Bingham County commissioners unanimously adopted a resolution on Monday, declaring a disaster due to a severe water shortage that could result in a loss of crops and financial hardship for some residents. 

Commissioner Ladd Carter said they adopted the resolution at the request of the Aberdeen-Springfield Canal Company, and plan to submit it to the State in the days ahead.   

Steve Howser, general manager of the canal company, said the county resolution is the first in a series of steps required to declare a drought, which when official, helps expedite emergency water transfer rights. And he believes the canal company, which irrigates 62,000 acres in Bingham and Power counties, will need those rights soon. 

“ASCC owns space in American Falls, Palisades, and Jackson Reservoirs,” Howser said, adding that the canal company’s supply consists of natural flow. “This year, I expect to run out of natural flow within the next few days (it typically lasts until mid-July, through our peak irrigation period) and our storage supply is less than half of full.”

Howser said he predicts the storage supply will be gone by mid-August if things continue as they are, but he’s already planning to implement methods that could make the water last through early September.  

“Once we begin drawing storage water, we will cut our daily available delivery by 40 percent and place our water users on rotation. In addition, we are working to identify irrigation wells that are serving lands growing grain in the hopes that we may be able to transfer those water rights to lands growing row crops that are being served from the canals once the grain is finished in early to mid-July,” Howser said. “We will be making changes to head gates twice a day, instead of our normal once per day, in order to save water that might otherwise go unused for 10 to 12 hours. We will control our spills back to the river and cut 75 percent from our nominal operating parameters.”

Howser said he is also hoping to find water to rent in the future that could stretch their resources into mid September. 

“This target date should allow us to get a third cutting of alfalfa, harvest a significant portion of our potatoes, and possibly get started harvesting beets,” he said. “We often see some natural flow return mid- to late September, which will assist with the beet harvest.”