Idaho's 2019 Legislative Session: Agriculture, Water, and Resource Legislation

Where Idaho's ground water mitigation machinery came from

The oldest session in this library is also the one that built the plumbing everything since runs through. In 2019 the Legislature gave ground water districts emergency assessment authority and a way to mitigate for a member who does not comply, then set out how a mitigation plan obligation is apportioned among the pumpers who owe it. It also formally supported the 2018 settlement between the cities, the Surface Water Coalition, and members of Idaho Ground Water Appropriators.

Six years later, that apportionment statute is what stands behind the ground water district filings on the mitigation plan docket.

This page reconstructs the agricultural and resource record of the session from the Legislature's own bill index and Sine Die Report, with a session law chapter on every enacted measure. The year after is the 2020 summary.

What Idaho's 2019 legislative session produced

The first regular session of the 65th Idaho Legislature convened on 7 January 2019 and adjourned sine die on 11 April 2019, after 95 days. The Sine Die Report records it as fifteen days longer than the previous session and the longest since 2009.

Across the session, 589 bills, resolutions, memorials, and proclamations were introduced. Of those, 329 became session law, numbered as chapters 1 through 329 with no gaps in the sequence.

Forty-four of the 589 measures addressed agriculture, water, or natural resources:

• 18 were enacted
• 9 resolutions and memorials were adopted
• 2 failed on a recorded floor vote
• 15 died in committee

Four of the nine adopted resolutions are aimed outside Idaho, at federal land management and at the neighbouring states on Bear Lake.

Idaho's 2019 agricultural and resource measures that became law

Full text for each is at the Idaho Session Laws.

The two Idaho ground water district statutes of 2019

Chapter 33, Senate Bill 1041, gave ground water districts emergency assessment authority, provided for mitigation by a district when one of its members does not comply, and allowed special assessments to pay for it. A district that mitigates on behalf of its whole membership needs a way to make a non-complying member pay, and this is that mechanism.

Chapter 261, Senate Bill 1056, provided for the apportionment of mitigation plan obligations, for separate mitigation plans by nonirrigators, and for delinquent assessments and noncompliance with an apportionment. Nonirrigators matter here: a city, a food processor, or a dairy pumping from the same aquifer carries a share of the same obligation, and the 2025 and 2026 mitigation dockets show exactly those parties filing.

Read together, the two statutes answer the question a delivery call forces on every ground water district: who pays, how much, and what happens when someone does not.

The 2018 Surface Water Coalition settlement, endorsed in 2019

House Concurrent Resolution 10 supported the 2018 settlement agreement between the cities, the Surface Water Coalition, and members of Idaho Ground Water Appropriators, and supported state management through the Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer. A concurrent resolution changes no statute. What it does is put the Legislature's position on the record while an administrative process runs, which is a pattern this library sees repeatedly: the 2024 session did the same thing in reverse, passing a ground water statute while a resolution on aquifer management died.

Idaho rules rejected in 2019, and a fight about hemp

Senate Concurrent Resolution 110 rejected a rule of the Idaho Soil and Water Conservation Commission relating to the Resource Conservation and Rangeland Development Program. A second rejection, House Concurrent Resolution 23, aimed at a Department of Environmental Quality water quality rule and died in a Senate committee. Rejection terminates a rule, and it is the sharpest instrument the Legislature has in the rulemaking process.

Hemp ran three ways and failed three ways. House Bill 122, the Hemp Research and Development Act, was held at the desk. House Bill 300, on interstate transport, ended in non-concurrence. House Resolution 7 failed on the floor. Idaho did not enact hemp provisions until 2021.

Idaho's 2019 federal file

Four of the nine adopted measures look outward from Idaho: support for scientific adaptive management of wilderness study areas, urging federal recognition of valid easements under the 1866 Mining Act, support for new water infrastructure and specifically for raising Anderson Ranch Dam, and a Bear Lake memorial urging Utah and Wyoming toward a shared approach. The other five are domestic: the settlement endorsement, a rule rejection, recognition of hydropower, an interim committee, and the centennial of the State Department of Agriculture.

The Legislature stated intent on the Anderson Ranch project again in 2022, as chapter 214. Three years separated the memorial from the statute.

What to watch from Idaho's 2019 session

Chapters 33 and 261 are where the apportionment of a mitigation obligation lives, so a change to either changes what an individual operation owes in a curtailment year.

Chapter 158 covers encroachments on irrigation and drainage works. As subdivisions reach ditches that predate them, encroachment law decides who has to move.