their small businesses running,” said Tester, a Montana Democrat, in a statement.

In a newsletter Friday, Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke’s office shared a letter sent to the U.S. Department of Interior and Bureau of Reclamation from him and the rest of the delegation, Tester, Republican U.S. Sen. Steve Daines, and Republican Rep. Matt Rosendale.

“We urge you to take immediate action to authorize federal funds to replace the siphons under the authority granted in Public Law 111-11,” the letter said. “A swift federal response is critical to restore the lands damaged by the catastrophic failure and to return water to the Milk River.”

A contact in the Bureau of Reclamation office in Montana could not be reached Friday by voicemail.

In a phone call, Jennifer Patrick, project manager for the Milk River Joint Board of Control, said the funding package has moved quickly, which will make a difference in work on the ground.

“That will allow us to move forward into construction a lot quicker,” Patrick said.

The cost of fixing the breached St. Mary siphon and another piece of infrastructure in need of replacement, the 100-year-old Halls Coulee siphon, is $70 million together, Patrick said.

So far, Montana irrigators aren’t impacted this year partly because of the rain and full reservoirs, although Patrick also said it’s a “compressed irrigation season.”

If the winter is strong, that will help storage for Montana, she said, but it won’t make construction easy. Montana holds water in the Fresno and Nelson reservoirs on the Hi-Line.

“We’re really, really trying to have water running back into the Milk River by the fall of 2025,” Patrick said.

Patrick, however, also said Alberta, Canada, likely will be affected because it doesn’t have water storage like Montana does.

She said Milk River irrigators are working closely with landowners, the Blackfeet Nation, and state and federal government, and the cooperation and partnerships are “incredible.”

“We’re moving quickly. You might not hear from us that often, but our goal is to have water back in the Milk River in 2025,” Patrick said.

The entire congressional delegation has been “turning over rocks” for funding, emergency authorizations, and whatever “works best for the state of Montana,” she said. And she said local representatives and state legislators have been on the job as well.

Kwebb Galbreath, water director for the Blackfeet Nation, also said politicians and decision-makers have been moving quickly, which is key to fixing the problem.

“The problem is that this has been something that’s been left unattended for 100 years,” Galbreath said. “It should have been replaced probably 75 years ago.”

He described the current situation as “chaos, but I think right now it’s controlled chaos.” And he said a plan is in place that he believes will lead to repairs made to both siphons by 2025.

“I do believe that they’ll both be fixed, and next year in August, we’ll have good water flowing,” Galbreath said.

The St. Mary Diversion Dam and Canal is “dilapidated” and has long been in need of repair, according to the Bureau of Reclamation.

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act set aside $100 million for facilities that have failed in a way that prevented water delivery for irrigation, and the St. Mary canal is the only project that fit the criteria, according to a project overview on the Bureau of Reclamation website.

Bozeman company NW Construction was recently awarded a more than $88 million contract to complete the canal and dam replacement project, part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

One of the strongest earthquakes in Western Montana so far this year woke up people who had only been sleeping a few hours after the 4th of July fireworks.

There was no mistaking this one for the rowdy kids down the road who were still lighting it up well after midnight.

The U.S. Geological Survey says the quake, centered under the mountains just east of Seeley Lake was a sizable one, measuring a 3.9 magnitude.

READ MORE: New Maps Show Montana’s Risk For Damaging Earthquakes

More than a rumble

While we’re somewhat used to earthquakes in Montana, anything over a 3.0 tends to get most people’s attention. And this one was well into the “very noticeable” range.

U.S.G.S. seismologists said the quake was located at a depth of 10 km, or approximately 6.2 miles under the surface, with an epicenter just over 14 miles east northeast of Seeley Lake near the western edge of the Scapegoat Wilderness.

The quake hit at 4:45 am. It was followed by three distinct aftershocks, with two measuring 2.5 and then 2.0 magnitude, with a third, and final, small jolt hitting 1.3 about 5 hours later 2 kilometers to the east.

Where people noticed

U.S.G.S. received several reports from people feeling the quake, despite the early hour. Residents in Missoula, Kalispell, and Helena all filed reports, in addition to those living in the Seeley-Swan. Additional reports came from as far away as Helena and Deer Lodge.

Montana is known for its active seismicity. There have been a total of 22 small quakes reported in Western Montana over the past three weeks.

Don’t Be Here During a Powerful Montana Earthquake

The Montana Supreme Court will hear oral arguments next Wednesday in the state’s appeal of a district court judge’s decision in the Held vs. Montana case, setting the stage for a decision that will have broad impacts on environmental law and regulations in Montana.

Considering the arguments from both sides, and additional briefs from Republican-led states and recreation businesses like Orvis and Patagonia, the court will have to decide whether to uphold Lewis and Clark County District Court Judge Kathy Seeley’s order from last August finding the state was violating the constitutional rights of the 16 youth plaintiffs to a clean and healthful environment.

Seeley’s order struck down the so-called “limitation” to the Montana Environmental Policy Act that prohibited the state from considering greenhouse gas emissions and climate impacts from energy and mining projects.

She also enjoined a portion of another bill passed by Republican lawmakers last year that said permits approved by Montana agencies that did not include a greenhouse gas emissions evaluation could not be vacated or voided unless Congress voted to start regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant under the federal Clean Air Act.

Attorneys representing the state, Gov. Greg Gianforte, and three state agencies will get 40 minutes to make their case to the justice, while attorneys for the youth plaintiffs will have 30 minutes. The hearing will be held in the Supreme Court chambers in Helena and start at 9:30 a.m.

The Montana Environmental Information Center and other Montana environmental groups are also hosting watch parties of the oral arguments, which will be live streamed online, in Missoula, Billings and Kalispell.

What the two sides and their supporters are arguing

The youth plaintiffs in the case filed their response to the state’s appeal in March, and the case was fully briefed in April when attorneys for the state, Gianforte, and the state agencies filed their replies. About 20 separate amicus curiae, or “friend of the court” briefs have been filed in the case either in support of the youth plaintiffs or the state that the Supreme Court can also consider when deciding the case.

Lawyers for the state, governor and agencies have maintained since Seeley handed her decision down that striking down the MEPA limitation does not alleviate the plaintiffs’ injuries because Montana’s greenhouse gas emissions are a small fraction of global emissions, which all affect Montana and the global climate.

The defendants are also asking the Supreme Court to clarify that Seeley’s order does not require the state to perform emissions and climate impact analyses but simply provides the opportunity for them to do so if the Legislature decides to follow that route.

The Supreme Court received friend-of-the-court briefs in support of the state from the Republican-led chambers of the Montana Legislature, the Montana Chamber of Commerce and several local chambers, NorthWestern Energy, conservative think-tank Frontier Institute, the mining company association Treasure State Resources, 12 Republican-led states, and a Navajo Nation company that owns the Spring Creek Mine in Decker.

Most of those briefs, like those from the state, argue that the plaintiffs do not have standing in the case, that Seeley used the wrong level of scrutiny in deciding the case, utilized one-sided data from the plaintiffs’ expert witnesses that the state did not contest at trial, or that the judiciary was wrongfully stepping into the realm of the Legislature when interpreting laws that intersect with principles of the state constitution.

“The Judiciary’s constitutional authority does not allow the district court to determine how The Legislature should provide for the promise of a ‘clean and healthful environment’ under Mont. Const. Art. II and IX,” Senate President Jason Ellsworth and House Speaker Matt Regier’s attorney wrote in their brief, for instance.

The plaintiffs’ attorneys will argue that the Supreme Court should uphold Seeley’s order in full, which would permanently keep the MEPA limitation out of Montana law, as well as the portion surrounding permit reviews and when permits could be vacated.

Their attorneys say Seeley was correct when she found that the state’s actions prohibiting emissions and climate impact reviews were in direct violation of the 1972 Constitution’s intents to protect the environment in Montana for current and future generations.

They say attorneys for the state have purposefully tried to focus the case around the global impacts of climate change when Montana’s constitution directly concerns the state’s environment and impacts to it caused by the state’s consistent permitting of high-emissions energy projects.

“Accepting any of the state’s (or their amici’s) belated factual or constitutional arguments would eviscerate the purpose of MEPA, young Montanans’ rights to a clean and healthful environment today and well into the future, and the very idea of an independent judiciary that reviews government laws for constitutional compliance and defers to the District Court’s factual findings but for clear error,” the plaintiffs’ attorneys said in their March brief.

The friend-of-the-court briefs filed on the side of the plaintiffs come from a group of professional climbers, runners and mountain guides in Montana; six Montana tribes, a group of public health experts and doctors from Montana and other states, the ACLU and ACLU of Montana, a group of tribal members and conservation groups, a group of outdoor recreation companies that includes Patagonia and Orvis.

“Because the MEPA Limitation allows Montana to avoid its constitutional responsibility to protect a clean and healthy environment, and because that derogation of constitutional duty is already having profound negative impacts on the outdoor industry in Montana, this court should uphold the district court’s order and strike down the MEPA limitation,” the brief from the outdoor recreation companies said.

There are also friend-of-the-court briefs the court can consider from six retired Montana Supreme Court justices who make arguments in support of the judiciary’s role in determining what laws are constitutional or not, as well as from the Montana Trial Lawyers Association, which argues Seeley was correct in not allowing the state to conduct mental health examinations of the 16 plaintiffs before last summer’s trial.

The former justices in their brief ask the Supreme Court to “emphatically stress” the importance of the separation of powers in government.

“The separation of powers principle secures our republican form of government. It is well established in Montana jurisprudence. In recent years, however, repeated attempts have been made to abridge long-settled elements of the judicial power,” they wrote. “The present case involves another such attempt.”

Recent court decisions could factor into case

It’s also possible that some recent court decisions at the federal U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and in other states could be a factor in Wednesday’s arguments. Both sides have submitted notices of supplemental authority informing the court of recent decisions that could factor into the Held case.

That includes filings from the plaintiffs about another case decided by the Supreme Court in which courts found election laws created by the Legislature were unconstitutional, and another in which the Supreme Court used similar standing requirements as Seeley did in Held and also found it could not hear new arguments first raised on the appeal.

A third notice tells the court about a similar case in Hawaii which the plaintiffs’ primary attorneys, Our Children’s Trust, led to a favorable settlement with the state in late June. Hawaii’s constitution has similar environmental protection requirements as Montana’s, and the plaintiffs said the state was violating their constitutional rights because the state Department of Transportation continued to prioritize highways over other transportation modes that emit less greenhouse gases.

The settlement will involve the state establishing a new greenhouse gas reduction plan, a roadmap to decarbonizing the state’s transportation system, and tens of million dollars to go toward building green infrastructure.

The state, meanwhile, told the court that the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals had again dismissed a similar Oregon case for a lack of standing, and there was a similar dismissal in a California case challenging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“Relevant to this appeal, the district court rejected the plaintiffs’ contentions that declaring the challenged EPA policies unconstitutional would redress the plaintiffs’ climate change injuries,” attorneys for the state wrote in the filing.

The court’s decision in the Held case will also factor into its decision in a case involving the fate of NorthWestern Energy’s methane-fired power plant in Laurel and whether it was properly granted permits despite the state not considering its expected emissions of 700,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in that case on May 15.

Both cases are expected to see decisions issued later this summer or fall ahead of the November election and the January start to the 2025 legislative session, where there is sure to be more legislation introduced surrounding MEPA and climate analyses depending on the outcome, lawmakers have said during the interim.