Two new state water projects will help slowly refill the depleted East Snake Plain Aquifer in the coming decades, officials say.
In high water years, a recently completed $1 million canal in the Egin Bench area of Fremont County will funnel water from the Henry’s Fork to a porous basin where it will sink into the ground.
The other major project, barely finished in time for irrigation season, was the $1.4 million construction of a new headgates for the Great Feeder Canal, the large canal system branching off from the South Fork of the Snake River east of Ririe. That project also will help state water managers ramp up aquifer recharge sites in the coming years.
The projects are part of a statewide effort by the Idaho Department of Water Resources to replenish the aquifer through managed recharge, a method of allowing surface water to seep through certain porous areas of ground and into the aquifer. The massive underground reservoir has been on the decline for decades due to pumping and other reasons, sparking frequent battles over the water that remains. Recent drought has exacerbated the problem.
The state’s goal by 2020 is to recharge as much as 250,000 acre feet of water annually back into the aquifer. To get there, recharge infrastructure and sites will need to be scaled up dramatically, officials say.
