Dust Bowl Imperils Idaho Farms
About half of the farms in Idaho — totaling some 500,000 million planted acres — could blow away, owing to a water curtailment order issued by Matthew Weaver, head of Idaho’s Department of Water Resources. The order requires 6,400 junior groundwater rights holders who pump off the Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer to shut off their water.
This is the largest curtailment of water use in the state’s history. Idaho Gov. Brad Little, a Republican, has supported Weaver’s order. But farmers say it will rob them of thousands of dollars they have invested in their farms, and turn much of Eastern Idaho into a gigantic dust bowl. This is the region where much of the nation’s potato supply grows.
“What remains is an utterly absurd situation, where hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland, and their associated economic benefits, are thrown away during a wet year to cause a small amount of additional water to overflow from the aquifer into the Snake River,” Idaho Groundwater Appropriators attorney T.J. Budge wrote. Our take: If the price of French fries at McDonald’s doubles next year, thank the pointy-headed bureaucrats of Idaho, including a governor appropriately named Little, for the spike! Here’s more from BlueRaven.
