Idaho leaders unveil plan to save aquifer
BOISE – State leaders have unveiled a plan to avert a legal battle that could dry up farmland and cost the state’s economy up to $900 million a year.
The state has been embroiled in a struggle between water users who draw from springs along the Snake River Canyon in south-central Idaho and those who pump water from the ground. The water supply once thought limitless is far from that.
The proposal was revealed Monday at a meeting of the Legislature’s Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee in Idaho Falls.
“I think every water user in the Snake River system will benefit,” said Sen. Laird Noh, R-Kimberly, co-chairman of the Expanded Natural Resources Interim Committee which has looked for a solution to the furor over the Eastern Snake River Plain Aquifer.
The plan would pay willing farmers and business owners to give up their water rights. It could cost up to $100 million over 30 years. But a deadlock over the issue could cost the economy nine times that amount each year, officials said.
It could stop the depletion of the aquifer and increase the flows out of Thousand Springs near Hagerman into the Snake River. Water users such as commercial trout farms have older water rights than farmers who draw water from the ground.
The plan is proposed by the Idaho Department of Water Resources, the Idaho Attorney General’s office and the interim committee.
“It’s a conceptual proposal,” Idaho Water Resources Director Karl Dreher said. “I don’t know how it will play out.”
They say groundwater users in the areas affected will pay most of the costs for state bonds, which will pay for most of the proposal. The federal government will pick up some of the costs from farm programs and rental fees for water used to aid migration of endangered salmon.
But all water users in the Snake River watershed may be asked to pay a water fee, and some state tax dollars also are expected to be needed. The ruling could set a precedent for water disputes in the future.
It also would accelerate the shift of water use from agriculture to urban and industrial uses. Idaho has the second highest per capita water use in the nation behind Wyoming. More than 90 percent of the water goes to farmers and ranchers for irrigation.
Dreher said he will have to sell urban lawmakers, mostly in Boise, who may question why their taxpayers are required to resolve a water problem on the other side of the state.
“They’re part of this. We plan to reason it through with them,” Dreher said. “They need to keep in mind that one day they’re going to have these kinds of troubles.”
The aquifer holds more than 200 million acre-feet of water. The drought and a shift from the use of canals – which leach some water back into the ground – to sprinklers have reduced the huge pool.