The Nature Conservancy in Idaho - Silver Creek Symposium Keynote Address

Rocky Barker photo
Rocky Barker is the Idaho Statesman's environmental reporter. He is also the author of Scorched Earth: How the Fires in Yellowstone Changed America. The highly acclaimed book was a finalist for the Western Writers of America’s Spur Award in nonfiction. The story has inspired a television movie, Firestorm: Last Stand at Yellowstone, co-produced by Barker. His first book Saving All the Parts, Reconciling Economics and the Endangered Species Act was published in 1993 by Island Press. He co-authored two outdoor guidebooks, the Flyfisher’s Guide to Idaho and the Wingshooter’s Guide to Idaho, with Ken Retallic.

Rural Water, Urban Water
An overview of the presentation given by Attorney Jeff Fereday at the 2007 Silver Creek Symposium, addressing water law and policy implications stemming from the urbanization of farmland.

Hope for Salmon
Learn more about how the Conservancy is creating a hopeful future for salmon in the Pahsimeroi and Lemhi valleys.

Idaho Statesman environmental reporter Rocky Barker delivered the keynote address at The Nature Conservancy's 2007 Silver Creek Symposium, held on October 27 at the Sun Valley Inn. The following is a transcript of his remarks, reprinted here with the author's permission.

We’re here to talk about water in Idaho. That inherently means we’re also here to talk about salmon and climate change since right now the three are totally linked from a public policy standpoint.

About 32 million acre feet leave Idaho at Lewiston in the Snake River in a good year, and if many of Idaho’s “Water Buffaloes”—the relatively small group of people who control most of the state’s water—had their way only a trickle would pass through that border. The rest of us from farmers to even environmentalists are vigilant to ensure that the water that does stay in the river is put to the best use for fish, power production, industry and other uses downstream. We rightfully fear the political power that lies in the large populations of Oregon and Washington.

That political power can at times be used for good, to save salmon, clean up rivers and push our region toward more energy conservation and development of new renewable resources. Unfortunately, we in Idaho too often see it used to protect the economic and political power of the status quo industries and other interests in the downstream states. When we see Democratic and urban leaders in Portland and Seattle criticize Idaho for sending too little water downstream, we take a jaded view. That’s because we see these same leaders approving new water development projects on the Columbia River that takes some of the same water we are putting back in the river out to water new farms, nurseries or orchards.

For the last few years, Idaho’s water lobby has been fighting amongst itself over how to divide up the declining pie of the Snake River Plain Aquifer. Flows from that giant bathtub that come out at Thousand Springs have declined for the last 50 years and now Idaho realizes it doesn’t have enough water to meet everyone’s needs. Groundwater pumping is part of the problem but probably not even the biggest drainer of the aquifer. The aquifer actually rose dozens of feet since the turn of the century as flood irrigation and leaky canals incidentally recharged the groundwater and filled up the underground tub. Many people don’t realize that Idaho actually has two Snake Rivers. One ends a the Milner Dam every summer as all of the water is diverted into canals north and south of the river. However, the overflow from the tub—the springs—replenishes the river immediately and along with downstream tributaries it grows again to the big river you all know and love. Idaho Power’s dams are dependent on this second river and thanks to a major court victory in the 1980s, Idaho must keep the river running above 3900 cfs in the summer and 5600 in the winter.

That’s not only good for Idaho Power, it’s good for fish, recreation and power production downstream. But even that agreement is under challenge. Idaho Power has sued the state suggesting they were both wrong about how much water was available in 1984. So they want out of the contract. Las July, Water Resources Director David Tuthill came close to shutting off the pumps to 15,000 acres of growing crops. This year he’s already sent out letters to 2700 more farmers, dairies, cheese plants, cities and other water users warning he could do it again.

For years irrigators warned that environmentalists were going to dry up Idaho but now it’s Idaho trout farmers and surface water irrigators who would dry up their neighbors’ fields. Go figure.

New technology that could help capture flood flows in aquifers efficiently could help resolve these issues. More storage reservoirs could help but all the cheap sites are gone and even this is only a short-term fix because reservoirs eventually fill with silt.

Added to this challenge is global warming. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change now says there is little doubt fossil fuel burning has contributed to the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that is unnaturally warming the earth and changing climates around the world. Here in Idaho the scientists have already documented an increase in temperatures that has led to earlier spring run-off, longer and larger fire seasons, reduced water storage, power production and a shift spawning and rearing habitat for salmon.

As the temperature continues to rise, which these scientists project over the next 50 years, these trends will only accelerate. The rivers, streams, lakes, indeed the entire Idaho landscape to which we have grown accustomed will be shaped.

All of our current water tensions will only become harder to resolve. Forests that have been the same for thousands of years could be reshaped by warmer, drier conditions. Croplands could become productive as the growing season lengthens. Or regular droughts and water shortages could force a transformation of our agricultural economy.

In short, we live in a new world.

Since we lie on the southern edge of salmon habitat, there is a real potential we could lose these fish even if we were to take bold action. Remember, the salmon that spawn in the Salmon River only a few miles north of here live in many habitats beginning with the Sawtooth Valley at 6500 feet, the 900-mile river corridor to the Pacific and the thousands of miles of ocean where they can either thrive or wither depending on the currents.

It is in this new world that the salmon and water debates must be reckoned.

Science and economics are only useful to these debates as far as they go. In the end, politics and values trump science. The salmon issue is the latest proof. A majority of scientists who this kind of thing agree. The only way to restore an abundant population of salmon year-in and year-out from Idaho is to breach the four lower Snake dams. All the water in Idaho won’t do it. All the habitat protection won’t either. But those dams are valuable resources themselves especially now with global warming. In January 2001 only 500 megawatts separated California from a blackout that would have cost billions of dollars. That’s how much power those four dams were producing that cold winter day.

So how does the region reconcile the clash of these values? I’m just a reporter. Ask an editorial writer like Pam Morris.

But it’s clear that Idaho’s water users must work out a plan with the involvement of all Idahoans that resolves the Snake River and aquifer debate for good or our division will cost us dearly. This means urban and rural, pumper and surface user, environmentalist and taxpayer must all find solutions that recognize that the water belongs to all of us, not just those who own the right to use it.

The same is true for the Pacific Northwest.

The Pacific Northwest’s political leadership—both Democrats and Republicans—must engage in a hard-nosed but real effort to resolve this fight once and for all. I’m convinced political consensus can be reached. All sides would have to give in the same way we did in the early 1980s when the Northwest Power Act was forged. Washington Senator Patty Murray would have to step into the shoes of Scoop Jackson. Idaho’s Senator Mike Crapo would have to show the political courage of Mark Hatfield. California, Alaska and Montana all would have to get their piece of the deal. No one in the region will be rolled but those would rather die fighting than fix this.

You folks in the Wood River Valley have made a remarkable start. Now because farmers, ranchers, sportsmen and environmentalists came together with a plan that allows people to donate their water so they can leave it in the stream for fish and to recharge the aquifer downstream, Idaho has the beginnings of a new model for managing water: the Wood River Legacy Project. Added to the Water Bank on the Lemhi, and other creative ideas that are emerging from crisis, and there is hope that we can find a way to increase our water efficiency, protect our rivers and fish while sharing the scarce resource in a manner that is both fair and certain.

I remain optimistic.

Ladies and gentlemen, when I first began covering salmon regularly in 1990 they were all but gone in the minds of Idahoans. Many Idahoans had already given up on them. Others hardly knew they existed at all.

But today, just as Rick, the nightclub owner in the movie Casablanca, and Ilsa, his long lost lover, got back the intimacy they had in Paris by the end of that 1940 classic, we in Idaho got salmon back in our rivers, and most of all, in our minds and imaginations.

Now we’ve got a job to do, and where we are going the faint of heart can’t follow. It doesn’t take much to see that the problems of the citizens of a Rocky Mountain state don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. So here’s looking at you, kids, and together let’s win the next season of Survivor-Idaho Style, with pluck and vigor.