A water curtailment order issued by Idaho Department of Water Resources Director Mathew Weaver in May has been sidestepped, after most groundwater districts in the region have agreed to comply with an approved mitigation plan and others are in negotiations.

Keith Esplin, executive director of the Eastern Idaho Water Rights Coalition and Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer Recharge, said he thinks the remaining groundwater districts will agree to mitigate, but pumpers want a long-term solution.

For about 20 years, there’s been a water call between the Surface Water Coalition, which includes seven canal organizations in the Magic Valley, and groundwater pumpers because some of the canal companies rely on return flows into the American Falls Reservoir, he said.

“Their contention has been that the groundwater pumpers reducing the levels of the aquifer, which is reducing the return flows into the reservoir, is therefore impacting their water rights,” he said during the latest University of Idaho “Ag Talk Tuesday” webinar.

“The groundwater pumpers don’t dispute that, it’s just how do we handle it, and how do we move forward?” he said.

Terms disputed

In 2015, the Surface Water Coalition and groundwater pumpers came to an agreement under which groundwater users would reduce pumping by 240,000 acre-feet annually and supply storage water to senior surface water users.

“That worked until we hit the drought year in 2021. The groundwater pumpers thought because they had been over-conserving and doing excess recharge … it would all be averaged in in a drought year. The surface water contention said, ‘No, you have to supply water every year,’” he said.

IDWR agreed, and things have been “kind of falling apart” ever since, he said.

“The groundwater users’ contention is that if they have to plan for every year being a dry year, they would basically have to dry up like a fourth of their land in order to be able to do that,” he said.

Aquifer levels

To make things worse, another part of the agreement was they had to reach certain levels in the aquifer, he said.

“It can be argued that the last 10 years … the levels have stabilized, which I think is really good news, but it has not improved to meet the targets they set in 2015,” he said.

So this spring, IDWR said it would require an additional 12,000 acre-feet cutback in groundwater pumping every year — in addition to the 240,000 acre-feet pumpers agreed to — until levels are restored, he said.

“That would be like taking 6,000 acres out of production every year … indefinitely,” he said.

Senior rights

This spring, the director determined the Surface Water Coalition as a whole had 500,000 acre-feet in excess water but the Twin Falls Canal Company was short 74,000 acre-feet, he said.

So the director ordered the curtailment unless the groundwater users were in a mitigation plan. The order would go back to 1954 water rights, and water to about 500,000 acres would have been curtailed.

Some of the groundwater districts agreed to continue to follow their mitigation plan even though they didn’t like it and didn’t think it would work long term, he said.

But three districts in eastern Idaho said, “No, we can’t. … we’re either going to die all at once or we’re going to die by a thousand cuts. So they’ve been disputing it,” he said. Those are Bingham Ground Water District, Bonneville-Jefferson and Jefferson-Clark. Carey Valley Ground Water District in south-central Idaho was also not planning to mitigate.

Pumping fines

Desist orders were sent to pumpers and the department sent inspectors last week to tag wells that should be turned off. They didn’t physically force that but said they would be turned off or the pumpers would face a $300-an-acre fine, he said.

“I’ve heard that some growers did turn off and some of the crops are drying up. So there definitely have already been impacts from that,” he said.

Gov. Brad Little, Weaver and Lt. Gov. Scott Bedke recognize changes are needed in the 2015 agreement, he said.

He thinks the groundwater districts in negotiations are going to accept going back under the safety of the mitigation plan from 2015 with the promise they will be able to renegotiate its terms before next year.