Idahoan Foods weighs in on water curtailment concerns

 IDAHO FALLS, Idaho (KIFI) - In the past weeks, local farmers have become increasingly worried their irrigation pumps could be shut down. It's over a potential call for water from water right owners in the Twin Falls area. 

While a curtailment hasn't been made official yet, the Idaho Department of Water Resources has made clear it is a possibility. Now, big local potato producer discusses the hardships of a possible water curtailment.

Idahoan Foods entire industry relies on groundwater for everything from potato farming and preprocessing, to boiling and cooking. 

Senior Manager of Health and Safety, Dennis Leikam, tells us a mitigation plan provides a safe harbor from having your well turned off. But even having a mitigation plan like Idahoan has in place, doesn't ensure they'll have enough water.

"While that sounds really scary, it doesn't impact us.  but that's really only because we got lucky with a big precipitation year," Leikam said. "I'll take luck once in a while. But we can't rely on luck."

In a bad year, Leikam said they can budget and purchase more water to stay within the bounds of their mitigation agreement. But that's not an option for smaller farms.

"If you're a guy growing, you know, a hundred acres of spuds or something, that's(a curtailment is) going to that's going to destroy your whole financial for that year."

Some local water districts also had a mitigation agreement to use the water through the Idaho Department of Water Resources, but left the agreement because they believed it unfairly favored water users in Twin Falls.

Leikam suggests instead of cutting their water off, that the department of water resources makes legislative changes.

"We're worried about in future years when that water is not going to be available," Bingham Groundwater District Director Alan Jackson said. "Is the answer going to be to shut off hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland? Is there a better solution that doesn't require  something so destructive to the economy."

Leikam suggests a legislative option, to make water rights more flexible.

"If we had that flexibility. I'll tell you last year, we probably would have recharged 1500 acre feet of excess surface water that we have," Leikam said. "But since that surface water is earmarked only for irrigation,  we can't recharge it and it gets lost in the system."