Water fights are for kids with squirt guns

Maybe we can stop fighting about water in Idaho. There is a real possibility.

Last week former Idaho Supreme Court Justice Gerald Schroeder delivered a set of recommendations to resolve or at least move closer to resolving bitter fights about who owns Idaho’s water and what they can do with it.

Surface water users who draw water from rivers and streams and ground water users who pump it to the surface with wells never see the water situation in quite the same way. After all, water is water. If I dig a well in my back yard and find water, I can use it any way I wish, right? Or if a stream runs through my property, nobody can stop me from irrigating my pasture with it, right?

But what if there isn’t enough water to go around?

In a drought, pumpers in Southern Idaho can deplete the store of underground water known as the East Snake Plain Aquifer that helps keep streams and rivers flowing. When the aquifers start drying up, big users of irrigation water don’t have enough water to keep their crops and livestock healthy.

Sounds like doomsday talk, but Schroeder doesn’t believe Idaho is running out of water. We just need to be more careful about how we use water that is available. It used to be assumed that well digging could continue without restriction. Now that we know the effect that pumping can have on the supply of surface water and in the eventual turn of the global water wheel, steps are being taken to develop a better system of pricing, regulating, and testing our water.

I think too many newspapers try to keep people away from their news. Thank you, Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and many others for letting me read your news whenever I need to. Anyway, I can’t give you a good link to the May 6 editorial in the Idaho Press Tribune or to the Idaho Falls Post Register that presented editorial text on Schroeder’s recommendations. The Magic Valley Times-News does offer free links to news coverage on this topic and even posts the name of the reporter, Nate Poppino, and his email address (npoppino@magicvalley.com.)

And, here’s a link to an Legal Newsline story covering the retirement last summer of the former Idaho Chief Justice, Gerald Schroeder. A native Idahoan who has specialized in water rights and water litigation throughout his career, Schroder continues to play an active role helping the public understand water issue. (By the way, this is not the Gerald Schroeder who is the author of books such as The Hidden Face of God and Genesis and the Big Bang.)

(This blog is from Griffith Publishing)

Why worry about a little bit of water pollution?

Maybe you find it as ironic as I do that our former governor, Dirk Kempthorne, cut the budget for improving Idaho’s environment three times in his four-plus years before rising to the heights as a cabinet member for the U.S. Department of the Interior. That’s the federal department whose main responsibility is the conservation of our country’s natural resources.

I’m no scientist, but those who are tell me that water goes through a huge cycle, from rain to wells to oceans and rivers, to our food and drinks to raw sewer, and back to the clouds of the air. I’ve heard that we’re consuming the same water that was satisfying thirst as long as there have been human beings on the face of the earth.

Thaw a chunk of ice next time you’re in Alaska and you might come down with a pre-historic virus if you drink the cold run-off from ages ago.

The reality is that we don’t drink “pure” water. There are microscopic bits of “stuff” in the water we drink, things like the remains of the shells of sea creatures or deadly chemicals like arsenic or cyanide. Because we can measure these substances down to 1 or 2 parts per million, we can give a frightening list of harmful “stuff” in the water we drink. That’s why our water is treated by the city to purify it and keep the worst “stuff” out.

Sometimes poisons or disease-causing items do get through and make us sick. The government doesn’t like this to happen, and neither do the citizens of this country.

More on this later. Meanwhile, how about a glass of treated, filtered, “natural” water from your special dispenser?

Berms or not, it’s a flood plain in Canyon County

The consensus among water experts seems to be that the part of Idaho I call home is an eternal desert, treated now and then to a decent rainfall and usually delivering enough snow in the mountains to irrigate our parched land and grow crops.

We’ve been officially in a drought for years, and any concern about the quantity of water in Southwest Idaho was that we didn’t have enough.

Until this year. Heavy snowfall both in the valley and in the mountains. More predicted for the week end. Now we’re talking about possible flooding.  As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, we have a very high water table in this part of the state, especially west and south of Caldwell where you can hit water at five or six feet or less when drilling a new well.

Apparently it has been a whispered secret that the City of Caldwell is sitting on top of so much water that the city put up a flood-mitigation berm at the 9th hole of the city golf course, according to my source, Paul Allredge, former chair of the city’s planning & zoning commission and Caldwell’s unofficial guardian.

It was pure coincidence that this week new maps drawn by FEMA showing a much broader area at risk of flooding was released to the community. Since Caldwell was built along the Indian Creek tributary to the Boise River, the new map affects this city and could sink the city’s plans for revitalization of downtown Caldwell. To all of this, Caldwell Mayor Garrett Nancoles calmly informed Jamie Huff, FEMA spokesperson who delivered the presentation this week, “What you are about to present will scare the holy, whatever, out of Nampa and Caldwell.” This is according to Kendet Murrant and Byran Dooley, reporters for the Idaho Press Tribune.

I don’t know who’s scared, but if I understand rules about waterway construction correctly, the new maps pretty much shut down the mayor’s dream of a beautiful downtown area on Indian Creek because federal law does not allow new construction or substantial building repairs in the floodplain.

JG

Private wells in Idaho

In Idaho you don’t have to cut any red tape if you own a small well that supplies water to your home. That’s because a well like the one I have in my garage pumps no water at all in winter and very little on the few occasions when I water my lawn in the spring and summer. I’ve been using city water for my “domestic” use for more than a year and then filter it to take out the bad chlorine taste.

The problem is that we’ve developed acres and acres of land beyond the range of municipal water systems, and these “ranchettes” or “starter castles” obtain all of their water from individual or shared wells.  There needs to be some sort of statewide oversight of domestic wells because of the risk of pollutants such as nitrates and because of the possibility of severe water shortages at some future time.

The Idaho Business Review reports on an address delivered by Barbara Cosens, University of Idaho law professor, to the Senate Resources and Environment Committee.

My comment:

Domestic wells also need more monitoring in areas where the water table is especially high as in the area immediately south and east of Caldwell. And we need to put the brakes on development of new, large subdivisions that plan to draw their water from wells.

We have a limited supply of groundwater in Idaho and an even more limited supply of clean water. We need to take better care of what we have before it’s too late.

Would nitrates be better?

If you don’t like the idea of chlorinated water, think about a nitrate-rich liquid from your kitchen faucet.

Nitrogen, the “N” in nitrate, is the fifth most abundant chemical in the universe. The earth’s atmosphere contains about 4,000 trillion tons of nitrogen. (That’s 4,000,000,000,000,000 tons.) We combine nitrogen with hydrogen to make ammonia and use it in fertilizers, explosives, and other products.

We need nitrogen to survive. Plants, including vegetables and fruits, rely on nitrogen plus two other elements (potassium and phosphorous) to live and grow. Although 80 percent of the air we breathe consists of nitrogen, the airborne form of the chemical is inert and has no effect on our health. Most foods contain nitrogen but in amounts that can be readily digested by the body.

The problem is that when oxygen instead of hydrogen joins with nitrogen, we have nitrates or, chemically speaking, NO3. Micro organisms in the cattle’s digestive system convert the nitrate to its more poisonous form, nitrite, and then to methemoglobin, a biological chemical.

Step by step harm is done. Methemoglobin doesn’t react with oxygen. The animal’s blood becomes oxygen starved and turns dark brown. Within 30 minutes the animal may have trouble breathing, may begin to suffer from tremors and diarrhea, experience a rapid heartbeat, go into convulsions and die within 24 hours. Cattle owners take pains to keep their cattle away from weeds such as pigweed, oat hay, goosefoot, and many others because their ability to absorb nitrates can raise levels to a dangerous point. Montana University provides an easily understood explanation of how nitrates cause problems.

Nitrates are also found in water: the water we humans drink and the water cattle and other living creatures take into their systems.

Most people tolerate nitrate and nitrates fairly well unless they are infants. A baby’s tiny body converts nitrates to nitrites that binds to methemoglobin and starves the blood of oxygen. Too much nitrite, and the result is a condition we call “blue baby” because the baby’s body is the color that blood without enough oxygen has—blue. Long-term effects on the spleen and an association with certain types of cancer have also been observed.

And that’s where Idaho’s water comes in.

The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) has measured nitrate levels in groundwater throughout the country and has set a standard of 10 parts per million (ppm) as the maximum acceptable level in drinking water.

We have learned since 2000 that about 8 percent of wells in Southwest Idaho have nitrate levels above this standard, and educational efforts are under way by state and county agencies and an advisory committee representing the general public in Canyon County. The goal is for well owners to test nitrate levels in their water systems on a regular basis and cooperate with other well owners and agencies in reducing these levels.