Hi-Line farmers and ranchers between Havre and Malta may not have much of an irrigation season in 2025 for the first time in more than a century, the result of the massive mid-June failure of aging infrastructure used to increase and sustain water flows in the Milk River.
At a public meeting in Malta Tuesday night, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation officials told about 100 people in attendance and more than 50 watching online that the agency determined it would be impractical — financially and logistically — to implement a temporary fix for two failed steel siphon pipes near Babb that allowed the St. Mary Canal to plunge down a hillside, across the St. Mary River, up and over a smaller hill, and toward the upper Milk River to the east.
Water flows out of a ruptured and broken irrigation canal pipe on the St. Mary Canal near Babb on June 18, 2024.
The canal and siphon are part of the Milk River Project, which diverts water from the St. Mary River on the east side of Glacier National Park and sends it instead into the Milk River, which spans the Hi-Line from Havre to Fort Peck. The siphon pipes failed June 17, hemorrhaging nearly 4,500 gallons a second and destroying the once grassy hillside they traversed. The failure broke the link that fed water from the St. Mary into the Milk for more than 100 years.
