Can I Sign Idaho Banking Form

Can i industry sign banking idaho form myself

[Music] while ago I sitting on the banks of the Snake River in Idaho Falls here watching the water flow by what came to me was a line from the poem the Ancient Mariner it says water water everywhere nor a drop to drink I was thinking of that because I just come from meeting with people talking about Idaho Falls water supply and the fact that we may be running out of water for new development in use and I was thinking about that as a hydrologist when in fact I know that where I was standing were over the eastern Snake River plain aquifer and it holds billions of acre feet of water and in front of me was the Snake River which brings billions of gallons of water past Idaho Falls every day on average and I was I was thinking about this because it seemed to me that although Colville and his poem was talking about a a person that was out in a boat adrift in the ocean and he was dying of thirst but couldn't access water here we are billions of gallons of water in the river billions of acre feet in the in the aquifer and we can't use a lot of that essentially I don't false has a small slice of that aquifer that they can use the water rights we can't take a drop out of the river we have no rights to that even though it's rolling bias so water water everywhere not a drop to drink so it's interesting to me that we have any water issues at all on earth because if you think about it we're covered with water seventy one percent of the globe is covered with water but 93 percent or 97 percent of that water is actually water in our oceans in the seas it's salt water only 3% is water that we can actually use readily and easily for our needs so this here is a t-shirt I got from what claims to be the most sustainable brewery in America and this is in Portland this is a brewery that actually takes their water from the Portland sewage treatment plant it's the discharge and I've drank that but the point of this is what they say on the t-shirt is two part one is the water that we have here is the same water we've been drinking since the days of the dinosaurs and even before the water on Earth is about 4.5 billion years old so when you hear them people talk about we're running out of water we're not running out of water we're just not using it well the other part that they talk to is the fact that that water is always being recycled we use it we recycle it we use it recycle it it doesn't break down it just keeps flowing through the system so if we look how does water how do we get water how do we get fresh water well all water on land essentially starts from the ocean and it comes and it falls as precipitation on land and if we look here the vast majority of the the water we get here in the continental United States is from is from the east it's the humid areas where most water falls and then there's a strip between the Cascade Mountains in the Pacific Ocean and in between those two strips is what we call the arid West so if we look at Idaho specifically we see we have a humid North in the green and we have an arid south in the brown we live in that arid part so in the arid or in the excuse me in the humid East what we have is plenty of water and and by that I mean that we can grow crops out there and we can do that without having to irrigate and water managers out there what they have to do is figure out how to take too much water from a place and move it away so they have ditches that move water away from them here in the arid West we can't grow crops without irrigation and we have managers that what they're trying to do is find scarce water resources and bring them to the areas where we need them so the first 20 years of my career is the water person and water manager in the water scientist I spent using all of the science that I was taught trying to figure out how to best protect and use that water and I always had faith in that science and I always had faith in the policies and the laws that we were trying to implement until one day I read a court ruling on a water rights dispute in Oregon that was written by the Oregon or the Ninth Circuit Court what that said was scientists have long delighted in pointing out to lawyers that all waters are interrelated in one continuous hydrologic cycle as a result it's become fashionable to argue that an effective legal regime should govern all forms and uses of water in a consistent and uniform manner the law is otherwise that really struck me as a scientist and as a manager that the law is otherwise here we live in the United States the supposedly advanced society and we're saying that we understand the water system what that statement that they give its highfalutin but it says that the scientists understand the natural laws and they understand the scientific principles to manage water resources and that we can do it in an integrated manner for a long time scientists and others have advocated finding a more uniform a more holistic way of managing but the law says otherwise so as I thought about that it really I had an epiphany it's like what do we mean I I just can't grasp it as a scientist that we are not following the laws and the principles that govern water so I started a quest and that quest was to look for a better more holistic integrated way of managing water and I looked around the world and what I came up with is integrated water resources management not practiced here in the United States it's practiced in a small number of trees around the world it's a it's a choice it's a choice they're making to redo their water laws for the most part to try to integrate it more an integrated water resources management is a process that's essentially promoting the integration of water resources with land resources with other associated resources such as taking care of the the fish and wildlife so what I wanted to do is say okay we have these systems out here how do we use them well I took a look at them and and what happened was I looked I saw that each of these programs would take a little piece and they would integrate a little piece of something and a few things together but I never found anything comprehensive so what I did was I took it upon myself and built a conceptual model of what I thought integrated water resources management should be and so this is it I know it looks messy I know it looks like you know it looks complicated and water resources management is both of those things but if you'll stick with me I'll try to go back and walk through this and see if we can all understand what integrated water resources management is about so first let me take and show you these are the seven major parts that I think are really critical to a integrated water resources management program and if we strip away the different noise in the back the different pizzas the strands of of connection and all that this is what we have here and if we if you look we have three parts in blue and those are the parts that are actually water related and we have four parts in red and what those are those are the things that constrain our water use or water availability so let's walk through this let's walk through this system so the top was hydrologic inputs and outputs those are what we informally in the water roll call goes in some goes out it's what goes in the system what comes out of the system what goes out of the system here we are in eastern Idaho Idaho Falls you can see on the right the blue is the Snake River plain under Lane by the eastern Snake River plain aquifer and so where do we get our water well we get our water from precipitation directly on the plain we get water from precipitation on the mountains that surround us you can see the rivers and streams that we all know the big loss and little loss and the port NIF in the raft and we get them from the waters flowing down either through the streams through their aquifers onto the plain so we also have things like the Teton River Basin and the Teton is connected to the Henry's Fork and then comes to us and more importantly we have this the South Fork of the Snake which brings water to us from the upper Snake River Basin and it all of the area along the eastern Idaho western Wyoming border and the Teton Mountains so all of that comes down and it flows down to the eastern Snake River plain and it can either drop into the aquifer or it can go down the river many of us know the river comes in in the north and goes down to the southwest and with the aquifer flows the same direction generally from the Northeast to the southwest and they both flow down there and eventually when we get down near Hagerman we have the world-famous thousand Springs area where our entire aquifer naturally dumps into the Snake River again and both of those join up and then they go out past King Hill and out of this eastern Snake River plain our goes in our goes out so that brings us water water to use for whatever purposes we need or desire so how much do we get and what do we use it for well Idaho uses about 18 billion gallons of water a day for a state of about a million and a quarter million and a half we have the third largest conserve water in the United States behind California and Texas so what do we use that water for well we use it for all the things we all know we use it for in our houses for domestic purposes we use it for commercial and industrial purpose as we generate electricity we do all kinds of things we navigate with it but most importantly in Idaho the vast majority of it is used for irrigation purposes 86% of all the water that is used in Idaho on a daily basis is used for irrigation that's on average because obviously we don't irrigate in the winter so that's an average number that's the vast majority of our water that's why many times when we talk about problems with water here and I told Falls we know about a lot of water being used that's where it's being used that's where we're competing against those are the waters we have to use what are the constraints on those waters what keeps us from using them are using them more effectively well we have physical constraints and those physical constraints are quantity quality timing and place those are the things that water resources managers manage most of the time if you think about it quantity if we have too much we have a flood if we have too little we have a drought for quality we could use water coming straight out of the ground or wherever we get it we can use it directly or we could have to treat it which in many cases is quite costly and it may be that it's just so bad that we cannot use it there's waters we just don't use because especially economically it's not worth trying to treat it timing when you think about it if water comes right when you need it then you're fine but what happens when it doesn't come and how much Wayne do we get in August when you need it on your garden so if it's not right we're when we need it then we gotta either store it and that usually happens naturally up in the in the snowpack of our mountains or in the aquifer or it can happen by what we do and that's building reservoirs and tanks and such in place it can either come right to our place where we need it or if it doesn't then we have to move to it or we move it to us those are our choices social economic constraints really what it boils down to is people politics and money that's what we have to work with socially economically in general that's generalizing people that you and me we're the people it's we the people are the the ones that should be deciding what we do or don't do with our water resources and we should be deciding what we want to pay or not pay relative to developing and managing our water resources politicians those are the people that we elect and we elect them to be giving some leadership and we elect them to make the policies and laws that regulate our water resources and money that's what keeps our community going and builds the projects and pays the people to to do the work for us legal constraints we have policies we have laws we have compacts and treaties those are the major tools we work with and if you think about it Idaho especially in the south its water short always has been so since the very beginning we have actually had water law embedded into our Constitution it's considered that important to us any policies we have policies all the way from the federal level to the state level to the local level we have volumes of those policies and laws that we have to live to hear again where it's a state that we need to get water to where we want it and need it so we have a very robust set of policies for water allocation how do we get and use water it's really well designed but it's really well designed to take water out of rivers and aquifers and get it on the land so we can use it for economic purposes we also have policies and laws like water quality which essentially is dictated to us by the federal government they set the rules and we're required to follow them and that's okay and there's just a myriad of other policies that are related the related things are things like things that control mining and control timber harvesting and other things that could eventually impact the water quality or quantity in our state here in eastern Idaho we only have one water compact water compacts are agreements between States and what we have is one compact with Wyoming that says essentially we in eastern Idaho get first use we have senior priority on some of their water rights we don't have any treaties here that really affect us here though environmental constraints so for environmental constraints we have ecosystems and ecosystem services that's just the scientists way of saying ecosystems are just the natural resources that we have out there ecosystem services are those things out there in the environment that we as humans use for our sustenance to maintain us for our survival and for our benefit and with those ecosystems serve with those ecosystems those are the things like the plants and the animals and the fish that we love to go out and catch and shoot or for harvest it's the places that we like to go to to hike and bike and enjoy the scenery all of those are part of the ecosystems the flipside of that is the ecosystem services which really you know it's just the other side we're using the services from those ecosystems so everything we do that's for us we're taking some from those ecosystems when you think about it when we go out there and we build a city or build a house out on the country essentially what we're doing is eating up a little bit of those ecosystems those are all the major parts of integrated water resources management we have our three parts that are water aspects and those constraints and what we need to do is figure out scientifically all of those water parts and from a policy perspective we have to think about what are all those constraints the non physical constraints the ones that are social economics and laws and such and we've got to figure out how to Mel them and blend them so they work together to maximize our availability and use of water after I went through all of this learned what I could about integrated water resources management I went back and I sat at the same place that I started in the Snake River on the bank of the Snake River in Idaho Falls and I thought so what okay what about it what are we gonna do what can I do and I thought let's think big about this don't think about just what's there what can we do and I thought if I was the benevolent dictator of Idaho for the day what would I do well of course I would require integrated water resources management and what if the the proverbial genie stopped by and said to get three wishes what would they be for water in Idaho I thought through that long and hard and here's the three things that I would wish from Idaho to change their policies to do to improve our water resources number one I would require that we look at our atmospheric water our surface water and our groundwater resources as a combined resource as a single source of water treat them that way and manage them that way that's really the the key of integrated water resources management the second part that I would do is I would require that we took our water allocation laws and really blended them prop rly would I consider properly with our environmental laws so that we could get a more balanced and sustainable approach to meeting both the needs of humans in the environment third I would require that we quantify how much water it takes to meet those sustainability goals both for humans and for animals and from those what I would require is that whenever we take enough water out of the system that we're compromising that sustainability that we quit issuing water rights and what would you do then so you don't do new water rights you would look at water markets and water trading programs water banks so within the basin or the watershed that you would be managing for all of those sustainability's that you were working for towards so those would be my three wishes from that genie what I recall from my early professional life was of a wise man in Water Resources here in Idaho and he told me said Jerry he said Idaho water law was written in the 19th and 20th century with the intent of taking water and getting it out of our aquifers and our streams and getting him on the ground for economic purposes he said your generation when you take over you're gonna have to decide what's important to you and I'm thinking that here in the 21st century that some of the laws that we have may need to be reworked a little bit and hopefully they'll be we've worked pretty soon because what I would hate to think now that I'm retired is sometime in the next decade or so that some other young Water Resources professional is going to have to sit on the banks of the Snake River watching water flow by thinking water water everywhere not to drop to drink [Applause]