Drought in Idaho
The Worst On Record
By John Yewell, 4-19-05
After taking into account water as a worldwide issue, then looking at water and the West in an historical way, the Boise conference on the Western water shortage was yanked rudely into the here and now. Karl Dreher, director of the Idaho Deptartment of Water Resources, told the conference that the drought in the upper Snake River basin is the "worst on record." It is so bad, he said that it appears to have a recurrence interval of 500 years. Six years of back-to-back dry years is something that didn’t even occur in the dry years of the 1930s, which were interspersed with years that weren’t so bad. "Reservoirs have made the difference," he said. "What we’re going through is bad and it could get worse." [End of article]We're very worried about drought up here in Moscow, as well. The snow this year was light, and the spring rains have not come -- or at least they've not been as heavy and as frequent as in years past. There is a good deal of concern about well not re-charging and about Moscow's water-mining both the shallow and deep aquifers. This is a story for the whole of Idaho, one that unites North and South in joint concern.
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