Idaho and feds clash over water with high stakes for state law, nuclear ambition
Idaho and the Trump Administration are locking horns over who controls the flow of water to the Idaho National Laboratory in a case that pits America’s nuclear ambition against the bedrock rules of Western water policy — and the state sovereignty that governs it. The Department of Justice in September sued Idaho to override the state’s power to curtail groundwater access at the massive federal laboratory in rural Butte County, which the case describes as the “backbone of nuclear innovation in the United States.” Work there depends on water to cool reactors, store spent fuel and test new technologies, in addition to regular domestic uses. The lab has rights to some 35,000 acre-feet of water per year — about 11.4 billion gallons. But in dry years, when conflict arises, the state controls the spigot. In the eyes of the Idaho Department of Water Resources, the federal government is just another water user — and, in a state where claims routinely date to the 19th century, it’s a relative newcomer. Idaho’s control over its own resources is an old rule, too. The Desert Lands Act of 1877 gave the state “plenary” — that is, complete and exclusive — control over non-navigable
