Idaho Gov’t Shuts Down Water for 500,000 Acres of Farmland in Latest Effort to Engineer Mass Famine

Idaho Department of Water Resources (IDWR) director Matthew Weaver issued a curtailment order for farmers using groundwater irrigation in six districts that affects half a million acres.

by Natural News

Idaho Department of Water Resources (IDWR) director Matthew Weaver issued a curtailment order for farmers using groundwater irrigation in six districts that affects half a million acres. Thousands of farmers across the Snake River Plain must now abandon their fields or else face steep fines. Critic Adam Young warned that this order will upend the local and regional economies of eastern Idaho as family farms, grain merchandisers, potato warehouses, food processors, truckers, input suppliers and equipment dealers see their business models evaporate, and as banks face the prospect of widespread defaults. He says Idaho has plenty of water, the reservoirs are filled, the snowpack was above average, more than 200 billion gallons of water were released to prevent flooding, and the state’s rivers have swollen beyond their banks. 

It is almost as if the powers that be in Idaho want to starve the state’s farmers of water in order to create a food crisis.

At least half a million acres of farmland in eastern and southern Idaho are under a new curtailment order that restricts farmers in these areas from using groundwater to irrigate their crops.

Thousands of farmers across the Snake River Plain must now abandon their fields or else face steep fines, this after Idaho Department of Water Resources (IDWR) director Matthew Weaver issued a curtailment order for six groundwater districts on May 31.”

The 500,000 acres subject to curtailment represent about half of all the groundwater acres in the eastern Snake River Plain, which is a really big deal not only for Idaho but also the entire country as those acres grow food for the nation.

Last year, the IDWR changed the methodology, or process, it uses to estimate water shortfalls and determine curtailments. The change “ignores reasonable use of Idaho’s water,” according to the Idaho Statesman‘s Adam Young, which means curtailment orders “will be both more frequent and more severe.”

“This order, in the absence of an emergency stay, will upend the local and regional economies of eastern Idaho as family farms, grain merchandisers, potato warehouses, food processors, truckers, input suppliers and equipment dealers see their business models evaporate, and as banks face the prospect of widespread defaults,” Young warns.

“The realities of our interconnected economy guarantee that widespread disruptions will be felt throughout the state, including in the Magic Valley, whose huge dairy industry, for example, relies on alfalfa from their neighbors to the east.”

Many of the banks, equipment dealers and processors that are certain to be put out of business by the new curtailment order also exist in the Magic Valley, meaning people and families all across the state of Idaho are going to suffer in the days to come.

Is Idaho really struggling with lack of water?

It is unclear what “emergency” prompted the new curtailment order, seeing as how Idaho’s reservoir system “has completely filled,” according to Young. More than 200 billion gallons of water were released to prevent flooding, and the state’s rivers have swollen beyond their banks, which means there is lots of water to be had.

“Our snowpack is above average,” Young notes, adding that “we have good soil moisture; and we have enjoyed a cool spring.”

Even so, the IDWR is insistent that there is a water shortfall of 74,100 acre-feet at one canal in the Magic Valley, which the IDWR director deemed as enough of a threat to shut off about one million acre-feet of irrigation – “[t]his despite the fact that the canal in question loses 660,000 acre-feet per year to inefficiencies, according to department calculations,” Young says.

“From 2016 through 2022 groundwater pumpers, on average, conserved (through pumping reductions and aquifer recharge) over 312,000 acre-feet of water annually – much more than was required under the 2015 settlement agreement between canal and groundwater users,” he adds.

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