U.S. Water News Online
TWIN FALLS, Idaho -- A temporary agreement is keeping a dispute between groundwater pumpers and surface water users out of the courts for another year, but it may be inevitable that the matter will eventually be decided by judges, a future Idaho Supreme Court justice says.
"I certainly hope things can be worked out, but I suspect we'll see those kinds of issues coming to the court," said Jim Jones, who is unopposed in the election to replace retiring Justice Wayne Kidwell.
But Jones said the Supreme Court should be well positioned to consider the complex issues involving state water law. Jones and Justice Roger Burdick, who also is unopposed to retain his seat on the state's high court, both are from Magic Valley and have extensive experience in water law. Burdick presided over the Snake River Basin Adjudication for two and a half years, and Jones was among the chief negotiators of the 1984 Swan Falls Agreement that launched the adjudication -- the legal sorting of more than 150,000 water rights throughout Idaho.
"Having that experience from the Magic Valley and with water is going to be helpful," Jones said in a pre-election visit to The Times-News. "At least if we have some practical experience and understand the issues, it makes it easier to understand where both sides are coming from. The court won't make a decision where it will be uninformed."
The temporary, last-minute agreement this spring headed off the shutdown of 1,300 wells north of the Snake River and the possibility of $750 million in economic losses to the region. The conflict has pitted commercial fish hatcheries in the Hagerman Valley, who rely on surface water, against irrigators, dairymen and others, who pump their water out of the aquifer with wells.
Low spring flows in the Snake River Canyon, blamed on wells and irrigation changes and aggravated by four years of drought, have denied the hatcheries and other surface water users their full water rights. The hatcheries invoked their right to receive full allocation by requiring users with more recent water rights to be cut off.
The parties have just a year to come up with a solution, or the hatcheries will renew their claim to their full allocation. And the outcome of that dispute could affect water users in other parts of the state.
Jones said he perceives that people in the agriculture community and others are realizing more and more that court decisions about water will have a dramatic effect on their lives. That awareness was heightened when the state Supreme Court in 1999 ruled that the federal government was entitled to a water right in three wilderness areas -- a ruling the court later reversed after Chief Justice Cathy Silak lost her seat on the court to Justice Dan Eismann.
"It hasn't gotten any less critical," Jones said. "If anything, we're in an era of even greater competing demands on water ... The court is going to be the arbiter of these disputes if they end up in litigation."
Jones, 61, grew up in Eden and graduated from Valley High School. He ran twice for the U.S. House against Rep. George Hansen in the 1970s before he was elected state attorney general, a job he held for two terms. He also ran for the U.S. Senate against Larry Craig, losing in the primary in 1990. Since then, he has practiced law in Boise, focusing primarily on business law.
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