Water deal averts crisis for eastern Idaho farmers — for now. But it will be back
The big dust-up between Magic Valley surface water users and eastern Idaho groundwater users came to an end last week in a successful deal.
The up-to 105,000 acres of farmland that was on the verge of having irrigation shut off will be protected from curtailment for this year. But the deal will require painful cuts for eastern Idaho agriculture nonetheless.
In exchange for not shutting down irrigation just ahead of harvest, the groundwater users agreed to purchase and provide 30,000 acre-feet of water (about one-eighth the capacity of Lucky Peak Reservoir) next year and another 15,000 the following year. That’s in addition to the significant reductions they’ve already made in the last seven years.
And looking further on the horizon, more trouble is brewing.
The dispute between the Surface Water Coalition, a group of canal companies in the Magic Valley with senior water rights, and the Idaho Ground Water Association, a group of irrigators in eastern Idaho with junior water rights, goes back more than a decade. In 2015, House Speaker Scott Bedke hammered out a framework to resolve the conflict that allowed groundwater users, who have junior water rights, to reduce water use and engage in aquifer recharge to avoid curtailment.
The latest bout of legal wrangling stemmed from a lack of common understanding about what that agreement required. Groundwater users thought their mitigation efforts — which include both pumping reductions and purchasing water to pump into the aquifer, or “recharge” — would be measured on a five-year average. That meant they could put in extra water in good years, like 2017 and 2018, and less in bad years like 2021. But when they did so, the Surface Water Coalition charged that they had violated the agreement, and the Idaho Department of Water Resources agreed with their interpretation.
Going forward, eastern Idaho farmers will have to either buy recharge water in drought years or pump less water. And there are worries that unless there is excellent snowfall this winter, there simply won’t be enough water in reservoirs to buy.
If it were a matter of simply taking some land out of production, it would be painful but manageable — that’s exactly what happened after the 2015 agreement. What worries eastern Idaho farmers and ranchers more is that they have lost the predictability promised by the original Bedke deal.
Farmers rely on complex systems of credit to run their operations between planting and selling their crops. And it can be difficult or impossible to assess at planting time how much water will be available through the rest of the year. That means you have to plant not knowing if you’ll be able to harvest.
“The modern agricultural industry has to have reliability,” said Bingham Groundwater District manager Alan Jackson.
This is the common perception among many eastern Idaho farmers and ranchers: This year, the problem is more or less solved. Next year and every year after, it is not, and the threat is existential.
If climate change continues to result in less snow and hotter summers — and that’s what’s expected — it won’t be long before things reach a crisis.
It’s possible that Idaho agriculture could adapt to this evolving crisis, but it would require a fundamental change — “reimagining water” as one rancher put it.
It will be difficult to do that so long as Idaho remains wedded to a legal concept called “prior appropriation.” But it is almost inconceivable that Idaho will abandon it either, since it forms the bedrock of water law throughout the West.
Tomorrow: The basis of Idaho’s water system is also its fundamental flaw. Climate change is exposing it.
This story was originally published September 15, 2022 at 4:00 AM.