Following curtailment fight, Idaho water users seek long-term solution • Idaho Capital Sun

With the issue temporarily resolved for the year, Idaho water users continue to negotiate toward longer term water solutions that farmers hope will avoid shutting the water off during growing seasons.  

The issue came to a head on May 30 when the Idaho Department of Water resources issued a curtailment order requiring the holders of 6,400 junior groundwater rights to curtail, or shut off, their water, the Idaho Capital Sun previously reported. 

Ultimately, the curtailment order lasted about three weeks until water users reached an agreement for the 2024 irrigation season that the Idaho Department of Water Resources announced June 20. 

The Idaho Department of Water Resources announced it paused enforcing the curtailment order on June 13 after it became obvious the two sides were working toward a settlement agreement. 

While the agreement resolves the issue for this year, Gov. Brad Little has asked water users to come up with longer term solutions in the coming weeks. 

Little issued an executive order on June 26 that outlines two new deadlines: 

• By Sept. 1, the Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer Groundwater Management Plan Advisory Council has to submit a new groundwater management plan to be submitted to the Idaho Department of Water Resources.
• By Oct. 1, the surface water user and the groundwater users have to meet and establish an improved mitigation plan.

“Several negotiation meetings have taken place over the summer, and I’m confident that farmers will create the solutions that will avoid future water shortages no matter where you farm,” Little wrote in an opinion piece released Wednesday. 

Little stressed that he would not mandate a solution.

“Because the only solution that is acceptable to me is one that is crafted by farmers,” Little wrote. “If we don’t do this together, then the EPA or the courts (or worst, Congress!) will determine our water destiny.”

Idaho Lt. Gov. Scott Bedke, R-Oakley, is helping facilitate a series of stakeholder meetings between surface water managers and groundwater managers. The two sides met Aug. 7 in Pocatello. Although they did not reach a long-term agreement at that meeting, Bedke said he is encouraged. 

“We made substantial progress today,” Bedke said in an Aug. 7 phone interview. “In everyone I think there has been a decided shift in the thinking a little bit, this acknowledgement that we are all in this together and that we have the tools at our disposal to fix this and never have a repeat of what happened this spring.”

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

“That’s certainly my commitment,” Bedke said. “I will not be a part of anything that puts one side of the state against the other. This is all Idaho. We are all in it together and think we have to end up having something we can work with.” 

“Having said that, not everybody is going to get everything they want (in a new deal), but they will get everything they need,” Bedke added. “That is certainly my commitment.”

T.J. Budge, general counsel for the Idaho Ground Water Association, said he hopes for a new deal that protects the water for senior water rights holders and removes uncertainty and anxiety for junior groundwater rights holders. He also hopes the state can stabilize the aquifer for future longevity. 

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“At a high level, we are in a place where the water users are in negotiations to try to develop a groundwater management plan that both sides can agree to and can provide a path forward to maintaining the aquifer and keeping farmland in production,” Budge said in a phone interview. 

On Aug. 8, Idaho Department of Water Resources hydrologists reported that water levels in the Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer increased by 800,000 acre feet in the last year, according to a news release issued by the department. Despite the recent gain, the aquifer has been dwindling for decades. Since 1952, the storage capacity of the aquifer is down by more than 14 million acre feet of water, according to the Idaho Department of Water Resources.

Acre feet is a unit of volume used to indicate the amount of water needed to cover an acre of land one foot deep.

“Idaho is facing a water shortage underground,” Little wrote Aug. 14. 

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

Budge wants to avoid water curtailment during growing seasons, when farmers need to water crops.

“What we learned is you have to curtail a lot of farmland to get a comparatively small benefit in terms of water coming out of the springs at American Falls,” Budge said. “… We think there are much more cost effective ways that don’t involve drying up hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland.”

“In-season curtailment of water for growing crops is problematic, and economically and socially devastating for the state,” Budge added. 

Budge said one of the topics the two sides are still negotiating over is how to mitigate the senior water rights holders when there isn’t enough water to go around.

How do water rights work in Idaho?

Water issues in Idaho are governed by the doctrine of prior appropriation, which means “first in time, first in right.” In other words, the older senior water rights have priority over the more recent junior water rights when there is not enough water to go around. 

The junior water rights holders have a mitigation plan that identifies how the junior water rights holders will prevent or compensate the senior water rights holders for water shortages. 

This year, the director of the Idaho Department of Water Resources said six groundwater districts were not compliance with mitigation plans and issued a May 30 curtailment order that called for 6,400 junior water rights holders who pump of the Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer to shut off their water due to a predicted water shortage for senior water rights holders. 

After three weeks, the two sides reached a settlement agreement that protected all members of groundwater districts from curtailment for the rest of this year’s irrigation season, the Idaho Department of Water Resources announced June 20.