Case History: Large Diameter High Volume Water Resource Development and Conservation Project at USBR’s Minidoka North, South Central Idaho, Located A&B Irrigation District Incorporating “Sustainable Design Principles”

Dry weather conditions over much of the western U.S. has been a significant challenge for the agricultural industry for a number of years that has led to significant innovative ways to more efficiently utilize the natural water resources that are available. The general drought conditions have caused reduced crop yields in much of the West and Midwest section of the country and emphasis on needing to solve them became urgent and launched a chain of events among several stake holders to implement a large irrigation project involving several local interests, state and national fund resources to provide a dependable source of surface water to augment an existing system of interlinked ground water sources that had been able to keep up with the need a resulting in crop yield reduction and losses in the recent multiple year drought cycle. The project described herein is a joint effort of A & B Irrigation, the irrigation system operator, the NRCS Office of the State of Idaho and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, who has federal responsibility for irrigation district water projects. The purpose of the project was to 1) provide supplemental irrigation water from the surface water source available from the Snake River in order to 2) reduce demand on deep well water sources that had been inadequate through several continuous drought years depleting the ability of the wells to provide adequate water supply. The project described here 3) adds a significant new surface water source directly from the Snake River, 4) incorporates over 93,000 feet of pipe to distribute water to additional acres of land, 5) replaces miles of canals and reduces demand on the underground aquifer. During the first season of operation the new improvements resulted in higher crop yields, more acres under cultivation, significant increase in groundwater levels, a savings of 2.3 million KW of electricity compared to the previous 9 year average. Over 2.0 million acre feet of water was saved over the irrigation season due to enclosing canals and transporting water in pipelines and eliminating water loss to evaporation and seepage into the ground from the canal system that was replaced.