With the problem temporarily resolved for this year, Idaho water users continue to negotiate longer-term solutions that farmers hope will allow them to avoid water shutoffs during the growing season.

The problem reached a head on May 30, when the Idaho Department of Water Resources issued a curtailment order requiring holders of 6,400 subordinate groundwater rights to reduce or shut off their water supplies. Idaho Capital Sun previously reported.

Ultimately, the curtailment order lasted about three weeks until the water users agreed that the Idaho Department of Water Resources announced on June 20.

The Idaho Department of Water Resources announced on June 13 that it had suspended enforcement of the curtailment order after it became clear that both sides were working toward an agreement.

While the agreement solves the problem for this year, Governor Brad Little has asked water users to come up with more long-term solutions in the coming weeks.

Little spent an implementing regulation on 26 June, which sets two new deadlines:

• The Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer Groundwater Management Plan Advisory Council must submit a new groundwater management plan to the Idaho Department of Water Resources by September 1.
• By October 1, surface water and groundwater users must meet and develop an improved mitigation plan.

“Several negotiation meetings have taken place over the summer and I am confident that farmers will find solutions that will avoid future water shortages wherever they farm,” Little wrote in an opinion piece published on Wednesday.

Little stressed that he would not prescribe a solution.

“Because the only solution acceptable to me is one that is worked out by farmers,” Little wrote. “If we don’t do this together, the EPA or the courts (or worse, Congress!) will decide our water fate.”

Idaho’s Lieutenant Governor supports water talks

Idaho Lieutenant Governor Scott Bedke (R-Oakley) is supporting a series of meetings between surface water officials and groundwater officials. The two sides met in Pocatello on Aug. 7. Although they did not reach a long-term agreement at that meeting, Bedke said he was encouraged.

“We made significant progress today,” Bedke said in a phone interview Aug. 7. “I think everyone’s mindset has changed a little bit, recognizing that we’re all in the same boat and that we have the tools available to solve the problem and that what happened in the spring will never be repeated.”

Bedke said the state’s May 30 cutback order was “not our finest hour.”

“That’s certainly my commitment,” Bedke said. “I’m not going to be part of anything that pits one side of the state against the other. This is all Idaho. We’re all in this together and we think at the end of the day we’ve got to have something we can work with.”

“Still, not everyone will get everything they want (in a new agreement), but they will get everything they need,” Bedke added. “That is certainly my commitment.”

TJ Budge, General Counsel for the Idaho Groundwater Associationsaid he hopes for a new agreement that protects water for older water rights holders and eliminates uncertainty and fear for younger groundwater rights holders. He also hopes the state can stabilize the aquifer for a long life.

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“At a high level, we are in a situation where water users are in negotiations to develop a groundwater management plan that both sides can agree to and that provides a path to conserve groundwater and maintain agricultural use,” Budge said in a telephone interview.

On Aug. 8, hydrologists with the Idaho Department of Water Resources reported that water levels in the Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer have risen by 800,000 acre-feet in the past year, according to a department news release. Despite the recent rise, the aquifer’s water levels have been shrinking for decades. Since 1952, the aquifer’s storage capacity has dropped by more than 14 million acre-feet of water, according to the Idaho Department of Water Resources.

Acre-foot is a unit of volume that indicates the amount of water needed to cover one acre of land one foot deep.

“Idaho is suffering from a groundwater shortage,” Little wrote on August 14.

“Since 1952, we have lost the equivalent of 19 trillion gallons of water – enough for the domestic use of the entire population of Idaho for the next 75 years,” Little added.

Budge wants to avoid water cuts during growing seasons when farmers need to irrigate their crops.

“We’ve learned that you have to remove a lot of farmland to get a relatively small benefit in terms of the water that comes out of the springs at American Falls,” Budge said. “… We believe there are much more cost-effective ways to do this that don’t require draining hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland.”

“The seasonal restriction of water supplies for agriculture is problematic and has devastating economic and social consequences for the state,” Budge added.

Budge said one of the issues the two sides are still negotiating is how to provide relief to holders of priority water rights when there is not enough water for everyone.

How do water rights work in Idaho?

Water issues in Idaho are governed by the principle of first-come, first-served appropriation. In other words, if there is not enough water for everyone, the older, priority water rights take precedence over the younger, subordinate water rights.

The holders of the subordinate water rights have a mitigation plan that sets out how they will prevent water shortages or compensate the holders of the priority water rights for them.

This year, the director of the Idaho Department of Water Resources declared that six groundwater districts were not meeting remediation plans and issued a curtailment order on May 30 requiring 6,400 junior water rights holders pumping from the Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer to shut off their water because senior water rights holders were predicted to face water shortages.

After three weeks, the two sides agreed to a settlement that protected all groundwater district members from cuts for the remainder of this year’s irrigation season, the Idaho Department of Water Resources said. announced 20 June.