The Sacred Buffalo Vision by Robert J. Juneau and Robert C. Juneau pg.131-132

Senator Lane was amazed that Campbell’s Five Year Plan had not included the 40 acre irrigated plots, which were forty miles away from the Indians grazing allotments, and the fact that the irrigation ditches did not even reach the Indians irrigable lands to provide water. The engineer estimated there was a 20% loss of water on most laterals for which the Indians were charged for maintenance and use, and their lack of use inclined the Indian Office to grant border-whites as outside water users in neighboring Toole County access to water from the Blackfeet Irrigation Project, which was likely the plan all along to charge the Indians for construction costs to carry reservation waters to border-towns and border-whites and pay the annual operating and maintenance costs.

Campbell saw a silver lining in the disaster by noting that completion of the irrigation projects might ultimately restore the winter feed once so abundant, that had been destroyed by over grazing by white stock men’s sheep and cattle herds, but even this silver lining would benefit the white cattle men lessees as the Indians owned little livestock to graze on their recovering reserved 1896 Agreement tribal grazing tracts.
-The Sacred Buffalo Vision by Robert J. Juneau and Robert C. Juneau
pg.131-132