{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://downing.house.gov/media/press-releases/downing-daines-sheehy-and-zinke-send-letter-bureau-reclamation-requesting", "Downing, Daines, Sheehy, and Zinke Send Letter to Bureau of Reclamation Requesting Funds  to Repair St. Mary Diversion Dam and Canal", "2026-04-28", "2026", "2026-04", "Republican", "House", "MT", "Troy Downing", "D000634", "downing.house.gov", "downing", "https://downing.house.gov/media/press-releases", "scraper", "WASHINGTON, D.C. \u2013 Congressman Troy Downing (MT-02) and Congressmen Ryan Zinke (MT-01), as well as U.S. Senators Steve Daines and Tim Sheehy, today sent a letter to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation encouraging the use of funding from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to support repairs to the St. Mary Diversion Dam and Canal.\n\n\u201cWe write to urge full and fair consideration of the St. Mary Diversion Dam and Canal of the Milk River Project (Project) in northwestern Montana to be an authorized recipient of funding as appropriated in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, titled under \u201cWater Conveyance and Surface Water Storage Enhancement. \u201d\n\nWhen the Canal was originally constructed in 1915, it had the capacity to divert up to 850 cubic feet per second (cfs). However, due to its age, capacity has declined to only 600 cfs. This reduction in capacity is leading to a loss of more than 100-million-acre feet that\u2019s flowing across the border into Canada every day\u2026\n\n\u2026While two out of the five Drops have been successfully replaced, failure of the remaining three is imminent. As you may know, Drop 5 failed in 2020 and the Siphon failed in 2025, leading to the complete loss of the irrigation season for local and regional producers, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars lost. The failure of any three remaining Drops could once again lead to catastrophic failure and severe economic loss.\n\nFunding under \u201cWater Conveyance and Surface Water Storage Enhancement\u201d was designated specifically for \u201cconstruction and associated activities that restore or increase the capacity or use of existing conveyance facilities constructed by the Bureau of Reclamation.\u201d The current fragility of the system speaks to the dire need to restore this key infrastructure to protect our precious water resources,\u201d they wrote in the letter.\n\nRead the full letter HERE.\n\n###", 1, "2026-06-26T06:29:35Z", "2026-06-26T06:31:46Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://downing.house.gov/media/press-releases/downing-daines-sheehy-and-zinke-send-letter-bureau-reclamation-requesting"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.21043692342937, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}