A bill enabling water rights adjudication for the Bear River Basin was unanimously approved by the House Natural Resources and Conservation committee last week.

The bill, presented by Sen. Mark Harris, R-Soda Springs, and co-sponsored by committee chair Rep. Marc Gibbs, R-Grace, would kickstart the lengthy process of cataloging all existing water rights in the Bear River Basin, which stretches over parts of Bannock, Bear Lake, Caribou, Cassia, Franklin, Oneida and Power counties in Idaho’s southeastern corner.

Water rights in the basin were last adjudicated in 1920, Harris told the committee. In the century since, usage has shifted drastically — many of the rights decreed in the 1920 adjudication are no longer being used as described then or have been split among numerous users in property sales. Many beneficial-use, or “grandfather,” water rights are likely to exist unrecorded in the basin.

The Bear River and its tributaries are appropriated to the extent that not all existing water rights can be satisfied during much of the year, according to the bill text. The shortage has resulted in disputes that can’t easily be resolved through the courts because records are so out of date.

“Beneficial-use rights are the first to be curtailed in times of water shortage,” Harris told the committee. “Because of that, a lot of disputes have arisen because of uncertainty as to whose water is whose.”

Water rights to the Bear River, which winds through Idaho, Utah and Wyoming, were allocated to each state under the Bear River Compact in 1956 and updated in 1980. But in recent years, as Utah’s population has grown exponentially and Idaho’s portion of the basin remains largely rural and agricultural, Idaho users worried their southern neighbor would develop its water until Idaho was left with nothing.

Harris said the adjudication process would help ensure the state’s delegation to the Bear River Commission had adequate information to advocate for Idaho’s portion of the rights, as well as resolving uncertainty for the region’s water users.

The bill will soon see a vote on the House floor. Once it becomes law, the Idaho Supreme Court would appoint a district judge to oversee the process of verifying and potentially reallocating existing water rights claims in the basin. Water users would have the opportunity to file notices of their current water rights and to dispute errors in the final recommendation if needed.

The legislation was modeled after a 1987 bill enabling the Snake River Basin Adjudication, which assessed 160,000 water rights claims and took 27 years to complete. The Idaho Department of Water Resources estimates the Bear River Basin process will include up to 20,000 claims and last between five and 10 years.

-XXX-