Sen. Larry Craig and Idaho water users’ opposition to a bill to protect 387 miles of the Snake River and its tributaries in Wyoming presents a new challenge to Sen. Mike Crapo’s Owyhee Canyonlands bill.

Craig has opposed the Craig Thomas Snake Headwaters Legacy Act from the start, saying it presented a threat to Idaho irrigation farmers downstream. Now the bill appears to be linked as a package to the Owyhees bill, which was sent to the floor Wednesday along with it.

Here’s the rub. Irrigation districts in the Twin Falls area own the rights to most of the water stored in Jackson Lake inside Grand Teton National Park. Craig and the Idaho Water Users Association say Wild and Scenic Rivers designation, especially the stretch of river below Jackson Lake, could alter the releases from the Jackson Lake Dam or provide a legal platform for environmentalists to sue to reduce Idaho’s control over Wyoming’s water.

The two states have a compact, an agreement, that clearly defines how the water is split up and Craig doesn’t want any other legal issue brought into the mix.

Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso added explicit language that says the designations “shall not affect the management and operation of Jackson Lake or Jackson Lake Dam.” He says any federal water right associated with the designation would be junior to existing rights, which means Idaho water users would get the water first in times of scarcity.

That’s not enough for Idaho’s “pays to be paranoid” water users.

“Idaho’s water user community has a long, painful history of dealing with federal bureaucrats and environmental groups who try to manipulate policies, statutes or rules to achieve results never intended,” said Norm Semanko, executive director of the Idaho Water Users Association. “Given that track record, it is only a matter of time before those same forces attempt to use any Federal protected river designation to drive Jackson Lake water management, resulting in reduced water storage supplies for Idaho irrigators,” Semanko said.

The reason Semanko and his folks are so paranoid is in the series of cases determining in state court what federal laws gave the federal government clear federal water rights, one of their few defeats was over the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. The Idaho Supreme Court ruled that the designation of large parts of the Salmon River as wild and scenic gave the federal government a 1980 water right to protect the wild and scenic character of the Salmon River. So, hundreds of people who sunk wells, installed irrigation systems or even domestic wells since 1980 have water rights junior to the federal government.

That wouldn’t be the case in Wyoming since the federal water right would be set the day the bill is signed into law. Only if sometime in the future Idaho water users thought they could expand the dam in one of the nation’s most popular national parks, could this bill really threaten operations. But it is enough to make them leery of any new legislation affecting some of the most important water rights in Idaho from an economic standpoint. Most of the Magic Valley’s farm economy depends in part on these water rights.

Enter Mike Crapo. A former water lawyer, Crapo is as sensitive to the issue as any water user. Her made his political career on protecting Idaho water.

He’s not going threaten Idaho water just to get his Owyhee bill passed.

He is working with Barrasso trying to find an acceptable solution. It might be the two bills are separated and voted on separately. But that would have its own perils.

At the moment it’s hard to see how the Idaho water users will be satisfied without taking the stretch of river below Jackson Lake, the most prominent stretch through Jackson Hole, out of the bill. That would be unacceptable to Wyoming and a blow to its own view of its sovereignty.

In past battles like this Sen. James McClure could find a compromise, as he did on the Nevada Wilderness bill in the 1980s and over a wilderness study area that overlapped in Idaho in the Wyoming Wilderness bill in 1985.

Crapo has shown remarkable ability to hold together the coalition of ranchers and environmentalists who back his Owyhees bill. But they succeeded because they were talking about tangibles such as land trades, wilderness designations and the like.

This debate will be not with farmers but with lawyers who bill by the hour and make their trade on the intangibles of water law. Ultimately, Crapo may have to make his own legal judgment of whether this bill really presents a threat to Idaho’s water.

Meanwhile, six years of collaboration in the Owyhees hangs in the balance.

Bookmark/Search this post with:

delicious | digg | yahoo