Homeowners around Payette Lake who are now drawing water from the lake could be assessed a $50 per year fee as demand for water grows tighter downstream, a water official said last week.
Ron Shurtleff, water master of Water District 65, gave the fee estimate at last Thursday's special session of the Big Payette Lake Watershed Advisory Group.
Water District 65, which includes the entire Payette River basin including Payette Lake, controls the top 5-1/2 feet of the lake for use by irrigators downstream.
The district ensures that water is distributed and compensated for equitably.
The fee would not be levied anytime in the near future, as the water district is still trying to determine how to assess fairly small users. Officials do not know yet whether the suggested fee is workable or legal, Shurtleff said, and it would have to pass first Idaho Water Resources Board scrutiny.
Shurtleff suggested homeowners might be grouped to determine a flat rate rather than assessing individual use. But to make the whole system fair, everybody using surface water should pay an assessment, he said.
No one knows how many people are now drawing water from the lake for irrigation and domestic use.
No permit is required from the Central District Health Department or any other agency to draw water from the lake for residential use.
Someone planning to build a new home on the lake can still apply for a water right without being assessed a water-use fee, Shurtleff said.
Historically, whoever first applied for water rights was granted seniority. Many water systems in the lower part of the Payette drainage were put together before Idaho earned statehood. Water rights obtained after 1900 are generally considered junior, Shurtleff said.
When Idaho's population was smaller, demand on water resources was low.
Homeowners drawing water were not included in the district's water accounting system even though their water rights were recorded, he said.
But as demand swells, what is now considered negligible could spark conflict in a couple decades, Shurtleff said.
"As long as there is enough water for everybody, nobody is really concerned about water rights," he said.
So, the water district is in the process of putting into its accounting system more-junior and smaller users.
Fees irrigators pay for water storage and maintenance help operate reservoirs, Shurtleff said.
Large junior users, like the city of McCall, pay to lease their unused water.
Advisory group Chairman William Weida called the meeting to start a conversation about water rights inlight of development in the McCall area.
"A lot of people don't really understand the water rights that are in existence here and don't really understand how those things may come into effect later in the area's development and developments down in the valley," Weida said.
Weida hopes to avoid a fight over water by talking now to solve problems that may be 20 years away.
Anyone benefiting from stored water should participate in the accounting system so they are not overcharged for using water when they have not, Shurtleff said.
He hopes to locate water rights that may have lapsed for lack of use. That water could go then to somebody else, but the water district has no way of knowing whose those may be unless those people are contacted, he said.
A system of reservoirs sustains the supply when nature runs short. Without reservoirs, about 800,000 acres of farmland in the valley would be dry, and the region would have reached its growth limit around 1940, Shurtleff said.
Irrigators were expected to pay off in 10 years dams built by the federal government to store water. That did not come to pass and after a couple extensions, there are still dams that have not been paid off, Shurtleff said.
Health department rules do not bar people from drawing domestic water out of the lake; however, the practice is not recommended, Jeff Lappin, Central District Health environmental specialist, said.
"We certainly don't recommend the use of lake water for private water supplies," Lappin said. "It's fine for public supplies where they are doing daily testing, and filtration and chlorination, but private individuals do not have that capability."
Even small home-treatment units may not be safe if not maintained properly and can give someone a false sense of security when they really are not doing the job, he said.
aren't doing regularly the monitoring, taking the bacterial samples, and looking at turbidity, etc., they don't know whether (home units) are properly functioning or not," Lappin said.
He recommends for drinking using bottled water or boiling water.
