{"id":4976,"date":"2016-08-09T21:30:02","date_gmt":"2016-08-09T21:30:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.racinelaw.net\/?p=4976"},"modified":"2016-08-09T21:30:02","modified_gmt":"2016-08-09T21:30:02","slug":"summary-espa-settlement-agreement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racinelaw.net\/blog\/summary-espa-settlement-agreement\/","title":{"rendered":"SUMMARY OF ESPA SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT"},"content":{"rendered":"<p dir=\"LTR\" align=\"CENTER\">By: Randy Budge, T.J. Budge<\/p>\n<p dir=\"LTR\" align=\"LEFT\">On June 30, 2015, a historic settlement agreement was entered into between groundwater users and surface water users to permanently end conflict over use and management of Idaho\u2019s vast Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer (ESPA). Nearly the size of Lake Erie, the ESPA supplies water to roughly two million acres of farmland and dozens of cities and industries across southern Idaho. About half of that farmland is irrigated with groundwater pumped from the ESPA while the other half is irrigated with surface water from the Snake River that is supplemented with groundwater that discharges from the ESPA into the Snake River via springs located primarily in the American Falls and Thousand Springs areas. The settlement resolved more than a decade of contentious litigation between surface water and groundwater users. It calls for increased aquifer recharge funded by the State of Idaho and diversion reductions by groundwater users designed to stabilize and over time improve groundwater levels<\/p>\n<p dir=\"LTR\" align=\"LEFT\">Groundwater levels in the ESPA have been declining since the 1950s due the conversion from flood to sprinkler irrigation, the advent of groundwater irrigation, and persistent drought. As groundwater levels declined, so have spring discharges from the ESPA into the Snake River, thus reducing the water supply available to senior surface water rights. This spawned a meteoric conflict as canal companies in the Magic Valley and fish hatcheries in the Thousand Springs area called on the Idaho Department of Water Resources (IDWR) to shut off junior groundwater pumping in an effort to increase spring and surface water flows.<\/p>\n<div class=\"read_more_link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.racinelaw.net\/blog\/summary-espa-settlement-agreement\/\"  title=\"Continue Reading SUMMARY OF ESPA SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT\" class=\"more-link\">Continue Reading \u203a<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By: Randy Budge, T.J. Budge On June 30, 2015, a historic settlement agreement was entered into between groundwater users and surface water users to permanently end conflict over use and management of Idaho\u2019s vast Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer (ESPA). Nearly the size of Lake Erie, the ESPA supplies water to roughly two million acres of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-water-rights"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Summary of ESPA Settlement Agreement|Racine Olson<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"By: Randy Budge, T.J. Budge On June 30, 2015, a historic settlement agreement was entered into between groundwater users and surface water users to &#8212; August 9, 2016\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.racinelaw.net\/blog\/summary-espa-settlement-agreement\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Summary of ESPA Settlement Agreement|Racine Olson\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"By: Randy Budge, T.J. Budge On June 30, 2015, a historic settlement agreement was entered into between groundwater users and surface water users to &#8212; August 9, 2016\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Racine Olson\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Summary of ESPA Settlement Agreement|Racine Olson","description":"By: Randy Budge, T.J. Budge On June 30, 2015, a historic settlement agreement was entered into between groundwater users and surface water users to &#8212; August 9, 2016","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.racinelaw.net\/blog\/summary-espa-settlement-agreement\/","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_title":"Summary of ESPA Settlement Agreement|Racine Olson","twitter_description":"By: Randy Budge, T.J. Budge On June 30, 2015, a historic settlement agreement was entered into between groundwater users and surface water users to &#8212; August 9, 2016","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Racine Olson","Est. reading time":"4 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.racinelaw.net\/blog\/summary-espa-settlement-agreement\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.racinelaw.net\/blog\/summary-espa-settlement-agreement\/"},"author":{"name":"Racine Olson","@id":"https:\/\/www.racinelaw.net\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/aa8aa04699b3ee65fb6e3d91aaa6b2bd"},"headline":"SUMMARY OF ESPA SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT","datePublished":"2016-08-09T21:30:02+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.racinelaw.net\/blog\/summary-espa-settlement-agreement\/"},"wordCount":881,"articleSection":["Water Rights"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.racinelaw.net\/blog\/summary-espa-settlement-agreement\/","url":"https:\/\/www.racinelaw.net\/blog\/summary-espa-settlement-agreement\/","name":"Summary of ESPA Settlement Agreement|Racine Olson","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.racinelaw.net\/blog\/#website"},"datePublished":"2016-08-09T21:30:02+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.racinelaw.net\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/aa8aa04699b3ee65fb6e3d91aaa6b2bd"},"description":"By: Randy Budge, T.J. 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