Idaho water director tells committee federal rulings, new Eastern Snake Plain mitigation plan and staffing needs will shape agency work

Matthew Weaver, director of the Idaho Department of Water Resources, told the House Resources and Conservation Committee that federal court rulings, a newly adopted mitigation plan for the Eastern Snake Plain and a recent information-technology failure will drive the department’s priorities this year and next.

Weaver said the department is preparing to begin—or continue—major adjudication work across the state, including the newly authorized Kootenai River Basin adjudication and contested matters arising from the Snake River Basin Adjudication (SRBA). He also described a settlement adopted as a mitigation plan on Jan. 3 for the Eastern Snake Plain that he said he supports and that gives junior groundwater users a path to avoid curtailment if they meet new mitigation requirements.

Weaver summarized three near-term challenges. First, a pair of federal and state legal tracks tied to federal defendants and SRBA deferred domestic and stock claims could force the department to process a very large number of water-rights claims and show-cause proceedings. Second, the agency’s recently rebuilt public records system is still restoring a multi-month gap of documents after a catastrophic failure in October 2023. Third, the department has asked the Legislature for staff and technical capacity to keep up with administration and adjudication work.

On adjudications, Weaver said the Attorney General’s Office filed a petition on Jan. 3 to commence the Kootenai River Basin adjudication; a hearing was set for April 15 and he said he would expect a commencement order in midyear if the court follows prior timelines. He also described ongoing federal litigation tied to show-cause orders the department issued around 2021; Weaver said the federal court recently held that the department’s authority under certain Idaho Code provisions (identified in the meeting as sections cited during the briefing) is constitutional as applied to the United States, while also granting declaratory relief and an injunction on other statutory provisions implicated by the litigation. Weaver said appeal deadlines remain.

Weaver warned the committee that a state-court issue tied to deferred domestic and stock water rights in the SRBA could require the department to process an extremely large volume of deferred claims—“likely in the tens of thousands, if not in excess of a hundred thousand,” he said—if the state courts lift existing stays. He told lawmakers the department does not currently have staff dedicated to that scale of work and that the resulting workload could “have a significant impact on the human resources at the department.”

The director also described the October 2023 loss of the department’s online water-rights records system. "In October of 2023, we lost our entire online water rights record document management system," Weaver said, noting the department had migrated more than one million records into the new system before the crash. He said the department and the state Office of Information Technology Services (ITS) rebuilt servers and repopulated data over nine months and that most documents are now again stored in the rebuilt Laserfiche system, but some documents from the gap period remain to be restored.

On budget requests for fiscal 2026, Weaver outlined five decision units the department submitted: a transfer to fund aquifer-monitoring and measurement positions (paid from a loan‑repayment stream connected to the Pristine Springs settlement, which he said repays approximately $716,000 a year and runs through fiscal 2028); a full‑time public information officer; ongoing funding for GIS licensing; a one‑time application to accept beneficial‑use submittals online; and funding for five new positions to create a water administration bureau to support water‑district creation and priority administration. Weaver said that, historically, the department had very few staff devoted to water‑district administration and that adding five positions to create a bureau would help the agency meet statutory obligations to create and support water districts in adjudicated basins.

Weaver spent much of the briefing on the Eastern Snake Plain aquifer (ESPA). He said Senate Bill 1341 changed the administrative boundary for the area of common groundwater supply effective July 1 of the prior year, bringing roughly 1,500 additional irrigation rights into delivery‑call proceedings. To give those newly covered users time to prepare mitigation, Weaver said he issued an order allowing them until Nov. 1, 2025, to have mitigation plans in place.

Weaver described the department’s role in the delivery call and curtailment process that culminated in a curtailment order in late May of the prior year and in a temporary settlement that stayed curtailment through the end of that irrigation season. He said the parties finalized a more permanent settlement in November and that he issued an order on Jan. 3 adopting that settlement as a mitigation plan. Weaver said the adopted mitigation plan (1) requires pumping reductions and recharge measures that affect the combined aquifer–river water budget, (2) provides a four‑year averaging allotment for junior groundwater users so users can average consumption over multiple years, (3) sets standards for qualifying recharge, (4) limits curtailment to noncompliant individual water users rather than automatically curtailing entire groundwater districts, (5) provides a path for tributary‑basin groundwater users to join the plan if they take on a proportionate obligation, and (6) requires in‑season measurement and reporting so exceedances can be detected in near real time. Weaver said the plan has a four‑year term with automatic renewal unless a party asks otherwise and that one narrow question (calendar year vs. water year reporting) was under reconsideration.

Weaver said the department is pausing work to finalize a separate groundwater management plan for the ESPA until parties have had time to implement and assess the 2024 mitigation plan, but that the agency will publish water‑budget metrics, issue water‑master instructions and work to create water districts in tributary basins to expand administrative capacity.

Weaver’s presentation drew questions from legislators about the technical charts he displayed, the department’s use of independent hearing officers in contested cases, the effect of incidental recharge losses caused by canal lining and efficiency projects, and what additional recharge and infrastructure would be required to avoid curtailment of junior pumpers. Weaver told lawmakers that the department has relied on independent hearing officers (including retired justices) for contentious proceedings, that appeals history shows the department’s contested‑case decisions have generally been upheld, and that meeting recovery targets without curtailment would require substantially more recharge infrastructure, particularly in the upper basin above American Falls Reservoir.

Weaver stood for questions after his presentation; lawmakers asked for copies of his slides and the settlement documents he referenced.