Two century-old steel pipes that help convey water from a river on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation to a river that helps irrigate northern Montana cropland have failed, causing local flooding and raising concerns about the availability of drinking water for 14,000 residents in the city of Havre later this summer.
Staff closed the headgates that diverted St. Mary River water into a 9-mile canal after the first pipe was breached, but the Bureau of Reclamation expected it to take up to 36 hours for that canal to drain through the broken pipes. The water, which was flowing at 600 cubic feet per second when the first pipe broke, was down to a trickle Tuesday afternoon, said Ryan Newman, the bureau's Montana area manager.
The economic impact of the failure of the pipes will depend on how long it takes crews to restore the flow of water to local producers, who are between 200 and 350 miles from the diversion. The Bureau of Reclamation will start working on those assessments, Newman said. Design work on a project to replace the pipes, which was underway before the pipes failed, is about 60% complete, he said.
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