MOUNTAIN HOME, Idaho (CBS2) — Little Camas Reservoir -- located northeast of Mountain Home is the largest surface water source supplying the Mountain Home Irrigation District.
If you live in Elmore County, this is your source of water.
A recent look at the reservoir shows it's bone dry from low runoff from their watershed with no additional surface water source to depend on. Experts tell me that surface water resources are expected to run out for the Mountain Home Irrigation District by the end of June.
That's compounding concerns for Elmore County over their groundwater resources and their rapidly declining aquifer.
The drought this year is extreme, but Elmore County is no stranger to drought. The bigger issue - is below the surface - groundwater.
"What it comes down to is that Elmore County, Mountain Home, Idaho, has no water source," said Bud Corbus, Elmore County commissioner. "The only water source the community has is deep well water and we have no way to replenish that aquifer, no water source."
The county is doing what it can through aquifer recharge sites.
This is a look at the site a few years ago and again now
Depending on where you live the Mountain Home Plateau Aquifer is declining between one to three feet each and every year.
Now, this is one of the aquifers recharge sites - there are four of them in Mountain Home - and as you can see, it's bone dry.
In a prolonged drought, recharge isn't dependable.
"With the declining aquifers, the levels have dropped significantly over the past few years," Commissioner Corbus explains. "If we don't start bringing water in, we will have to stop."
Stop irrigating, stop development, stop growth.
"Stop our future," Corbus shares.
Groundwater levels in the Mountain Home Plateau Aquifer have been declining in portions of the county for more than 40 years.
The water table has also fallen one hundred feet or more in some locations,
"They've been getting by, but there is an endpoint somewhere out there," explains Engineer and Hydrogeologist for SPF Engineering Terry Scanlan. "As you drain the bathtub, at some point it's going to start to go dry."
To put this in perspective, groundwater pumping currently exceeds aquifer recharge by an average of 40,000 acre-feet a year, according to the Idaho Department of Water Resources.
That is over 13 billion gallons of water being lost each and every year.
"The pumping has been exceeding natural recharge by over 50 percent," Scanlan explains, "Especially from the Ada County side."
Here's why even those in the Treasure Valley should care.
The Ada County Aquifer and the Mountain Home Plateau Aquifer are geologically the same aquifer.
Running from the lower Treasure Valley, through Boise, and into the Mountain Home region.
"There is no physical barrier between these two groundwater systems," Scanlan explains. "It's all apart of the Western Snake Plain aquifer system."
But there is hope.
And both Commissioner Corbus and Hydrogeologist Scanlan are actively working to make sure that this decline doesn't dwindle further.
"We would like to come up with an avenue to bring water on a more constant basis," Commissioner Corbus explains.
They plan to do this through three solutions, all without harming existing water rights.
But the cost to accomplish these projects will be in the tens of millions.
Part two of this story will air only on CBS2, Wednesday.
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