Today, thousands of farmers, businesses, and municipalities across the Snake River Plain received curtailment letters from the Department of Water Resources. These letters order water users to immediately cease irrigating crops or otherwise pumping water to support their business operations.

Several farmers, myself included, have pointed out that shutting water off at this point in the growing season will result in a near-total loss of this year’s crop. In the case of our family’s grain and hay farm, we will experience losses surpassing $1,500 per acre.

Taken together, those losses will total millions of dollars and spell the end of our farm. For producers of more capital-intensive crops like potatoes, the losses will be several times steeper.

The ripple effects of this order will echo through the state economy as businesses across the supply chain are shuttered and as local communities face financial devastation.

This latest move represents a bold escalation by a state agency 1) in the absence of a crisis and 2) despite the fact that groundwater users, collectively, have already taken steps to ensure that the predicted shortfall to the Twin Falls Canal Company (if it even materializes) will be fully mitigated.

In the meantime, we find ourselves, in a second consecutive wet year, suspended in a place of extreme uncertainty while the Governor’s office looks the other way. Other than a brief statement supporting the curtailment on May 30th, the governor has yet to even address the issue in any kind of public statement or press release. As of this date, the curtailment is not even mentioned on his or the lieutenant governor’s websites.

Apparently, commenting on the Lava Ridge wind farm is more pressing than addressing a curtailment order that will take hundreds of thousands of acres of Idaho farmland out of production and that will inflict losses estimated at several hundred million dollars on our state and local economies.

So here we are, waiting to see if a state agency will really shut down thousands of Idaho farms to comply with an unnecessary and draconian curtailment order, while our state leadership whistles past the graveyard. We are in desperate need of true leaders on this issue. Where are they?

Adam Young

Bingham County, Idaho