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For the week of July 18 - July 24, 2001

  Features

Express photos by Willy Cook

Big Wood changes character in midstream

Working river makes the desert bloom


By GREG STAHL
Express Staff Writer

The middle section of the Big Wood River from Magic Reservoir to Gooding is the primary "working" portion of the river that helps provide water to farms and ranches spread across the southern tip of the Snake River Plain.

Without dams and irrigation, the Snake River Plain would be considerably different than it is. Magic Reservoir is the only sizable plug on the Big Wood River, banking water during winter to keep fields green during summer. This year, the reservoir ran dry early this month. It’s managers are now saving for next year’s irrigation season.

But there’s an irony to the Big Wood’s existence downstream of Magic. Below the reservoir the Big Wood is a dry riverbed, turned off at the dam on July 1 to begin saving for next year’s growing season. Downstream 50 miles the river flows again — but not with water that began in the Big Wood’s basin.

Rather, the massive Milner-Gooding Canal delivers Snake River water from Milner Lake to the Big Wood and Little Wood rivers, and to the legions of canals, farms and ranches in between.

During this drought summer, upstream use completely dries up the Big and Little Wood rivers, but on the Snake River Plain, the rivers maintain their working-class status, flowing strong with water that may have originated as far away as Wyoming’s Teton Mountains or Yellowstone National Park.

 

A river’s job security

The Big Wood River maintains its working class status all summer long most years, in part because its waters are stored behind Magic Dam in southern Blaine County during most of the non-irrigating seasons.

Though Magic Reservoir can attract more than 80,000 campers, anglers and boaters during wet years, its primary purpose is to help supply water to farmers and ranchers downstream.

An exact count was not available, but there are between 200 and 300 irrigation diversions on the Big and Little Wood rivers, as well as on Silver Creek, between the rivers’ headwaters and the Snake River.

A massive diversion on the Milner-Gooding Canal splits flows between the Little Wood River (the left channel, above) and the canal, which continues north to the Big Wood River basin. Water remaining in the canal flows beneath the Little Wood River (through the gate on the right) and resurfaces to continue its journey.

"There’s a gob of diversions," says Lee Peterson, Idaho Department of Water Resources District 37 water master. "We’ve got large diversions out to little tiny ones."

Peterson’s job, governed by the state, is to control water in the river systems. He also delivers water to several canal companies, which take over management once the water is in their artificial veins.

The Big Wood Canal Co., based in Shoshone, makes the decisions on water levels and irrigation releases from Magic Dam. The releases primarily feed the Richfield Canal, which transfers water to between 300 and 500 farmers east of the Big Wood toward Richfield. Unused water flows into the Little Wood River, which merges with the Big Wood near Gooding to form the Malad River.

This summer, however, the reservoir ran dry, and both the dam and Richfield Canal were turned off July 1.

"It’s not the worst ever," Big Wood Canal Co. Manager Lynn Harmon says. "Nineteen ninety-two was probably as bad a year as we’ve ever had."

That year the dam delivered only 17 or 18 days of water, compared to this year’s 55 days. Last summer, the dam delivered for four months.

The Richfield Canal and Big Wood River below Magic are both bone-dry. Magic has been plugged to begin banking for next summer’s irrigation season.

"The only water now will be what leaks out of the dam, which is pretty minimal when it gets down that low," Harmon says. "We’d better have lots of snow and rain this winter, and that better be statewide."

The reservoir is holding about 6,000 acre feet of water. Its capacity is 191,500 acre feet, and it’s gaining about 100 acre feet a day.

"As far as irrigation use, it’s probably off for the summer," Harmon says.

 

Putting a working river to work

The Little Wood River, deep and heavily laden with cool, green water, crawls through the 300-acre Bryant Ranches organic farm west of Shoshone.

Fred Brossy, farm manager, surveys fields of organically-grown wheat, beans, potatoes and alfalfa raised using Silver Creek water rights and watered from the Little Wood. But the water that ends up on his fields could come from any one of seven regional sources.

“We could leave a lot more water in the river if we used it more efficiently,” says Fred Brossy, manager of the Bryant Ranches organic farm west of Shoshone. “The time is now to start thinking about these issues, before it’s too late.”

Brossy’s fields nestle in the middle of a complex network of irrigation canals and rivers that nab water from the Big and Little Wood rivers, Magic Reservoir, the Snake River and Silver Creek. Water from any of those sources could end up on his fields.

From Magic Reservoir to Gooding, the Big Wood River and its tributary, the Little Wood, are rivers no more—at least not in the natural sense of the word. Water rights and farming have transformed them into a vast network of water exchanges that are capable of trading water from drainages whose headwaters are separated by hundreds of miles.

A resulting Fertile Crescent of green stripes the desert between Shoshone and Gooding. Fertile fields follow the paths of the Big and Little Wood rivers, which parallel one another as they weave across the plain.

"It’s an incredibly complex system," says Brossy, 47, who is no stranger to Idaho irrigation. His parents owned Cove Ranch, in the southeast corner of the Bellevue Triangle, in the 1960s, and irrigated by flooding the entire property with Big Wood River water.

"Obviously we don’t work like that anymore, but as we experience these dry cycles, these Silver Creek water rights are less viable all season long."

One of Brossy’s concerns this summer is that upstream consumption, especially in the Wood River Valley, is draining the river system enough to affect downstream farmers, and, during this drought summer in particular, he’s preaching a sermon about conservation.

"I’m not bemoaning running out of water," he says. "We’re all in this thing together, but you have to look at the whole hydrologic system of the Big Wood. How does watering your lawn in the Wood River Valley affect the system and Silver Creek?"

Brossy lost one-third of his available water on June 21 because of this summer’s shortage, and on July 3 he lost the rest. Under Idaho’s first-in-time, first-in-right water laws, Brossy’s April 1884 and April 1883 water rights were cut off to keep flows running to those with senior rights.

"So, basically, we’re off," he says. "What it means really is that I’m going to have to stop watering some fields. I’m going to have to cut something somewhere."

Peterson, who calls the shots on water rights and seniority cutoffs in the Big and Little Wood drainages, says he doesn’t think he’s very popular this summer. Telling farmers and ranchers they’re cut off from the water that feeds their fields—pinching their pocketbooks—is hard to do.

"It’s not looking very good, and it’s going to get worse before it’s over," he says.

 

History, recreation and a thought on irrigation

The Big Wood River from Magic Reservoir to the Snake River didn’t used to be the Big Wood River. Where the Big Wood joins Camas Creek, usually beneath Magic’s calm backwaters not far from the junction of U.S. 20 and Highway 75, the Malad River was once born.

When construction of Magic Dam and the Richfield Canal were finished in 1909, the river’s name was changed. The Malad is now formed at the confluence of the Big and Little Wood rivers near Gooding.

About 17,860 years after melting on Galena Summit, an imaginary snowflake-cum-water molecule finally flows into Magic Reservoir’s backwaters near Hot Springs Landing boat launch at the north end of the reservoir, says Ketchum hydrologist Lee Brown.

Anglers cast lines in Magic’s waters, and boaters speed around the 3,750 acres of surface water created there when the reservoir is full, usually only in the spring. It’s a popular recreation destination for residents of the Wood River Valley and the rural Snake River Plain. It attracts about 80,000 visitors during wet years, but only about 30,000 during dry years like this one.

From Magic Reservoir to Gooding, the Big Wood River is a working river, feeding fields of corn, alfalfa, sugar beets and potatoes. Irrigation pivots tap the plain’s vast aquifer, which is recharged in part by the Big Wood.

After about six months of churning around in the reservoir, the molecule pours through two turbines in the dam, helping feed power lines leading to lights, dishwashers and computers in Southern Idaho’s homes and businesses. The turbines, owned by potato king J.R. Simplot, release water into the historic river channel, a meandering gorge cut in volcanic rock.

Just a mile downstream, the river is split, and most of it, during typical summers, flows into the Richfield Canal.

"We have to manage the water by using its best conceivable location, and then replacing it in the system to use it to the best of our ability," Peterson says.

But Brossy has some not-so-conventional ideas about irrigation.

"Should we even be irrigating to the extent that we are?" he asks. "Growing crops that are surplus, to the detriment of river systems or the soil, you wonder if it really makes any sense."

Brossy, like many of today’s Western farmers, uses lined irrigation ditches or pipes rather than earthen trenches to convey water to his fields, but he’s still not sure the desert should be irrigated as much as it is.

"We could leave a lot more water in the river if we used it more efficiently," he says. "The time is now to start thinking about these issues, before it’s too late.

"On one hand, I philosophically believe that we really need to look at our irrigation practices, but on the other, you ask that question, and can I live with the answer?

"The answer is being dealt to us this year with running out of water early. That’s a hard one to swallow."


The Idaho Mountain Express is distributed free to residents and guests throughout the Sun Valley, Idaho resort area community. Subscribers to the Idaho Mountain Express will read these stories and others in this week's issue.