JUL 08 2005 United States Department of the Interior BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS Rocky Mountain Regional Office Billings, Montana Water Resor oma JUN 3 0 2006 Dan Jewell, P.E., U.S. Co-chair International St, Mary/ Milk River Administrative Measures Task Force P.O. box 30137 Billings, Montana 59107-0137 Dear Co-Chair: We appreciate the opportunity to have reviewed your “Report to the International Joint Commission, April 2006,” and are enclosing our comments. The Bureau of Indian Affairs agrees that the apportionment of waters from the St. Mary and Milk Rivers is complex and extremely important, and we are in favor of a just and equitable option that will improve the performance of apportionment, which must include serving our trust beneficiaries, the Blackfeet and Fort Belknap Indian Tribes and allottees, and the Fort Belknap Indian Irrigation Project, We are also cognizant of Task Force’s objective assignment and have thus focused our comments specific to the report. Ifyou have any questions or need additional information, please contact Douglas Davis, at Respectfi y) Enclosure.BIA Comments on International St. Mary ~ Milk Rivers Administrative Measures Task Force, Report to the International Joint Commission, April 2006. Page 21, History of Administrative Procedures, Sth paragraph: The BIA agrees that data on irrigated sereage are outdated and supports updating this information, Page 30, Suggestions, 1 & 2: The BIA supports the above suggestions as they may lead to a more accurate estimate of natural flow on the Milk River. Page 32, Suggestions, 4 & 5: Keeping the irrigated acreage up-to-date is strongly supported, as is a GIS base map with that information. BIA also supports making such information, including the GIS data, accessible to the public, In addition to updating irrigated acres and types of irrigation systems, an additional category should be added to include factors that affect actual water use (i.e. partial service, full service, water supplied by groundwater, crops grown, etc.) Page 33, General Comments, first bullet: The calculation of natural flows and apportionments should be a transparent process with all procedures and data available for public use and view. BIA suggests, thatthe IIC offer such information on their website. Also, any published data should be available in dual units, Page 40, Instream Flow Requirements, third paragraph, 1, 2, & 3: It is not clear here whether the “average annual flow” and “average monthly flow” refer to natural flow or gaged flow. BIA agrees that determining appropriate instream flows is important and supports future efforts to quantify a requirement, as long as the tribes” natural flow water right and irrigation water use are not ‘impacted. Page 93, Appendix I, Note: The differences between the two models should be outlined explicitly. From the information presented on pages 93 to 105, the differences between the models are not clear. For example, Alberta states that it includes Canadian Verdigris diversions in its computation of Milk River natural flow, while Montana does not. However, the computed flows shown in the tables on pages 96 and 103 are the same. What is the explanation for why the two models compute the same natural flows when the methods appear to be different? Moreover, the values in Table 2, pages 99 and 105, which are common to both tables, do not appear to differ. BIA also suggests that the formatting of this section be updated so that the table numbering is. consecutive. As it stands now, having two tables ealled “Table 2” is confusing. Page 93, 3 paragraph beginning with “The current JC Mile River accounting...”: BIA supports efforts to produce more accurate natural flow estimates and requests that future changes to the calculations be made available for public review and comment prior to implementation. Page 94, 2™ full paragraph beginning with “Because the Milk River...”: A more quantitative description of how the two Milk River flows differ should be included here, as well asa justification for why the unpublished values were used instead of the published values.