The Idaho Supreme Court has unanimously upheld a lower-court ruling on several pending issues involved with the Rangen Inc. water call in southern Idaho, rejecting the Hagerman trout farm’s argument that an Idaho Department of Water Resources order in the case constituted an unlawful taking of Rangen’s property.

The court on March 23 issued another major ruling in the case, in which Rangen issued a call to enforce its senior water rights from Thousand Springs for its fish farms, curtailing water use by junior water rights holders in the Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer, who were pumping groundwater for irrigation and municipal use – which was determined to be cutting the available flows to Rangen. The IDWR approved a mitigation plan proposed by the Idaho Ground Water Appropriators, in which some junior water rights holders avoided curtailment by leasing water from another surface water right holder and piping the water to the Rangen facility.

After the March 23 ruling, Rangen attorney Fritz Haemmerle told the Capital Press, “All of these rulings in the Rangen case are adding a lot of conjunctive management body of law that is sparse in Idaho.”

The latest opinion, issued Tuesday, was unanimous, unlike the 3-2 opinion issued last month; the Tuesday opinion was authored by Chief Justice Jim Jones. You can read it here.