There is only one candidate running for Congress in Western Montana District no.1 who has the ability to change the CSKT Water Compact in Washington and that is Dr. Al Olszewski. An arduous “student” of the Compact, Olszewski has been studying these water rights since 2012. No one else is qualified to combat the Water Compact and tackle it from a legal standpoint in Congress. “How much water do 5000 people in western Montana need? I’m against it and we can change it.”
Tom Schultz from “Voices of Montana” radio interviewed Dr. Olszewski and the candidate responded with the following information.
“As all of our ranchers and farmers understand (that have senior water rights), water rights are complex and you can’t talk about them in two minutes. I’m not an expert on the CSKT Water Compact; I’m a student of it, but I’m a student that’s been working with it and fighting against it and opposing it since 2012.
In essence what we have is a third of the state and our federal government took the water rights of western Montana and gave it to a smaller third party without renumeration and without it being adjudicated by a judge. It was done so unconstitutionally, and I was part of the suit as a legislator that took it after the 2015 legislature to the Montana Supreme Court, and they disagreed with us but then again, as the legislative branch we disagree with the judicial branch.
So, we’re in that situation. The truth is that at the federal level the DOJ legal theory is that the Supremacy Clause trumps contract law, and it trumps state law. So, if that’s the case, (and they don’t want to go to court because they know they’ll lose) that’s why they’re giving a small third party of 5000 people on a tribal reservation over two billion dollars and they are giving them 36,816 acres of federal land to replace that land that’s private within the reservation. This is a taking without renumeration or with adjudication by a judge.
I’m against and we can change it.
The big one as you just said is that through the supreme court ruling and we can go back to ‘old man’ Winters up on the highline. He was a rancher back in the turn of the century who stopped water going onto a reservation up on the highline. Basically, the U.S. Supreme Court said that we need to quantitate a water right to every reservation, and it needs to be enough to make those peoples pastoral and civil. Despite all this Compact-that water right has not been quantitated and I’m going to do that first and foremost. We’re going to quantitate how much water do 5000 people need on a reservation in western Montana? They do not need all the water of western Montana they only need some of the water.”
Schultz concluded the Water Compact portion of the interview by stating the following,
“I appreciate that, I mean the “we can change it” aspect of it and how can we do it legally in our process?” (Tom Schultz-Voices of Montana)
