SIDNEY, Mont. - Sugar beet farmers in Eastern Montana are worried that a severe canal break four miles south of Sidney forced water out of the Lower Yellowstone Irrigation Project and onto a nearby farm. The 200-acre lake spared the sheep grazing on the ranch, but repair time and heat are causing concerns for farmers who depended on the Lower Yellowstone Irrigation Project to water crops.
"It affects roughly 13,000 acres," says Duane Peters, Sidney sugars agricultural manager. "There's people who can get water, can irrigate from the river. There's 3,000 acres we're watching on a sandy, gravelly shelf. Those beets are lying flat on the ground."
It is thought rotten tree roots caused the break in the canal.
Coffer dams have been set to keep water flowing upstream, and now there are about 18,000 farm acres with water and 40,000 acres without.
