A failure of drop structure 5 on the St. Mary canal is affecting livestock producers along a 30-mile stretch of the canal through reduced water quantity and quality. Inadequate water supply has the potential to cause degraded rangeland health due to the difficulty in properly distributing livestock grazing across pastures. NRCS is providing the opportunity for Environmental Quality Incentives Program financial assistance and technical assistance to those producers located within two miles of the St. Mary Canal and the Milk River from the St. Mary Diversion to the Canadian border that have been negatively affected by the lack of water in the St. Mary Canal during the 2020 grazing season. This assistance will also provide longer-term benefits if the canal is dewatered for future repairs and may provide long term benefits and flexibilities in established livestock grazing systems.
2020 EQIP St. Mary Livestock Project area map (PDF; 1.9MB)
Applicable Conservation Practices
- Well
- Pump test
- Livestock pipeline
- Storage tank
- Water facility
- Pumping plant
- Fence
Detailed information on conservation practice standards and specifications can be found in Section IV of the Field Office Technical Guide.
Application
Applications are accepted on a continual basis. However, NRCS establishes application "cut-off" or submission deadline dates for evaluation, ranking and approval of eligible applications. The period to sign up for this project is July 13-24, 2020.
As the NRCS field office in Browning is currently closed, producers should visit the Cut Bank or Conrad office for more information and to sign up.
Find service center contact information.
Ranking Criteria
- Is the applicant a livestock producer who has been negatively impacted by the lack of water in the St’ Mary’s Canal in 2020?
- Does the application include Water Developments to address the lack of livestock water?
- Does the application include Fences to address the lack of livestock distribution?
NRCS uses the Conservation Assessment Ranking Tool (CART) for all application assessment and ranking. Learn more about CART.
Payment
