If anyone doubted that the Eastern Snake Plain Water controversy is reaching a climax consider Gov. Butch Otter’s guest opinion released Thursday.

Otter has made resolving this dispute between groundwater users, who pump their water out of the aquifer, and spring water users, who get the water from springs flowing out of the aquifer, one of his top priorities. He held a conference in Boise last year hoping to bring the senior spring users and the junior groundwater users together without luck.

Water director David Tuthill backed off his plan to shut off pumps to thousands of acres last July only after groundwater users agreed to pay for water that is currently flowing through a canal in an experimental project to see how much they can recharge the aquifer.
But groundwater need 20 percent more water this year to meet Tuthill’s order this year.

And the reservoirs are dry. So Otter wants volunteers.

“In an effort to give them a realistic and timely option while preserving our precious and dwindling Eastern Snake River Plain Aquifer, I recently proposed enabling farmers to volunteer up to 20,000 acres of their ground in the Thousand Springs area to lie fallow – untilled and unplanted – for three years,” Otter said. “Idaho taxpayers then would pay those producers for not irrigating that acreage from a fund created by the Legislature last winter specifically for this kind of emergency.

“The water saved would stay in the aquifer, potentially reducing the need to curtail water supplies next spring to other southern Idaho water users,” Otter said. “Every drop of water we conserve in this way is one drop – or more – that we need not find a way to recharge to the aquifer later.”

Otter’s challenge is that farmers are making money hand over fist this year selling corn and other crops. A hearing on the dispute is scheduled for Nov. 28 and each side thinks its legal position will eventually prevail.

Groundwater users remain skeptical the state can enforce the kind of mass shutdown Tuthill is threatening. Both sides seem to be long past ready for a compromise.
The only easy way out this winter and next spring will be if we get a big snow pack and a wet spring.