Once described as endlessly abundant, no doubt in order to lure settlers to unclaimed lands, southeast Idaho's water supply proved to be finite and consequently difficult to manage by the beginning of the twentieth century. With small irrigation projects already built and much larger ones on the way, the unchecked use of resources reached an inevitable impasse between users. Water rights, overpromised due to overactive imaginations or outright deceit, came into dispute between parties on dry years, with upriver users in a prime position to divert water that downstream users felt was theirs.
The 1905 water year was particularly dry, inspiring legal wranglings that took nearly a decade to sort out, and in 1919 the "committee of nine", an advisory board to oversee water management, came into being to smooth over disagreements. Comprised of three men from the North Fork Protective Association (the upper valley water users), three from the Farmer's Protective Irrigation Association (the lower valley), and three from the Minidoka and Twin Falls projects, their first task was to hire watermaster C.G. Baldwin to oversee measurement of water usage and distribution throughout the Snake River valley. He would be paid $3600 a year plus expenses when away, including a ten cent a mile reimbursement on his vehicle. His salary was to be paid by the canal systems, the financial obligation of each prorated according to its water usage.
Before 1919, a watermaster had been in charge of natural flow and a special deputy state engineer in charge of stored water. Each season a new crew to do this job had to be assembled and there was no guarantee in getting someone knowledgable for the task. The new team, funded by a stipend from the Idaho legislature, included a watermaster, eleven deputy watermasters, a special deputy, four hydrographers, a stenographer, and fifteen observers to take gage measurements at stations from the upper valley to the Clough station (near where the Tilden Bridge is now located). The observers would also monitor a Neeley gage and several further downstream in the Twin Falls vicinity.
--gage stations in 1919, image from the watermaster's report
Observers, who made their reports via telephone, telegraph or in person, earned from $34 to $202 an irrigation season for taking measurements in 1919, hydrographers were paid $1100, and the deputy water masters approximately $500. In the initial year of the water oversight organization, a drought year, a special expense came up: $507 for guards and $23.80 for chains, some canals needing oversight due to vigilante water users, without authority, opening headgates.
Low water supplies brought very early shutdowns to some canals. The Snake River flow dropped 8500 cfs in just four days at the end of May, when a cold spell stopped runoff. Jackson Lake, the only reservoir on the Snake at the time, was 200,000 acre-feet short of filling but in order to fulfill waterusers' natural flow rights the watermaster opened the gates on June 3.
Natural flow continued to decrease, however, and on June 11, all rights subsequent to 1903 were cut. The next day, cuts extended to those registered after 1901. June 14 saw more cuts, to those of 1898 and after. June 15, 1896 rights became unusable. June 20, the cuts reached to 1895 rights. By July 3, those rights extending back as far as 1889 saw cutoffs, though rains in early August restored some water diversions. In late August, the riverbed below Blackfoot was dry for four miles, an event that extended into September. When watermasters found some canal headgates illegally raised they first chained them, to no avail. Guards were then stationed at the heads of five canals and the cost assessed to the systems which required oversight.
With no electricity or wells, many settlers still depended on canals for domestic water and stock use, causing concern when canals were shut down. Due to a resultant uproar, domestic use was granted and taken from the natural flow totals, requiring even more rights to be cut. The entire domestic water allowance, had it been restored to the irrigators, would have given several small canals their full rights.
The scramble for water led the State Commission or Reclamation to accept temporary transfers of water from canals with old rights to those whose rights were curtailed, a practice previously not allowed. Canals made one hundred such transfers. Downstream users, particular in the Twin Falls area, argued that there would be less recharge in the upper valley aquifers if those canals didn't use their water in a normal manner, resulting in less natural river flow for their own systems.
With a team of observers and hydrographers in place, data collection became possible so that the irrigators' aim of zero water wastage might be approached. Readings at the many stations revealed water loss percentages at different areas on the Snake--6% between Woodville and Blackfoot, for instance, and lesser losses of 2% or less upstream. The gages showed net gains between Blackfoot and Neeley, near Massacre Rocks below American Falls, the water coming from Reservation streams and thos in the Springfield-Sterling area adding roughly 2500 second feet to the river flow.
The measurements also gave an overview of how long it took for water released from Jackson Lake to hit specific areas downstream: 24 hours to Heise, 42 to Woodville, 54 to Blackfoot, 68 to Neeley and 116 to Milner. This information gave watermasters the ability to better regulate diversions to canals and their customers.
Absent that knowledge in 1908, water distribution from Jackson Lake to Twin Falls users required periodic dumps with intervening times of natural flow. The lower Snake users used Lake Walcott for a catch basin for Jackson's release. During the flushes, upper Snake canal headgates were staked and locked to prevent tampering or mishandling. The frequent fluctuations damaged diversion dams, made delivery rates difficult to maintain, and increased wastage, as canal drafts increased from the higher river water, despite chained headgates, raising their water levels beyond the natural flow they had rights to. The practice was discontinued after the 1911 season.
The difficulties that the 1919 drought year proved to be the perfect backdrop for a 1920 meeting that instigated the buiding of the American Falls Dam and Reservoir to alleviate irrigator deficits. With the memory of shortages close, authorities moved forward on that project, one proposed well over a decade prior but only coming to fruition when spurred by drought.
Ralph Thurston is the author of The Shanghi Plain: Bingham County's Early History, an account of the century long extension of a frontier from the Snake River Plain's edges into its core. Purchase it locally at Kesler's Market and The Idaho Potato Museum, or online at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CCCS7XLR?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860
Comments