At a meeting of the Legislature’s interim committee on national resources on Monday, Idaho received some good news: negotiations brokered by Lt. Gov. Scott Bedke and Idaho Water Resources Board President Jeff Raybould produced a proposed agreement to end the water conflict that has pitted surface and groundwater irrigators in southern Idaho against each other for two decades.

The conflict centers around the massive Eastern Serpent Plain aquifer, which has been in decline since the mid-1950s, when groundwater pumping became more common and farms began abandoning water irrigation. flooding in favor of more efficient watering systems. The aquifer feeds springs along the Snake River, so the decline of the aquifer has also led to a decrease in surface water available for irrigation, particularly in the Magic Valley.

Because most surface water rights are older than groundwater rights, the conflict has repeatedly threatened to cut off water to much of Idaho’s most productive agricultural land. The latest outbreak prompted an abatement order, which threatened to end the growing season for about one in six irrigated acre in Idaho.

The precise details of the new agreement will not be fully public until members of the surface and ground water districts ratify it. But in broad terms, it addresses several outstanding issues that have repeatedly given rise to litigation over the past 20 years.

• It directly assigns responsibility to individual groundwater pumps that fail to comply with the mitigation plan, rather than punishing them collectively if one member fails.

• It creates a way to account for privately funded aquifer recharge projects intended to offset groundwater pumping and prioritizes recharge that feeds parts of the Snake River that need water, like the stretch between Blackfoot and Minidoka.

• It addresses water decisions in predictable four-year blocks, allowing farmers to make intelligent decisions about what to plant, given the amount of water they have.

• And it increases the amount of data available on how much is pumped from the aquifer and when.

Remarkably, one element of the agreement involves surface water and groundwater irrigators agreeing to either dismiss or suspend lawsuits in which they have been involved for years. This promises to transform the relationship of mutual distrust and hostility into one of collaboration.

“Collaboration has been the secret to our success, and it will be the secret to our success in the future,” Bedke said in an interview. “As long as communities live together, they will have to get along.”

“Both sides realized they were stuck with each other, and then the magic started to happen,” he added.

There is evidence that all this pain has produced some good.

At the hearing, Idaho Department of Water Resources Director Mathew Weaver testified that efforts to conserve the aquifer are paying off. The long-term decline of the aquifer, from the mid-1950s to the early 2000s, was either slowed or halted through water management.

Since around 2005, aquifer levels have fluctuated, but there is no longer a clear downward trend. The department’s simulations of what would have happened without recharge and pumping saved about 3 million acre-feet, or about six times the total capacity of the Anderson Ranch Reservoir, in the aquifer.

“I think it’s a very hopeful message. … We’re not seeing these historic declines in the system,” Weaver told the committee.

Water is a unique issue in Idaho governance. There is almost nothing political about water issues, at least in the traditional sense. They are extremely complicated. The stakes are enormous. Everyone involved fights as if their livelihood depends on the outcome – and indeed it does.

But there are neither Republicans nor Democrats, nor liberals nor conservatives. All problems are practical and the only question is whether a solution can be found.

And it’s a relief, in a time of endless polarization and culture war nonsensethat parts of Idaho government can still solve real problems like these.

“There is no substitute for the parties coming together and learning each other’s positions and learning that their positions are not unreasonable,” Bedke said. “Every successful family, every successful business has learned these skills, and that’s what’s missing in the public discourse.” »

Bryan Clark is an opinion editor for the Idaho Statesman.