Idaho water officials report on adjudications, ESPA settlement, recharge and major projects

Matt Weaver, director of the Idaho Department of Water Resources, and Jeff Raybould, chairman of the Idaho Water Resource Board, told the Senate Resources & Environment Committee about a range of legal, administrative and project developments affecting statewide water management.

Weaver said the department petitioned the courts to commence adjudication of the Kootenai River Basin and expects a commencement order by midyear. He described a recent federal court decision on the forfeiture of federally held stock water rights as mixed — “found some issues in favor of the state some issues in favor of the feds” — and said the federal government appealed the decision to the Ninth Circuit.

Weaver reviewed administrative setbacks and recoveries, including a loss and subsequent rebuild of the department’s electronic document management system that had affected access to more than a million water-right records; he said the system is restored and a small gap period is expected to be searchable by midyear.

On budget matters, Weaver said the governor has recommended $30,000,000 of ongoing funding for water projects and the department has asked for several enhancements including five new water-administration positions, continued fund transfers supporting staff, a full‑time public information officer, GIS licensing and an online application for proof forms.

Weaver described changes under a 2024 statute (cited as 42-233C Idaho Code) that expanded the area of common groundwater on the Eastern Snake Plain, bringing about 1,500 irrigation water rights into the delivery-call proceeding and authorizing the director to bring tributary basins into the same administrative area. The department plans spring public meetings in the Raft, Little Lost, Bannock and Portneuf basins and anticipates longer timelines (five to ten years) in basins lacking water-district administration.

Weaver reviewed last year’s delivery call and curtailment process on the Eastern Snake Plain, saying the curtailment was a required administrative step under Idaho law and related case law. He said that parties negotiated a temporary and then a four‑year settlement; “I approved it as a mitigation plan and issued that order in January,” Weaver said. The settlement, he said, focuses mitigation on farm-level compliance over a four-year period and protects many water users who belong to groundwater districts from district-level curtailment.

Raybould described funding and project work managed by the Idaho Water Resource Board. “More than $575,000,000 has been appropriated to the Water Board since 2019,” he said, and he summarized programs funded from that pool, ARPA allocations and competitive grant programs. He cited program totals and caps: a statewide aging-infrastructure grant program that covers up to one-third of project costs capped at $2,000,000 (about $56,000,000 awarded through five rounds to 90 projects), a groundwater-to-surface-water grant (11 grants, $13,000,000 total, up to 50% of cost capped at $5,000,000), telemetry/monitoring grants up to $250,000 (applications due March 28), and a flood-management grant program covering up to 50% of costs to a $200,000 cap (about $6,100,000 awarded to 77 projects).

Raybould also discussed recharge and cloud-seeding work: the board reports more than 2,500,000 acre-feet of recharge since the 2014–15 season with a current average of about 251,000 acre-feet per year and a program that generates roughly 950,000 acre-feet of additional water annually from cloud seeding at an average annual cost near $3,600,000 (about $3.77 per acre-foot), according to his testimony.

Raybould described the Anderson Ranch dam-raise project (approximately 29,000 acre-feet of added storage, estimated cost about $126,000,000 with roughly 11% federal share) and a Mountain Home Air Force Base pipeline project expected to turn over to the Air Force in 2025 with a base treatment plant online in 2026. He and Weaver said many projects are underway and asked for continued legislative support.

Committee members asked technical questions about cloud-seeding operations, program costs and the critical nature of the governor’s $30,000,000 recommendation. No committee votes occurred during the session.