03/08/07 SRBA winding down

It has taken nearly 20 years of investigating water right claims by the Idaho Department of Water Resources to get where we are today. The last of the claims for Snake River Basin Adjudication have been sent to District Court at Twin Falls. Don Shaff is IDWR's adjudication chief. Shaff says this case, the largest undertaking in the nation, deals with 148 thousand water rights and when finally completed in another couple of years it will provide a catalog of water rights tied to computer maps. SHAFF "To have a solid foundation of administrational water rights but even having a quantification then. What do we have available? What can we work with into the future? That's what the adjudication delivers plus security of title for the parties." If you want more information about the water rights cases you can find it in a couple of places. There's the Water Resources Department website, www.idwr.idaho.gov. SHAFF "There's on line data. The first item is water rights and adjudication search so that people can get to the given water right or water rights." Now that the ball is in the court's hands so to speak, the District Court also maintains a website for public use, www.srba.state.id.us. Final comment period on the latest claims runs out toward the end of this year. Today's Idaho Ag News Bill Scott