U.S. Water News Online
BOISE, Idaho -- As House Speaker Bruce Newcomb and Keith Allred, a Harvard professor, watched the Senate debate over a bill to allow the state to take water from the Snake River to help recharge an eastern Idaho aquifer, they noticed the same thing -- Idaho is changing.
Proponents of the plan, touted by Newcomb as a solution to replenishing an aquifer that's been depleted by 50 years of groundwater pumping and six years of drought, came largely from Idaho's agrarian east.
Those fighting against it were almost solely from the state's west and north, the more populous half of the state that has seen great growth in recent decades.
The fight was over water, but it revealed something about the character of a state that, despite its farming roots, sees more revenue these days from microchip sales than the potato chips for which it is famous.
"No question, times have changed," Newcomb, R-Burley, said in an interview. "We're evolving as a state, from rural to urban."
The Senate voted 21-14 to kill the bill in a victory for the Idaho Power Co., the state's largest utility. Idaho Power had fought the measure with television ads and letters to its 455,000 customers, contending the proposal would take water needed to produce hydropower and would force it to raise rates by millions of dollars.
It was a defeat for Newcomb, who along with allies from eastern Idaho had characterized the issue as a matter of economic life or death -- a dwindling aquifer, down from its historically high levels of the 1940s, could spell ruin for thousands of farmers, businesses and cities that draw water with pumps from the Lake-Erie-sized underground waterway beneath the desert.
The House passed the bill earlier this month.
Idaho is America's third-fastest-growing state, behind Nevada and Arizona, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, whose figures show the state's most-populous regions have grown three times faster than the state's rural areas.
Of the 21 votes against the measure, only two came from rural southern or eastern Idaho: Sen. Tom Gannon, R-Buhl, and Sen. Chuck Coiner, R-Twin Falls.
Coiner had a stake in the vote. He's on the board of the Twin Falls Canal Co., which had opposed the measure, arguing its water rights were threatened by the bill and that the solution to a depleted aquifer wasn't recharge, but reducing use of its water.
"My legislative district in Twin Falls is the Twin Falls Canal Co., and they opposed it. And ranchers in Owyhee County feared for the priority of their water rights," Gannon told the Associated Press. "It was a constituency issue."
And just three senators who favored the measure -- Sens. Joe Stegner, R-Lewiston, Shawn Keough, R-Sandpoint, and Monty Pierce, R-New Plymouth -- came from an urban district, northern district or a district west of Boise.
"As a fifth-generation Idahoan who grew up in Twin Falls, I felt we were seeing the changes in the state manifest themselves in the debate, and in the vote," said Allred, who also is president of The Common Interest, an Idaho organization of self-proclaimed political moderates.
Newcomb based his bill on a legal opinion from Attorney General Lawrence Wasden.
In it, Wasden determined a 1984 pact between Idaho and Idaho Power gives the state, not the utility, rights to water above guaranteed minimum levels.
Newcomb wanted to use water this year to send it down canals, where it would have seeped into the aquifer. Advocates of his plan said anything short of that would be leaving the future of Idaho's water in the hands of a single, powerful company -- not the people of the state.
"There's been great political power that's been brought to bear on this issue," said Sen. Bart Davis, R-Idaho Falls, who debated the bill for an hour. "House Bill 800 simply seeks to protect Idaho's right to use the state's trust water for the benefit of the state as a whole."
Lawmakers who opposed Newcomb's plan said they feared intervening would be an encroachment into Idaho Power's right to the water as guaranteed elsewhere -- in a law passed by the 1994 Legislature.
Opponents also said the bill could mire Idaho in years of litigation.
"If House Bill 800 passes, it will be challenged in court. It would not get us to a conclusion faster. Passing House Bill 800 slows the process down," Coiner said, adding that just because Newcomb had secured Wasden's legal opinion, that didn't mean it would hold up before a judge. "The attorney general's opinion is just one opinion, just one side of the coin."
Following the vote, Idaho Power Chief Executive Officer LaMont Keen said in a statement the company would work "cooperatively to resolve Idaho's water issues." He didn't offer specifics.
Before Newcomb's bill was introduced, Gov. Dirk Kempthorne had been negotiating with the utility for taxpayers to pay $1.4 million to the company -- in exchange for water to be flooded down canals near American Falls in an aquifer recharge pilot project.
Mike Journee, Kempthorne's press secretary, said that plan is now off the table because it is too late in the season. Starting April 1, irrigators will begin using many canals for their fields.
Return to the U.S. Water News Archives page Or Return to the U.S. Water News Homepage
Editor@uswaternews.com
*Your Name:
*Your Email:
*Friend's Email:
Use a comma to separate e-mail addresses:
*Your Comments:
Hi, I thought you might like to read this article.
*Required Fields