A pair of water rights meetings set for next week

PABLO — The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, the State of Montana and the United States, trustee for the Tribes, will not gather at the usual and accustomed place — Best Western KwaTaqNuk Resort and Casino — for the next set of public meetings aimed at hammering federal reserved water rights compact for the Flathead Nation.

The negotiating parties will gather 6 p.m. Tuesday, October 23, at the Ronan Events Center auditorium for a public information meeting.

The negotiating parties will meet for a negotiation session 9 a.m. Wednesday, October 24, in the Tribal Council chambers in the CSKT Headquarters Complex at Pablo.

The negotiating parties want to have a final compact ready to present to the Montana Legislature that convenes January 2013 and goes to the end of March. The draft compact is presently out for public review as is the Unitary Management Ordinance. They will be topics of the public meeting and the negotiation session.

The public review drafts for the Flathead Nation federal reserved water rights compact and the Unitary Management Ordinance can be viewed and/or downloaded at the MRWRCC website: www.dnrc.mt.gov/rwrcc