Siphoning water to the aquifer

A grand project to prevent hard feelings between surface and ground water users in Western Idaho from escalating further has been successful so far, according to today's report in the Idaho Statesman.

The Idaho Department of Water Resources was able to divert storage water north of the Snake River in the Magic Valley into the Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer. Half a million dollars from industrial sources including the Idaho Dairymen's Association gave them the right to lease the water instead of seeing their water pumps turned off.

The issue of course, is how to keep water-dependent industries alive with aquifer water and not violate laws that give the senior holders of surface water the first right to the water.

The aquifer was able to absorb 91 percent of the 29,500 acre-feet of water that ran through the canal between October 1 when the irrigation season ended and November 30 when cold weather set in. The courts will be involved again before this all settles down, if it ever does.

Who put the arsenic in our water?

Shawn Benner, PhD

Today I attended an interesting illustrated lecture about arsenic in ground water in Canyon County, where I live in Idaho. The speaker was Shawn Benner, Ph.D., assistant professor for the Department of Geosciences at Boise State University.

The maps he projected on the screen were compelling. In the area bounded by the Snake River, the Boise River, and the line between Canyon and Ada Counties, colored marks indicated arsenic pollution spread out over the whole area but especially the area immediately to the west of Caldwell.

In 1999 the highest level of arsenic acceptable in our drinking water was lowered from 50 parts per billion to 10 parts per billion. The levels were set because of observations linking an increased risk of cancer among people to their exposure to higher levels of arsenic. This brought dozens of wells in this part of the Boise basin into non-compliance with the Environmental Protection Agency.

Actually, Dr. Benner said, the evidence is overwhelming that it should be even lower, but the heightened risk was weighed against the cost of compliance, and the standard remains at 10 ppb.

How does arsenic get into our water?

Scientists don't know. They know that contamination is widespread throughout the area. They also know that it is "naturally" occurring and not the result of "dumping" or "mixing" arsenic compounds into our groundwater. Analysis indicates that arsenic levels are highest in the shallowest wells.

But where does it come from?

Dr. Benner and a formidable team of scientists and students are digging out the facts. They suspect that "surficial sediments" are a major source of arsenic in its mobile form. Arsenic that readily mobilizes is also common in shallow oxide-rich layers of soil and gravel.

So now I'm thinking...Maybe I should just write a book for the ordinary person about arsenic!

I've written to Dr. Benner expressing an interest in the subject. We'll see...

On a Collision Course

Idaho Power wants an 84-year-old agreement restored so they can use their "fair" share of water to generate electricity. The state's largest utility claims the agreement has been violated every year since 2001 and has filed a lawsuit in the Ninth U.S. District Court against the Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Reclamation.

Idaho's gift of hot water

It's a big mystery why Idaho uses so much water and yet is a bone-dry desert state. Just as mysterious is the wealth of geothermal energy in our state.

One of my favorite Idaho writers is Arthur Hart, a historian and scholar. Today's Idaho Statesman posted Hart's fascinating account of hot water in Boise through the years.
In this story you will learn—

• About a resort featuring hot and cold water that opened in 1890 in Boise
• The dust-settling qualities of water sprinklers on Warm Springs Avenue in the 19th century
  
• The location of the first home in Boise heated entirely by hot water from underground springs
  
• Why early residents of Boise anticipated the day when all of the energy needs of the city would be met by natural hot water beneath its moorings

Don't miss this coverage!

Water and Sand

The speaker at today's water presentation sponsored by the University of Idaho was Professor, V. Sridhar, Ph.D., P.E., from BSU. I didn't take my program with me and was amused to hear one of the class members in another venue (it is transmitted live to four other sites in Idaho) call him by name. I thought he was saying "Dear Sweetheart."

Anyway, most of his talk concerned the "Sand Hills of Nebraska," although he did talk a bit about nature's balancing act with energy and water.


He and his colleagues have calculated the direction the sand dunes of Nebraska would take if wind directions changed a bit. I thought it was interesting that winds blowing north to south, or vice versa, are warmer than winds blowing east to west or the reverse. Most of the Nebraska area of sand supports a few inches of grass and doesn't reveal the thousands of tons of sand below or the precarious situation of that little bit of topsoil. He had praise for an organization known as the "Sandhills Taskforce," a group of volunteers trying to maintain a healthy system of farms and ranches that rely on grassy terrain for optimal grazing.

Idaho Rivers United: A First Look

I have a feeling I'll be hearing more about Idaho Rivers United from here on. The city hall for Garden City is off Glenwood on Marigold. I think the best way to get there is from the Eagle exchange on the freeway, definitely not from downtown Boise!

Susan Stacy, the author of When the River Rises, was present and received accolades for her book about the history of the Boise River. In 1962-63, the river was so polluted that it smelled bad. Really bad. The cheapest homes were by the river, and nobody wanted to live there.

The Clean Water Act was first known as the Federal Water Pollution Control Act and was established in 1948. With various amendments, in 1966 it became The Clean Water Pollution Control Act, and in 1977 it became the Clean Water Act (CWA). (For a brief look at the history of the CWA, go to the Website maintained by The Bureau of Land Management.)

Some points I learned:

• Storm water runoff is also ruled by the permit process.
  
• Run a pipe into the river, and it is covered by discharge permit rules.
• The Boise River in and near the city supports more recreation any other river space in the state.
• Because of scant water flows, the black cottonwood is being replaced in the Boise River by the silver maple, an import from New England.
• The black cottonwood supports nesting birds because it has strong roots and stays upright when it dies or is blown over.
• The silver maple falls over into the river and doesn't encourage nesting.
• The result of the above two points: Less black cottonwood means a lower bird population as well as fewer insects to provide food for the birds and small animals along the river.
• Elected officials are much easier to reach and talk to about your water concerns than are business owners. That's their job.
• Just point out what is happening and why and ask a simple question: "This is the road we're going down. Are you sure it's the one you want to take?"

I signed up as a potential volunteer. I suspect I'll hear from them again.

Look at our water supplies

This is a picture of our water supply in Idaho as of September 24, 2007.

In case it's a bit hard to read, here are the numbers in the above chart:

Reservoirs
Lucky Peak: 30% full, capacity 264,400 acre feet
Arrowrock: 23% full, capacity 272,200 acre feet
Anderson Ranch: 18% full, capacity 413,100 acre feet
Cascade: 52% full, capacity 646,460 acre feet
Lake Lowell: 49% full, capacity 119,400 acre feet
Deadwood: 25% full, capacity 161,900 acre feet

The raging issue at the moment is control of water at the Lucky Peak reservoir, because that is the source for the water that flows in the Boise River during the winter.

A panel of experts is scheduled to speak on the topic tonight at the Garden City Hall. The program is sponsored by Idaho Rivers United and the Garden City Library.

I plan to be there.

Selenium

A water war is stirring in our state over selenium coming into the water supply from phosphate mining in southeast Idaho.

Phosphate is used in fertilizer and animal feed, and selenium is a mineral we need in tiny quantities for optimal health.

The problem is that too much selenium can be lethal. Six horses and more than 550 sheep in Idaho have died from grazing in forage laced with selenium, and researchers blame selenium for die-offs of salamander, deformed embryos of coot and Canada geese, and the death of beaver, cranes, and pelicans. Fish are absent from two streams in Caribou County, where most of the phosphate mining takes place in Idaho and the location of Grays Lake National Wildlife Refuge.

The war has two fronts. First is the war to stir up some action on the part of the government to deal with selenium pollution, which has been documented for years, and to enforce cleanup of past pollution messes related to mining. The second is to prevent the Simplot company from enlarging their Smoky Canyon phosphate mine near the Idaho-Wyoming border.

Read more: "Environmentalist say feds colluded with phosphate companies to cover up pollution," Salt Lake Tribune.

And this: Facts about selenium. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.

What is an aquifer?

Good question. Aquifers are buried sources of water. I like to think of aquifers as "rivers beneath the desert," because that's how they function: bodies of water that move like streams and rivers under the ground.

The United States Geological Service (USGS) defines an aquifer as "A zone of material capable of supplying ground water at a useful rate from a well."

There are aquifers in Africa, Asia, Europe and probably every body of land on earth. In the United States about 60 aquifers have been identified as "principal aquifers" by the USGS. They are located in every region of the U.S.

Major aquifers located entirely or partly in Idaho (links are to USGS maps):

Northern Rocky Mountain Intermontane Basins Regional Acquifer System

Snake River Plain basaltic-rock aquifers

Snake River Plain basin-fill aquifers

Here's a great report on USGS studies of 24 aquifers in the U.S. in the 1980s and 1990s. On the opening page are links to--

The Ground Water Atlas of the United States by the USGS

Aquifer basics by type of rock filter, by the USGS

JG

Copyright (c) by Joyce Griffith

My mind is starting to turn...

I had a brief email exchange today with the public information office for the Idaho Department of Water Resources.

As a result, I have decided to put a package together that will describe my communications efforts, make a pitch for a combined newsletter by private groups concerned about Idaho's water, invite participation in my IdahoWaterInfo.com site, and generally send out the message that I am interested in Idaho's water and am willing to volunteer as much time as I can scrape together to share what I learn. I will hand deliver the package and send it as an PDF attachment to an email as well. I'll post the address so that anyone can take a look.

My only credentials: I'm a native Idahoan, and I care.

Water organizations in Idaho

Here are some of the organizations involved in water for Idaho:

Government:

• Idaho Department of Water Resources, "Serving the Citizens of Idaho Since 1895"
• Idaho Water Science Center. Service of the United States Geological Survey (USGS)
• Water Quality Division, Idaho Department of Environmental Quality. "Assures that the state's surface, ground, and drinking water resources meet state water quality standards..."
• Natural Resources Conservation Service." Department of Agriculture. Provides "leadership in a partnership effort to help people conserve, maintain, and improve our natural resources and environment.

Educational:

• Idaho Water Resources Research Institute, University of Idaho
• Graduate classes in hydrogeology and related topics for civil engineering. Boise State University, Civil Engineering Dept.
• Hydrologic Science Graduate Program. "Designed to meet the educational requirements for certification by the American Institute of Hydrology.
  

Private:

• The Snake River Alliance, "Idaho's Nuclear Watchdog and Clean Energy Advocate"
• Idaho Water Users Association. Purpose is to "promote, aid, and assist in the development, control, conservation, preservation, and utilization of the water resources for the State of Idaho." Established 1938.
• United Water Idaho. Supplier of "safe, high quality drinking water" from surface sources and ground water.
• Idaho Rural Water Association. "a non-profit organization that provides training and technical assistance to water and wastewater communities and systems throughout Idaho."
• Idaho Ground Water Association. "[A]ssists, promotes, encourages, and supports the interests and welfare of the ground water industry within the State of Idaho."
• The Coalition for Idaho Water. Membership of "more than 50 groups, representing Idaho irrigation, agricultural, and business interests and Idaho cities and counties. The Coalition is united in its determination to safeguard the sovereignty of Idaho's water."

e. coli in our water

One virus we all know by name is e. coli, a virus that lives happily in the intestines of animals but manages to make people seriously ill when it travels by way of animal feces into our bodies. The "e" in "e. coli" stands for Escherichia.

Since last Friday people living in the 450-resident town of Melba, Idaho, have been boiling their water to avoid getting sick from e. coli. The virus has been found in drinking water for the city at unacceptable levels.

The question of the day is this: Since sand, rocks, and other objects in the ground filter and cleanse water beneath the surface, can e. coli appear in wells and other underground sources of water?

Do aquifers provide sufficient filtering to protect us from e. coli? The short answer is "No." The virus has been found in well water and ground water as well as in surface water.

If you'd like to know more, just enter the following words in your favorite search engine and browse some of the information that surfaces: aquifers filter protection e. coli.

Let me know what you learn!

jg

Underground water keeps us alive

About Aquifers

When I was growing up in southern Idaho several decades ago, I don't remember hearing the word, "aquifer." Today it's a household word in every corner of this three-sided state and in many other parts of the country.

An aquifer, I have learned, is a large piece of land that contains water beneath its surface. Apparently the word was invented about 1901 by combining two Latin words, aqua (water) and fer (carry or bear). That's not important except to make a point that we haven't been talking about aquifers forever.

Without a huge underground source of water from our aquifers in Idaho, most of us would be living in a desert so dry and barren that life couldn't be sustained there. (I guess we wouldn't be living at all in that case.) Anyway, thanks to aquifers, all of us in Idaho have access to plenty of drinking water and more than 1.3 billion acres of irrigation water for agriculture and industry. We measure water two different ways. If it's moving, we measure water by its speed in cubic feet per second (cfs). If it's resting on the surface of being held underground in an aquifer it is measured in acre feet (af). One cubic foot of water contains just under 7.5 gallons (7.4805). One acre foot of water contains 325,851 gallons of water.

While people in Idaho have been utilizing ground water for decades, some people who live in extremely dry conditions are totally unaware that beneath their feet is abundance of fresh, clean water. In the dry Judean desert of Israel, for example, water is transported hundreds of miles by commercial carrier while its rain-fed aquifers beneath the surface hold an average of 100 million cubic meters of water. Only about twenty percent of its groundwater water is used.

Do you believe the underground supply of fresh water for Idaho is in jeopardy? How much water do we need? How do we use it? Should the government be doing more to provide fresh water for our crops and families?

Let us hear from you.

Water Below

Almost a year ago I determined to get to the bottom of Idaho's impending water crisis. I researched the web, collected documents, and began piecing everything together.

Then I changed servers, and all of my "Idaho's water" files vanished. Apparently when I was saving essential files, I didn't notice my great effort had been saved on my server until I deleted about 100 pages of text and 200 files. My assistant Kay and I will try to find a paper footprint of where we'd gone and we'll pick up where we left off to the best of our ability.

Meanwhile, if you have anything at all to contribute to the dilemma of supply and demand for irrigation and drinking water in Idaho, please send me email or call me at 208 454-9553.