Idaho Power in court to get more water to generate electricity

Monday, May 21, 2007 6:15 PM CDT

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Idaho Power Co. is challenging a 1984 deal it made with the state that dictates how much water the power generating company is allowed to use at Swan Falls Dam.

In motions filed in 5th District Court earlier this month, the company argued it’s being shorted the amount of water it has a legal right to use at the dam south of Kuna in southwest Idaho.

“We’ve got a declining aquifer, a declining river and already an instance when the Swan Falls minimum flows were breached,” James Tucker, the utility’s senior attorney, told the Idaho Statesman. “The state has been unwilling to acknowledge the river is overappropriated.”

The state disagrees.

“It’s quite surprising that now the company wants to renegotiate the agreement and 23 years of history for the state,” said Attorney General Lawrence Wasden.

In the 1984 pact known as the Swan Falls Agreement, Idaho Power received the right to a 5,600 cubic feet per second minimum flow during winter months, and 3,900 cfs in summer at the dam.

The state argues that anything above those flows can be used by the state for whatever it chooses.

The company, which has about 460,000 customers in southern Idaho, argues that the 1984 agreement was flawed because of incorrect information about how much water was available.

Court fights over water rights are customary in the region, and most have to do with the Eastern Snake River Plain Aquifer, a Lake Erie-sized underground reservoir that has been dropping for years as farmers and cities pump water out of it.

Surface water users with senior water rights contend that those with junior water rights who pump water from the aquifer are lowering the aquifer and reducing the surface water that flows from springs, violating Idaho’s law that recognizes older water rights.

Earlier this month, the state Department of Water Resources sent out letters to hundreds of groundwater users in southern Idaho, warning that they might be shut down. They sued, and a judge issued a temporary restraining order and set a hearing for May 30.

Since then, the department sent out an additional 760 warning notices to water users spread across more than 46,000 acres in south central and eastern Idaho.

In March, the state Supreme Court ruled that water managers must take into account where water can best be put to use, not just who owned the rights to it first.

Information from: Idaho Statesman, http://www.idahostatesman.com

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