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, 0635 16 could receive water from the Milk River can be served from the Missouri. The Missouri River has a far more dependable supply of water during the growing season, and its quality is much superior to that of the Milk River as it enters the Reservation. The Wiota Unit of the Fort Peck Irrigation Project historically diverted from the Milk River, but has substituted Missouri River water for those diversions. One ground water diversion by an Indian near the confluence of the Milk River and Porcupine Creek is protected by the Compact. Article IV A(l) (d). The Tribes can also divert from any tributary surface water source (other than the mainstem of the Milk River) and from any ground water source on the Reservation. However, unlike diversions from the mainstem of the Missouri River, these diversions are subject to a protection of existing Indian and non-Indian tributary surface and ground water diversions (contained in Article IV and described pp. 28-35). In addition, the Tribes can divert surface water outside the Reservation for use on the Reservation or for water marketing. See pp. 17-25. (3) Benefits to the Tribes The Compact's provision of over 1,050,000 acre-feet in diversion as the Tribal Water Right is vastly larger than any amount of water ~ confirmed to ~ Indian tribe. , i To give some idea of the size of the Tribes' water right confirmed in the Compact, we offer the following comparisons. The entire flow of the Missouri River at Culhertson, Montana, just east of the Reservation, averages about 7 million acre-feet a year. The flow in drought years of the 1930s was around 4 million acre-feet a year. Moreover, since the Tribes' rights to the Missouri River are recognized in the Compact as prior and paramount to any use under state law beginning after 1888, in years of shortage the Tribes' right from the Missouri River would get satisfied first. Since present consumptive uses of the Missouri River in Montana are well under 2 million acre-feet, no shortage is likely at present or in the foreseeable future. But if water development continues, or Congress or the courts or the states of the Missouri River Basin agree to "apportion" the Missouri River among all the states of the Basin, Montana's share could become fully used and the Tribes' right could then become very valuable, either to use on the Reservation or to market outside the Reservation.. ".::. In one Supreme Court case, five tribes along the Colorado River in Arizona and California were decreed the right to divert about 900,000 acre-feet, all together. The trial court decision in the recent Wyoming case involving the Wind River Reservation, which is about the same size as Fort Peck,