Idaho governor signs SE Idaho aquifer management bill

May 2009

U.S. Water News Online

BOISE, Idaho — Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter put his signature to a management plan for the Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer, convinced this will help avoid costly lawsuits involving groundwater pumpers, spring-dependent trout farms and farmers who use the region's complicated network of century-old canals.

The bill signed by the Republican governor is expected to cost as much as $100 million over 10 years, with 30 percent coming from the state and the rest from irrigators and other water users like cities and Idaho Power Co. The plan emerged from a 2007 water summit Otter organized to help end legal wrangling.

The huge groundwater aquifer rivals Lake Erie in size, but drought and increased pumping since the 1950s have taken their toll. At a news conference, Otter said the plan to restore it was the result of difficult negotiations over how much of the state's most precious resource the different parties would be able to claim as their own.

“They collaborated and they stayed together, and the result was this comprehensive aquifer management plan,” Otter said. “Not everybody got everything they wanted.”

The plan aims to recharge the aquifer through various projects and by eventually changing how 600,000 acre feet of water is used.

However, no one is under the illusion that the pact will end water conflicts for good. In the Idaho high desert, scarce water is in high demand to grow potatoes, fuel urban growth and turn giant Idaho Power river turbines. A potentially difficult piece of the puzzle will be agreeing on priorities and recharge projects.

The plan is expected to cost $7 million to $10 million per year over the first 10 years, with about $3 million a year coming from state appropriations for a water fund. To start, Idaho lawmakers have socked away about $2 million from the state's share of the federal stimulus package.

“Funding is going to be a big issue, because it's going to take a lot of money,” said Rep. Del Raybould, R-Rexburg and a farmer.

Bringing once-warring parties to the table with this plan will help resolve disputes that once were almost certain to end up before a judge, said Lynn Tominaga, an Idaho Ground Water Appropriators lobbyist.

“We think (the agreement) is good,” Tominaga told The Associated Press. “It finally gets everybody to quit fighting, and start working together for solutions.”

The latest round of fighting over Idaho water began in 2005, when farmers who get their water from canals near Twin Falls sued “groundwater pumpers,” demanding they give up water that canal operators said was rightfully theirs. The state got involved, out of fear the battle could hurt eastern Idaho economic development and cripple agriculture.

Otter called the 2007 summit after the Idaho Supreme Court ruled in March of that year that state water managers must take into account where the resource can best be put to use, not just who owned it first. Though Otter took heat for holding a closed-door session in Burley, a move he said was necessary to allow water users to talk frankly, he said the process was worth it.

“We were hopeful this would be the outcome of that 2007 water summit,” Otter said. “We have a future that looks a lot brighter than it did.”

During the 2006 legislative session, Idaho Power, the state's largest utility, and groundwater users in southeastern Idaho fought over a bill to let the state take water from the Snake River for recharging the aquifer. The utility said it needed that water to generate power, and helped defeat the bill with intense lobbying, including dire predictions of increased costs to Idaho electricity users.

Last month, however, Idaho Power struck an agreement with state lawyers that includes some provisions of the 2006 bill, in part because the prospect of an aquifer management plan provided assurances that recharge would be done appropriately and because it eased the utility's fears of losing water without adequate compensation.

Idaho Power also is hoping for cleaner, cooler river water downstream, because a recharged Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer will boost flows into the Snake River at Thousand Springs near Hagerman. That may help the utility's federal relicensing efforts for the three-dam, 1,150 megawatt Hell's Canyon Complex, from which it generates the bulk of its hydropower.

“The main benefit is, the water users are working together to resolve various issues,” said Russ Jones, an Idaho Power spokesman.