The recently instituted water curtailment in southeast Idaho may seem like a surprise to most of us, but concern about diminishing aquifer water levels arose with the first sprinkler irrigation project in the 1950s. In the Burley area, pumping had jumped from a negligible amount in 1946 to 55,000 acre-feet just five years later. Observation wells at that time showed no change in water levels, but that would soon change. By 1954 most test wells showed a drop of one-half foot to two feet, with 9 wells near Jerome falling several feet. Test holes in Bingham, Butte, and Jefferson counties showed minimal loss. A year later, experts estimated that, due to Minidoka and Snake River Plain irrigation projects, spring outflows had lost five percent.
Flood irrigation, thanks to its inefficiency, actually had increased water outflows from the aquifer. The Blue Lake outflow increased from 80 cfs in 1902 to 506 cfs in 1963, and its nearby companion Clear Lake had increased from 150 cfs to 506 cfs. However, in the prior seven years, corresponding to the appearance of pumping projects, those flows had diminished by four percent. Despite that connection, Idaho pushed for more irrigation, in part to a sudden interest California showed in taking Idaho's water for its own use. Their argument, one based in longstanding water law, was that since Idaho wasn't using all of the 4.7 million acre feet emerging from the aquifer then they had a use for over half of that total.
That law of usufruction, or "beneficial use," applied to water distribution in order to keep speculators from buying water rights and not utilizing them. Intended to diminish waste, the law meant that no one actually owned water, but instead just had the right to use it—and if it wasn't used, that right could be taken away.
At that time, the annual recharge was thought to be 6.2 million acre feet on average from the various watersheds, from rainfall on the plain, and from recharge from surface irrigation. Hydrologists computed, from data acquired at five test wells surrounding a pumping station, that pumping at 250 cfs would lower the aquifer 5-15 feet over a fifty year time span. The Bureau of Reclamation and Corp of Engineers, in response to that likely scenario, proposed a recharge project which would take water from the Snake River near St. Anthony and Ashton on high snowpack years, transport it onto the northern edge of the aquifer where it would then percolate into the ground.
The $13.5 million proposal, to those following irrigation history, contains a bit of irony, for the Dubois Project, a much-imagined and never-created canal system that would follow the same trajectory but continue on to just south of Howe, then toward Taber and from there to American Falls, had spent thirty years on engineers' drawing boards and speculators' minds in numerous incarnations from 1895 to 1920. Had that project actually been built, rather than being abandoned in favor of the American Falls dam and reservoir creation, the area now under curtailment would have been irrigated by canal rather than from the aquifer—and hence, would not be shut down. It might be time to reconsider such a project, in truncated form for just recharge purposes, rather than relying on bellicosity, cheerleading, fasting and praying to maintain the status quo.
Other ideas surfaced, including pump back from Thousand Springs and the use of nuclear explosives to enlarge the aquifer—an AEC engineer, most likely, had imbibed too much coffee when coming up with that idea.
By 1970, aquifer levels near Eden were at a record low. Officials had known for some time that too much drawdown was occurring, and a 1963 moratorium on new wells east of Burley was already in place, water levels having declined by as much a five feet per year. A similar moratorium would be put in place in Southeast Idaho many years later.
The aquifer didn't serve just as a bank for irrigators at that time. Five thousand wells disposed of above ground wastewater and sewage into the underground reservoir, sixty percent of them in Jerome, Lincoln, and Gooding counties. In 1971, the legislature passed a law to end that practice. Locally, farmers often sank wells at the end of flood irrigated fields to take care of ponding, a practice less damaging in the first part of the twentieth century than later on, after the introduction of chemical fertilizers and herbicides.
Water wars likely entered history simultaneously with irrigation projects—how could it be otherwise, with rivers and aquifers paying no attention to man-made boundaries. Imagine the political and social skirmishes that must still be occurring where rivers flow through many countries, selfish cries of "it's my water" coming from all quarters. Some historians believe civilization, in the form of nation-states, arose with irrigation, the need to tally water rights, distribute water, and adjudicate disagreements requiring a bureaucratic and legal class of people to administer law, without which society devolves into a primitive fight between different factions.
Ralph Thurston is the author of three recent books on Bingham County history: much of The Shanghi Plain deals with water issues, including the history of the Reservation Canal, the Aberdeen-Springfield Canal, and the Lost River projects. The Dubois Project also appears in the book with a complete explanation of its many variations. His most recent book, "We The Peoples": Two Canals' War For Territory, details the inside history of the Peoples Canal's construction and its legal battle with the State of Idaho, the American Falls Canal, and the Department of Interior. You can get a copy of all his books at Kesler's Market or online.
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