Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
pumpers with junior water rights should be curtailed (stopped from
taking water).
The sides failed to reach a compromise, and Tuthill, then direc-
tor of Idaho's Department of Water Resources, issued a notice of
curtailment to the junior rights holders. That meant the junior
rights holders would lose their primary water supply if they failed
to provide an acceptable mitigation plan. The thirsty junior rights
holders, instead, offered an alternative plan that included building
a pipeline to provide the senior rights holders with the water they
are entitled to under the state's water laws. Tuthill accepted the
plan. A done deal? Not by any stretch of the imagination. Both sides
agreed to delay the pipeline, but the junior rights holders failed to
comply completely with other aspects of the mitigation plan. Says
Tuthill, now retired from his 33-year public service career: “My
expectations are the state Supreme Court will rule on all these rul-
ings. These are fundamental issues for Idaho, and the law is not
crystal clear.”
These adjudications [decisions over water], specifically the
senior rights holder (a trout farm) versus groundwater pumpers
(farmers) with junior rights, represent what Tuthill refers to as con-
junctive administration of water. It's all about dealing with the rela-
tionship between groundwater and surface water. “In the last century
we've been successful administering surface water, but ignored the
impact on groundwater of surface water pumping across the West,”
he adds. “Now that's changing with the result that senior surface-
water rights holders will get some relief from the water-depleting
impacts that have been occurring over the decades as a result of
groundwater pumping.”
Naturally, it's not that clear and simple either. A municipality
like the city of Boise, Idaho, which primarily uses groundwater as its
water source, may have junior rights to the water,
but
the domestic
portion of a water right can condemn (take precedent over) other
uses. Nondomestic uses like lawn irrigation, however, can't be con-
demned without other mitigation. Conjunctive administration will
encourage water banks and other forms of water marketing and
trading as groups scramble to fi nd the water they've always taken
for granted, adds Tuthill.
