ID • Salmon turns to groundwater

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ID • Judge throws out conjunctive management plan

JUNE 5, 2006 | Idaho 5th District Judge Barry Wood, a former water adjudication judge, held on June 5 that the state's system of conjunctive management - managing surface and groundwater as part of a single system - has the effect of unfairly disadvantaging some surface water users by not giving them full advantage of their water claim priority dates.
The decision grows out of a January 2005 call on water by a number of Magic Valley senior water right holders, who argued they were denied water in that low-water year because groundwater users with later priorty dates had used it first.
The state Department of Water Resources issued orders that groundwater users provide water or other compensation, but some of the surface water users said it wasn't enough, and sued the department to expand its remedies.
Wood's initial decision appeared to side with the surface water users. But he asked them, as a next step, to deliver to him their specific demands for compensation.
That may be complicated somewhat by the weather. 2005 was a drought year in southern Idaho, the last of several, but 2006 so far has been a water-surplus year. That may put off some demands for immediate compensation, but the legal issue could have impact again the next time a low-water year hits.
The Wood decision was thought likely to be appealed to the Idaho Supreme Court.

Adjudication approved for Panhandle

MARCH 22, 2006 | The Idaho Legislature in March passed a measure which would order adjudication of all water rights in northern Idaho which haven't been adjudicated in the SRBA. That would mean everything north of the Clearwater River system - roughly, everything from central Latah County north to Canada.
Governor Dirk Kempthorne is thought likely to sign the bill.
Specifically, House Bill 545 says, "the director of the department of water resources shall petition the district court to commence adjudications within the terms of the McCarran amendment, 43 U.S.C. section 666, of the water rights from surface water and ground water sources in northern Idaho through initiation of three (3) proceedings. Separate petitions shall be filed for water rights adjudications for each of the following river basins, and related ground water sources whether or not hydraulically connected to a surface water source, within Idaho: the Coeur d'Alene-Spokane river basin, the Palouse river basin, and the Kootenai and Clark Fork-Pend Oreille river basins. The filing of each petition shall be contingent on legislative funding approval. Each petition shall describe the boundaries of the water source or water sources to be adjudicated."
The measure, introduced in the House, was passed there 64-1 on March 2 and in Senate by 39-5 on March 22.
Most of the Panhandle legislative delegation signed on as co-sponsors and supported it. But several, including Senator Skip Brandt, R-Kooskia, who also opposed the Nez Perce Tribe agreement in the SRBA, did not.
[for more, see the Snake River Basin Adjudication Digest.

TAKING ON THE MEXICO CITY FORUM A guest opinion in the Cook County News Herald of Grand Marais, Minnesota, blasted the approach taken at the March Fourth World Water Forum in Mexico City which equated water rights with human rights.
"After the first day of the meeting, however, it became clear that the government and corporate agents were only interested in turning water management into a business opportunity, whereupon the NGOs and activists established an alternative forum intent on identifying access to clean water as a fundamental right . . . If we accept the position that water is a common good, and an inalienable right shared by all people, does that mean that folks in China or France have as much right to Lake Superior’s water as we do?
Perhaps we would be better served if we didn’t use the concept of human rights to justify our control of Lake Superior’s water, but rather, focused on Cibber’s observation that possession is eleven points in the law."