A process appears to be under way toward combining management of groundwater and surface water in the Big Wood River basin.
At a meeting Tuesday, the Blaine County Commission and about 30 members of the public received a presentation on "conjunctive administration" of water rights by Dave Tuthill, a former director of the Idaho Department of Water Resources and founder of Boise-based Idaho Water Engineering. Tuthill discussed the current conflict between users with rights to surface water, which is used for irrigation, and groundwater, generally pumped from wells for domestic use.
The administration would pertain only to "consumptive uses," such as watering lawns, as opposed to "non-consumptive uses," such as household water, which returns the water to the system.
"I predict that a change is coming [by 2014] relative to water delivery in the Wood River Valley," said Tuthill, who worked as the head of the Department of Water Resources for more than two years, stepping down in mid-2009.
"Do we want to manage that change or are we willing to respond to a crisis?" he asked.
One of the main issues, Tuthill said, is that groundwater users aren't being administered in conjunction with surface water users. That could create situations in which upstream users with junior groundwater rights are allowed to pump from a well when surface water irrigators with senior rights have to curtail their use during a dry year.
"Even with all the millions of dollars spent on the 'water wars,' not much has happened," Tuthill said. "There's been no fundamental change in the understanding of the laws."
But it appears as if conjunctive administration, which considers the connection between well and stream water use, could be implemented in the near future. That could mean that in a dry summer, irrigators with senior water rights would be given precedence over residential users with junior surface rights.
Lee Brown, a county resident who works for Tuthill and also presented at the meeting, agreed that timing is critical.
"The bottom line is you don't want sit around and wait," Brown said.
In order to avoid serious conflicts, Brown said, a groundwater management area—a public water administrative organization allowed by state code—could be created to help advise on the process.
Tuthill said the key to successful implementation of conjunctive administration in the Big Wood basin would be to bring many different users—irrigators, cities, domestic users and state and federal agencies—together on an advisory committee to ensure that all users are treated fairly.
Jon Duval: jduval@mtexpress.com
