Should the tribal water compact fail this legislative session, a Thompson Falls representative wants to set aside $13 million to help people defending against tribal water claims.

House Bill 427, sponsored by Republican Rep. Bob Brown, is scheduled for a hearing in the House Judiciary Committee March 6.

A particularly controversial proposal in Western Montana, the water compact is a proposed negotiated settlement between the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes and the state to quantify the tribes’ water rights. The legal framework surrounding how those water rights are defined is uncertain, and if the compact fails the tribes have indicated they will file more than 10,000 far-reaching claims to water rights stretching as far east as Billings.

“I think it’s really a thing to protect the citizens in the event that the compact fails,” Brown said Feb. 18. “That’s my basic motivation, to be sure those people who by no choice of their own are going to be thrust into some kind of legal battle and don’t have the finances or the ability to defend themselves.”

Montana Deputy Attorney General Cory Swanson has said the state will square off against the tribes in water court only when it is in the state’s interest, likely leaving out many individual objectors to the tribes’ claims, such as irrigators facing the loss of their water rights.

Under the proposal, $6 million would be administered by the Montana Department of Natural Resources to examine water rights claims filed on the Flathead Indian Reservation or elsewhere by the tribes. An additional $5 million would go to a newly created public defender fund specific to those water right cases. The remaining $2 million would go to the state water court’s caseload account to process those claims.

Brown said the legal aid would be limited to the money appropriated in the bill, and additional public defense expenses would need additional appropriations.

After all the relevant claims are processed, any unspent money would go back into the state’s general fund.

The compact is expected to face a difficult road to passage in the Legislature. After the previous version died in a House committee in 2013, a new bill based on recommendations by an interim legislative committee and a series of negotiations between the state, tribes and federal government in 2014, was heavily contested at its first committee hearing.

The hearing on Brown’s bill will be at 8 a.m. March 6 in Room 137 of the state Capitol.

Reporter Samuel Wilson can be reached at 758-4407 or by email at swilson@dailyinterlake.com