Batt: Quit Eyeing Idaho’s Water Governor Fights Efforts To Divert Water To Washington, Oregon To Save Salmon

Gov. Phil Batt called on Oregon and Washington Tuesday to share the burden of “Draconian measures” required to save the threatened Snake River salmon.

“We find the representatives on the Northwest Power Planning Council increasingly looking to Idaho and Montana to help downstream fish,” Batt said. “If we’re serious about recovery, we ought to not be looking jealously at each other’s water.”

Batt was reacting to plans to divert water from the Columbia River for two new agricultural developments in the Columbia Basin, which he said would compete with Idaho’s agricultural interests.

He tempered his more strident remarks for the Pacific Northwest Grain and Feed Association in Coeur d’Alene after receiving a response from Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber Monday.

Batt was particularly miffed about a letter from two Washington members of the Northwest Power Planning Council that suggested that Idaho’s potato crop be moved to the mid-Columbia region’s better soil.

“Failing that, we can move only the water,” the letter from council members Mike Kreidler and Ken Casavant read.

Idaho has dedicated 427,000 acre-feet of water to help salmon recovery efforts. When the additional water is released from upstream dams, it increases the river’s velocity and helps propel smolts to the ocean.

Under the National Marine Fisheries Service’s Endangered Species Act, that was the minimum amount needed to help move the migrating salmon downstream.

This year, the issue has been a moot point because of the high spring runoff, said John Harrison, spokesman for the planning council, an agency created to mitigate the impacts of the dams on the fish.

In a more typical season, the council has suggested that another million acre-feet of water should be washed downstream.

“Now they want to draw that (Dworshak reservoir) down to nothing and they want another million and a half (acre-feet of water) from the upper Snake,” Batt said. “We don’t have that kind of water.”

The Bureau of Reclamation, which purchased or leased the 427,000 acre-feet of water from irrigators for the salmon program, agrees.

“We do not believe that’s realistic,” said Ken Pedde, deputy regional director of the bureau. “To acquire that amount would require us to dry up several hundred thousand acres of irrigated land in Idaho.”

Some environmentalists argue that Idaho has plenty of water to help.

“Idaho’s sitting on 12 million acre-feet of water,” said Charles Ray of Idaho Rivers United. “I don’t think Idaho’s made too great of a contribution myself.”

Yet, Ray acknowledged that Idaho’s salmon recovery plan is a “good first step.”

In the plan, the state agrees to provide 427,000 acre-feet annually to the endangered species cause, “in the spirit of regional cooperation,” and as long as the Dworshak Reservoir is managed for summer recreational use.

But Tuesday, Batt said that water shouldn’t go to help agricultural interests downstream.

He was referring to plans to divert up to 100,000 acre-feet of water to irrigate land owned by Boeing AgriIndustrial Co. in Oregon and Mercer Ranch Inc. in Washington.

The water involved for the new farmland is covered by long-standing water rights.

Batt prefaced his remarks by speaking of the importance of salmon to the state of Idaho, historically and economically.

“Some people think we have to give up, that we can’t recover the salmon,” Batt said. “I don’t think that’s right, but I also don’t think we can decimate our economy to recover them.”

, DataTimes MEMO: Cut in the Spokane edition.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Susan Drumheller Staff writer The Associated Press contributed to this report.