Idaho Water Delivery Calls and Mitigation Plans: The Active Record

What an Idaho delivery call changes that a bill does not

Legislation changes the rules for a future season. A delivery call changes what a farm may divert in this one.

A senior water right holder who is not getting their water can ask the Director of the Department of Water Resources to curtail junior rights that are causing the shortfall. If the Director finds material injury, junior pumping stops unless the juniors mitigate. On the Eastern Snake Plain that reaches thousands of ground water irrigators whose rights postdate the surface rights on the rivers above them.

The record of these matters is public and complete. IDWR posts every delivery call, mitigation plan, administrative action, and court case with its docket number and the full dated trail of filings behind it. What does not exist anywhere is a plain-language index of what is open, what is closed, and how long each has run. This page is that index.

The Idaho authority for delivery calls, and where the tests come from

Two sources do the work.

Section 42-603, Idaho Code authorises the Director to adopt rules for distributing water from streams, rivers, lakes and ground water "as shall be necessary to carry out the laws in accordance with the priorities of the rights of the users."

The rules made under it are the conjunctive management rules, IDAPA 37.03.11. Three of them carry most of the weight:

• Rule 40 governs responses to calls for water delivery in an organised water district.
• Rule 42 sets out what the Director may weigh in deciding whether a right holder is suffering material injury and is using water efficiently and without waste. The listed factors are open-ended, and they include the amount of water available in the source, the effort or expense of diverting it, and whether junior ground water rights individually or collectively affect the quantity and timing of water available to the senior.
• Rule 43 governs mitigation plans. A plan is submitted in writing, identifies the water rights it benefits, describes the supplies proposed for mitigation and any limits on their availability, and goes to notice and hearing before the Director.

That last rule is the reason the mitigation plan docket is longer than the delivery call docket. A call is filed once. Mitigation is renegotiated, extended, and amended for as long as the call stays open.

What the IDWR delivery call record actually holds

The Idaho Department of Water Resources lists 242 legal matters: 37 active and 205 archived. By matter type:

Across the delivery calls and mitigation plans alone, the department publishes 4,218 individual filings, the earliest dated 1995 and the most recent July 2026.

The four Idaho delivery calls still open

These are the Idaho delivery calls IDWR carries on its active list, with the date of the most recent filing on each docket. Several are old: a call filed in 2010 is still on the active list in 2026, and still receiving filings.

The Surface Water Coalition call has been open since 2010, carries more filings than every other delivery call combined, and was still receiving filings three weeks before this page was written. Fourteen of the fifteen active mitigation plan dockets sit under it, running from CM-MP-2007-001 through CM-MP-2026-004, which is what a decade and a half of negotiated compliance looks like in the record. The fifteenth is Buckeye Farms, unrelated to the coalition call.

The largest closed calls by filing count are Big Wood and Little Wood Water Users Association (255 and 253 filings), A&B Irrigation District's 1994 call (203), and the Blue Lakes and Clear Springs 2005 calls (92).

What an Idaho delivery call means for an operation

If you hold a junior ground water right on the Eastern Snake Plain, your ability to pump in a given season may depend on a mitigation plan filed under a call you are not a party to. The plan, its approval order, and any order extending or staying it are all on IDWR's site under their own docket numbers.

If you hold a senior right, Rule 42 is the test your call will be measured against, and the factors there are about your own diversion as much as the junior's. Effort, expense, and efficient use without waste are all on the list.

The mitigation docket moves outside the legislative calendar. Nine of the fifteen active mitigation plans received a filing in the last two years, and the Legislature sits for about eleven weeks of it.

What to watch in Idaho delivery calls

Mitigation plan dockets numbered CM-MP-2026 are the current year's activity.

The Legislature has begun writing consumptive use limits into statute for large industrial users, covered in the 2026 session summary. Those users draw on the same aquifer the delivery calls are about, and the interaction between a new statutory cap and an existing mitigation obligation has not yet been tested.

The 2024 Stipulated Mitigation Plan, which the Legislature endorsed by concurrent resolution in 2025, appears in this record as filings on the Surface Water Coalition dockets rather than as a separate matter. Its performance is visible there before it is visible anywhere else.