ESPA Re-Hab
The water in South Central Idaho has been turned on and off more times than a wash basin faucet at the International Convention of Hypochondriacs. Former director of the Idaho Department of Water Resources, Dave Tuthill, spent the last part of his term in office in the middle of pitched battles and bitter disputes between Clear Springs Foods with Senior water rights and ground pumping irrigators who have Junior rights. Rulings followed by judgements, followed by challenges, followed by more rulings, legal interdictions, judges, lawyers. Gary Spackman, interim director, who took over for Director Tuthill told me that he didn’t know there was going to be a blow torch under his chair when he assumed command. ….whew…let’s all take a breath and listen to a little bit of wisdom from Tom Arkoosh, one of the legion of legal experts who represents the Surface Water Coalition: “I think the aquifer is oversubscribed such that we’re taking out more water than it can support and in times of stress or drought this becomes terribly apparent. If we don’t plan into the long term, it will be that the Junior will continue to be curtailed by the law and the senior curtailed by scarcity. I think we ought to be able to manage better than that. We keep putting off aquifer rehabilitation which is the whole purpose of conjunctive administration between surface water rights and ground water rights…or it should be the whole purpose.”
