Farmers and water managers in Pondera County are navigating one of the driest stretches in recent memory, with water allocations this season running at roughly half the typical level and some agricultural operations making dramatic cuts just to stay afloat.
Allocations Well Below Normal
The Pondera County Canal and Reservoir Company, which supplies water to more than 380 shareholders across the county, began the 2026 season with an allocation of just 3.5 inches per acre — a steep drop from the 8 to 9 inches per acre farmers can normally expect. The allocation was later nudged up to 4.5 inches, but that still falls far short of the 18-inch-per-acre maximum each water share allows.
Water moves through the system via Swift Dam, flowing into Birch Creek and then through a canal network that reaches farmers, ranchers, and the communities of Conrad and Brady. General Manager Heather Rice described the company’s core obligation plainly: “Our mission is to deliver water with excellence to over 380 shareholders that we have throughout Pondera County.”
A warm winter complicated matters this year. Higher-elevation snowpack melted ahead of schedule, before irrigation demand peaked. Managers were able to capture some of that runoff in Lake Frances reservoir, but the early melt meant less water was available when crops and pastures needed it most.
Farmers Adjusting Operations Under Sustained Pressure
For Maurice Tack, a third-generation farmer operating northwest of Valier, this season is not an isolated hardship — it is the continuation of a prolonged crisis. Tack says the area has been in drought for roughly seven or eight years, and the cumulative toll is becoming impossible to absorb.
“This is either the seventh or eighth year we’ve been in this drought,” Tack said. “You can make it out through a bad year or two, but going through seven, you know, the pastures are really starting to suffer now.”
To cope, Tack skipped irrigating any of his pastureland entirely this year and moved twice the number of cattle he normally would to manage grazing pressure on stressed ground. In a year when he would typically purchase no hay at all, he is now planning to buy between 200 and 300 tons to feed his herd through the season.
A recent rainfall of 3 inches offered some short-term relief, but observers note that isolated precipitation events do little to reverse years of depleted soil moisture and degraded pasture conditions.
Broader Pressures on Northern Montana Agriculture
The situation in Pondera County reflects the kind of sustained agricultural stress playing out across parts of northern and central Montana, where water-dependent farming operations have had to recalibrate year after year with no clear end to dry conditions in sight. Producers who rely on snowmelt-fed irrigation systems face particular vulnerability when warm winters disrupt the natural timing of runoff.
The financial strain is compounding as well. Purchasing hundreds of tons of hay represents a significant unplanned expense for a cattle operation, and moving larger numbers of livestock adds logistical costs while accelerating wear on pastures that are already struggling to recover. For multigenerational farm families, the question is no longer how to survive a bad year — it is how long operations can absorb losses before more fundamental changes become necessary.
Water managers, meanwhile, are left balancing an allocation system designed for more typical conditions against a reality in which adequate supply is no longer guaranteed. Montana’s agricultural economy has shown resilience in other areas — the state recently ranked among the top states nationally for new business conditions — but water scarcity remains a limiting factor for farming communities that cannot simply adapt around it.
For Pondera County’s canal system and the shareholders depending on it, the coming weeks will test whether the modest increase in this year’s allocation, combined with whatever additional rainfall arrives, is enough to carry operations through the rest of the growing season.
