U.S. Water News Online
BOISE, Idaho -- Scores of lawyers, lawmakers and water experts convened recently to lay the foundation for what state leaders hope will be a long-term solution to Idaho's increasing water problems.
Prompted by a water rights fight in southern Idaho, the special legislative committee was part of a late deal between Gov. Dirk Kempthorne, water users and other state officials to avert an economic crisis in the Twin Falls-Hagerman area.
But Sen. Laird Noh of Kimberly, co-chairman of the special panel, said the problems between groundwater and surface water users expand beyond his region and the Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer.
``That is by no means the only part of the state where we have difficulty,'' Noh said.
The panel has expanded its focus to include problems plaguing groundwater sources for the Rathdrum Prairie area in the Panhandle, Moscow in north-central Idaho and the Bear River Basin in the southeastern corner of the state. Members want to get ahead of the problems in those areas so they do not become as severe as the one in southern Idaho.
``We're depleting the aquifers across the state faster than we're recharging them,'' House Speaker Bruce Newcomb of Burley told the crowd of 100.
State Water Resources Director Karl Dreher laid out the complex water management issues facing the panel, which will meet at least monthly through the year. Working groups were established to assess specific issues for each aquifer.
But the priority for the committee is resolving the conflict that 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 flows in the Middle Snake River, blamed on groundwater users 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 last-minute deal headed off the shutdown of 1,300 wells north of the river and the possibility of $750 million in economic losses to the region.
The committee has just a year to come up with a solution or the hatcheries will renew their claim to their full allocation.
The state is putting up $2 million to provide replacement water for the hatcheries this year and help all water right holders find more efficient ways to use the limited resource.
``This isn't just fish farmers,'' Newcomb said. ``It's people who flush a toilet. It's people who turn on a faucet who are at risk here.''
``We're going to have to change the way we look at things,'' he said.
Dreher said 95 percent of the water Idaho consumes for residential, commercial and municipal purposes comes from aquifers -- the highest reliance on groundwater of any state in the nation.
``If, in fact, our groundwater resources are diminishing, that does not bode well for our future,'' he said.
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