PARSHALL - Sidnee Baca is only 5 years old and she knows cold splashing water feels thrilling on a hot day like Monday.

At her age, that's what she should know.

Adults in a downtown Parshall meeting room saw to it that she and all children will always feel the pleasure of clean water gushing from a garden hose.

The city and officials from Three Affiliated Tribes signed a historic cooperative to share a new water intake, treatment plant and distribution system that will serve Parshall, the reservation, the energy industry and the surrounding rural area.

The new water from a deep intake out into the depths of Lake Sakakawea could be flowing by late fall 2009.

It will serve Parshall and the reservation, where some 300 households and ranches still haul water, and fill a growing demand by the oil industry for water to fracture deep oil wells.

"We'll all be married when it comes to water," said Parshall Mayor Richard Bolkan.

It's a marriage that's been a long time in the works, and Monday's signing represented a prenuptial agreement of sorts.

Bolkan said even though Parshall is inside the reservation boundaries, this is the first shared project.

He said it took years and compromises over which entity would own the treatment plant and the distribution to get done. In the deal, the city will own the treatment and the tribes will finance and own the distribution system.

Bolkan views the shared water as a starting point. "Housing would be next," he said. "We've got rental lists all over."

This was the second time in a month that tribal chairman Marcus Wells Jr. was on hand for a historic agreement. A few weeks ago, he joined state officials to create a one-stop oil production tax for wells drilled on the reservation, ending tax uncertainty and making it simpler to develop the reservation's oil resources.

"We're all together. We need housing and we need businesses on Main Street," the chairman said. He said one tribal councilman, Mervin Packineau, hauls water. "We need to share with our non-Indian neighbors on this major issue."

Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., was there to say that he'll get Congress to do the heavy financial lifting of $8.4 million for the intake and treatment plant, with other funds coming from the State Water Commission and federal tribal funding sources.

"There are people on the reservation who have been hauling water all their lives," Dorgan said. He said cooperation between the city and the tribes is "exactly the way good government should work."

The new plant will have a capacity to treat 2.5 million gallons a day, six times the capacity of the existing plant at Parshall. Parshall could sell twice the 6 to 8 million gallons monthly that goes to oil drillers, the mayor said.

The present intake into the lake already has been moved deeper twice because of falling lake levels, one of the main reasons for the project. Rebuilding it down to 1,760 feet elevation should forever resolve that problem.

Tribal water administrator Marvin Danks said rural residents haul water because wells into the Fox Hills formation are deep and expensive.

"They've wanted rural water for a long time and they've waited long enough," Danks said.

He said the tribes will try to get distribution from Parshall out to the segment in no longer than four years and wrap up the total project to other segments within the decade.

(Reach reporter Lauren Donovan at 888-303-5511 or lauren@westriv.com.)