Idaho adopts 2024 mitigation plan for Eastern Snake Plain; director keeps enforcement tools while pausing groundwater management plan

Idaho Department of Water Resources Director Matthew Weaver told the House Resources Committee that the parties to the long‑running Eastern Snake Plain delivery call reached a settlement in November 2024 that he adopted as a mitigation plan on Jan. 3, 2025. The plan, Weaver said, requires pumping reductions and recharge, establishes a four‑year averaging allotment for junior groundwater users and clarifies that only users who fail to meet their proportional obligations will be individually curtailed.

Weaver said the plan “continues to require the physical acts of pumping reductions and recharge” and that it “builds a 4 year pumping allotment that is effectively, a practice that allows the groundwater users to average their consumption over 4 years.” He told committee members he supported the agreement and had adopted it as a mitigation plan but that a limited reconsideration request was pending about whether reporting should be on a calendar year or a water year.

Why it matters: the Eastern Snake Plain adjudication and delivery call have produced decades of contested proceedings and court rulings that set how Idaho conjunctively manages surface water and groundwater. Weaver told lawmakers the 2024 mitigation plan “holds the potential to improve water levels in the ESP and enhance reach gains to the Snake River” and provides a specific path for tributary groundwater basins and their users to…