Milk River to start flowing again as Montana siphon repair finishes three months early

Repair work on the St. Mary Canal Siphon in Montana is well ahead of schedule. That means water will soon flow through the Milk River once again.

The Milk River has been mostly dry since the St. Mary Canal Siphon near Babb, Mont., burst on June 17 of last year.

Original estimates put the repair work finishing in the fall of 2025.

But late Wednesday night, the water started to flow.

“As of Wednesday, water was turned on with some test flows from the newly constructed St. Mary’s siphon. They’re slowly ramping things up as it’s filling the diversion system,” said Tim Romanow, executive director of the Milk River Watershed Council of Canada.

The project was sped up by a push from all levels of government and emergency funding by Congress.

That’s good news for towns north of the border that rely on the Milk River.

Water should be flowing into Canada within the next two weeks.

“It’s good news. We were trying to plan all winter for the September turn-on. But hopefully all the contingency plans that we had to put in place, we don’t need them anymore. Supposedly they turned the siphon on. We haven’t seen any water here yet in Elk River, but a couple of days ago, they started flowing,” said Larry Liebelt, mayor of the town of Milk River.

The town of Milk River pulls much of its water from the river.

It introduced water restrictions last summer to keep reservoirs full.

While the town was never in danger of running out of water, having the river back will be a relief.

“We kept our reservoir full all winter long and went into the spring and summer here with full reservoirs, and we’re trying not to have water restrictions,” said Liebelt.

The mostly dry river has provided some positives.

Researchers have been able to study the river at its natural flow rate.

The aquatic ecosystem is expected to bounce back in a couple of years.

“We’ve done whatever we could to basically try to learn from the situation and learn how the system works a little bit more closely. And what everything looked like pre-diversion. … We still have a lot of questions, but we got a lot of data to go through,” said Romanow.

The taps will be turned off again on Aug. 15 to repair the siphon at Halls Coulee.

Normal water flow is expected for next spring.

Irrigators still won’t be able to draw from the Milk River this summer.

The water is reserved for municipal use.