Water users can’t solve Idaho’s water crisis. Idaho government needs to step up | Opinion
Walking out of an Idaho highway rest stop so filthy it presented a health hazard, I received on my phone an advertisement from the state of Idaho bragging about $4.6 billion in tax cuts since 2019, more than any other state per capita. I wish we had kept a few hundred dollars of this money to clean that highway restroom.
The state’s failure to provide basic services such as clean public restrooms while peddling tax cuts signals the mismatch between what is and what is needed. Idaho needs school funding, realistic public criminal defense budgets, health care monies, etc., all makings of the glue that binds societies together.
The current disquiet over water scarcity in eastern Idaho is the billboard advertising the state’s failure to effectively deploy its tax revenues.
The Eastern Snake River Plain Aquifer (ESPA) underlies approximately 10,800 square miles of the Snake River Plain in eastern to south-central Idaho. The ESPA stretches about 170 miles from Ashton in the northeast to Twin Falls and King Hill in the southwest. The water levels of the ESPA have steadily fallen since the early 1950s.
An increase in irrigation pumping from the aquifer following the development of deep-well pumps, which could lift water from deep levels and power sprinkler systems, directly reduced water levels in the aquifer. Sprinklers further reduced aquifer levels because a well-adjusted sprinkler system sends water down only to the root zone of crops rather than seeping all the way into the aquifer to replenish and recharge it as traditional irrigation systems historically did. In sum, since the early 1950s, we took out more and put back less.
In Idaho, the first person to use water — the senior user — has the right to use that water source before someone who seeks to put that water to use at a later time — the junior user. This is called the prior appropriation doctrine, or “first in time, first in right.” When a water user applies to the State of Idaho for a water right, the user must show not only will the water be put to use, but that the new proposed use will not injure older water rights. For years since the early 1950s, the State issued many new irrigation pumping rights without careful anticipation of the effect these new rights would have on older existing rights. Finally, in 1992, the Idaho Department of Water Resources (IDWR) issued a moratorium on new irrigation rights in the depleted Eastern Snake River Plain and the underlying aquifer. This moratorium did not occur, however, before the state handed out more water rights than available water.
Giving out more water rights than available water results in some junior users going without, or being curtailed, especially in a drier year of scarce water. A junior water user can avoid curtailment by providing water to the senior users if the junior can obtain water by buying water or water rights. The water user world calls this practice “mitigation.” In 2015, the junior water users and the senior water users on the Eastern Snake River Plain struck an agreement in which the juniors agreed to mitigate by changing the water budget on the ESPA by 240,000 acre-feet of water by either reducing junior use or providing water to the senior users. The juniors did not perform this agreement. As a result, the IDWR Director ordered the juniors dry up 330,000 acres of ground. This meant a massive loss of agricultural revenues to the state. Thankfully, the interested parties agreed to delay this enforcement for the 2024 crop year, seeking to negotiate a new way forward.
Some in state government have suggested discovery of the path forward rests solely with water users. Further input from this state sector has focused on the senior water users lining canals or converting from traditional irrigation methods to sprinkler irrigation. Of course, as soon as the canals are lined or conversion to more sprinkler irrigation happens, there will be less recharge of water to the ESPA, speeding the current decline of the aquifer.
Another obvious solution stares us in the face, a case of what is needed rather than what is. Remember the state handed out more water rights than there is available water, triggering some primary responsibility in the state actor for too much demand on too little water. Because we cannot make more water, the solution is reducing that demand, which the State can do. To reduce demand, the state can purchase water, water rights, or water storage and canal systems, or any combination of these measures. Such an action would permanently reduce demand to provide stability and certainty at the beginning of each irrigation season. Further, the State would have actual water to dispatch to lessen the difference between what is needed and what is available.
If the state’s purchases cause reduced agricultural revenue, the overall outcome would be much less than drying up 330,000 acres. Further, depending upon how the state went about its business, it may only reduce water use on some acres rather than dry up acres altogether. For example, many acres have both natural flow rights and storage rights. While the State might purchase the storage, the natural flow would keep the acres active with reduced production. And these acres would not only be paid for their storage water, but could continue to use the storage water in years of plenty.
Idaho should take responsibility and move to develop a long-term plan to reduce demand for limited water supplies.