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say that they are stable now in the aquifer or they are declining. We have heard that the we know that sprinkler irrigation is coming into our area very heavily and this is a more economical way to use water but at the same time the very sprinkler system denies us the seepage water that would come down from an irrigation project into the soil to recharge our spring system.

We are not in favor at this time of a recharge system simply because no one has proved to us that a recharge system will not damage the quality of the water, and until that is done, we are against any recharge program that is being proposed by the State of Idaho.

Thank you.

Mr. JOHNSON. I want to thank you for a very well prepared statement here and a very fine summary. I followed through here with you. I see Mr. Lloyd Webb and Mr. Higginson said there might be opposition but this was the first real opposition that was pointed up to us, I believe, in the project other than the North Side pump.

Mr. ERKINS. We were under the impression earlier, sir, that the pumping project of the spring waters had been deleted quite some time ago. We had protested when this program was originally developed and we thought it was deleted but after the recent hearing we discovered it had not been.

Mr. JOHNSON. The analysis that was made of the project, the investigation, feasibility studies of the Bureau, they claim that they took into account all users on the stream and as the two gentlemen from Idaho just got through testifying, they were satisfied there was enough water for this project that it wouldn't be detrimental to any of the other users on the river.

Now, moving upstream here for the pumping field that is anticipated now is quite a few miles up from-we were down and along over your area, too, and how you have developed your industry there, took advantage of the fine water coming out of the spring. I can see where you are concerned. But we were assured that this would have no effect on that.

Mr. ERKINS. We take strong exception to that, sir.

Mr. JOHNSON. Now, there probably is plenty of room for disagree

ments.

Mr. ERKINS. We were assured when the Atomic Energy Commission placed its atomic dump on top of our spring system that there would be no danger. I personally attacked the AEC on this and after about a year, Senator Church was able to shake loose a restricted Government report which showed that there was danger. The AEC now has 10 years to remove their waste dumps from over our spring system. So I have been assured by Government agencies before that there is no danger and I have found them to be in error and that is why we do not always buy what we hear.

Mr. JOHNSON. Well, I agree with you there, that Government agencies we have to deal with sometimes, but they do a very thorough job in exploring this as far as the Bureau of Reclamation and those that have studied this area along with the Geological Survey and all the geology in the area and everything that should be known about an aquifer. Then your own State people in the field of water resources gave blessing to this along with the Idaho Legislature, so we are going

to have to evaluate your position here along with what we have been told on the other side. We will certainly review your testimony and, of

course

Mr. ERKINS. Thank you.

Mr. JOHNSON (continuing). I know the trout industry, both private and public there, that you have in Idaho-it is one of your big economies and it is growing. It is a real good industry and you have to have very good water.

Mr. ERKINS. And lots of it.

Mr. JOHNSON. And lots of it.

The gentleman from Idaho. You probably know more about this Snake River than I.

Mr. McCLURE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am well aware of the fears expressed by Mr. Erkins and others in the trout industry in Idaho and I am sympathetic with your concerns. I do have two or three questions that I want to get on the record because I think they will assist this committee in making its own determination as to what ought to be done.

You have listed a number of trout operations by the number of cubic feet per second used or potentially to be used by each.

Mr. ERKINS. Yes sir.

Mr. MCCLURE. There are several of those that are not now in production and not now using the water.

Mr. ERKINS. That is true, but these are people who have filed on the waters under Idaho law and indicate their interest in using them.

Mr. MCCLURE. Do you know the date of application or date of filing of each of those applications?

Mr. ERKINS. Oh, truly, Jim, I couldn't tell you exactly. Let me look down and see. I know the very first one, 40 second-feet, was less than a year ago. Yes, less than 1 year.

Mr. McCLURE. I guess I could shorten this by asking which of these came before and which came after the filing by the Salmon Falls or Bureau of Reclamation on behalf of the Salmon Falls.

Mr. ERKINS. I would say just roughly probably the majority of them have come before, the larger ones of course being the Box Čanvon Spring of 800 second-feet. These were all I feel before the Salmon Falls.

Mr. MCCLURE. Do you know of your own knowledge whether they

are?

Mr. ERKINS. I am just trying to equate in my own mind. We really to be specific have to look up the record. Some of these who have come in the least 2 years are already in production, for example.

Mr. MCCLURE. Well, I will assure you that for the record we will get that information and it will be considered by our committee in deliberation on this matter.

Of course, there are some of those perhaps that will never be brought about. I understand there is at least some controversy over the Box Spring question.

Mr. ERKINS. Yes.

Mr. MCCLURE. And that controversy has yet to be resolved.

Mr. ERKINS. The overall point, though, in this is if you are going to remove 10 percent of the flow you must presume that 10 percent

of that water is going to drop at each particular spring. You are not going to remove it just for one spring and keep the others up.

Mr. McCLURE. That leads me to the second question which I wish to ask. That is which one of these applications are reflected in the high springs which are affected?

Mr. ERKINS. One fish hatchery down by two-thirds simply because I could not attribute why the water went down but it did go down. The ones that would be what I would class as a high spring would be the fourth one down-the Rimview. Niagara rather comes out relatively high. I think all of them would be affected. The Ragen trout farm has a serious drop in water at times. Immediately when pumping starts in the area, evidently an irrigation project, for example. These are higher springs. The upper end of the Idaho Power Niagara Springs trout farm system will drop quite a bit and the Sand Springs evidentally fluctuates. This is a high spring compared to Box Canyon right next to it which is a couple of hundred feet a year which would become quite low. This drop immediately cuts back your production, maybe even eliminates it if it were serious enough.

Mr. MCCLURE. I understand your concern, as I said before, and all of us are aware of the importance of the trout industry and I think the country is becoming growingly aware of the availability of a high quality product from these hatcheries and trout farms.

Mr. ERKINS. Fish farming is so much in the forefront today and we are looking at something that might damage our Nation's most progressive fish farming effort and it is most unstable and we feel if the spring waters were pumped from the base of the spring system down river or back up on to the tracts the costs would probably be basically the same and put back in the Salmon Falls Reservoir itself and then used in its present system. You have to pump from somewhere to somewhere else anyway.

Mr. McCLURE. Thank you very much. I appreciate your testimony. Mr. JOHNSON. Any questions from staff or counsel? We want to thank you.

Mr. ERKINS. Thank you for hearing me so I can make my other appointment.

(The full statement of Mr. Erkins follows:)

STATEMENT OF ROBERT ERKINS, PRESIDENT, THOUSAND SPRINGS TROUT FARMS, INC., BUHL, IDAHO

Gentlemen, my name is Robert Erkins and I am here to protest the proposed Salmon Falls Division Project. Some of our trout farms will be directly affected by the pumping of spring waters from our spring supply system, while others will be indirectly affected. Besides affecting other producers of trout, the suppliers of feed and other materials to this growing industry would also be injured. Employees of the trout producers, processors, and their suppliers would lose jobs.

I am a trout farmer operating four fish farms in Idaho, with two more under construction, and with a planned production for 1973 of 3,850,000 to 4,000,000 pounds of trout which are now growing. We manufacture our own fish feed in a plant at Wendell, Idaho, and process trout at our plant at Buhl, Idaho. Two of our farms, using 120 and 215 cubic feet of water respectively, are located on the discharge system of the Snake River Plain Aquifer. We employ 128 people in our fish farming complex. Our book value assets are well in excess of $2,000,000.00.

Other trout farms in the area operate on the same spring system, and would be affected by any loss of water. They are:

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In order to figure the production of trout, you can use a rule of thumb that 10 cubic feet per second of water flow will produce up to 100,000 pounds of live trout per year. Based on this figure, we can see that from the above-mentioned amounts of water used there are now nine commercial hatcheries using 1,380 cfs of spring water for an estimated production of at least 4,500,000 pounds of live trout in 1972, or over half of all the trout produced in Idaho. There are three new commercial hatcheries using 500 cfs with a present production estimated at 400,000 pounds of live trout, but which will expand further. There are seven commercial trout farms in the planning stage with a proposed use of 1,452 cfs of water. There are many farmers who operate farm ponds for the production of trout and use an estimated 110 cfs of water. The Boy Scouts use 300 cfs at their camp for a recreational fishing program. Idaho Power Company uses 100 cfs; the State of Idaho, 100 cfs; the Federal Government 57 cfs; all for the production of recreational sport fish, and this amounts to an approximate 600,000 pounds of live trout per year.

Total water usage and planned water usage from the Snake River Plain Aquifer approximates 3.999 cfs. This amount of water is necessary to maintain production of quality fish and a slight drop in water supply will cause a sizable reduction in fish production, and in some cases could eliminate it completely, particularly in those fish farms using the higher elevation springs.

Trout farming has expanded throughout southern Idaho. In the spring water section, there are six fish processing plants located, and one other across the river from the springs, so that a total of seven plants operate off the production of the fish farms. The fish farms offer year round employment. Commercial, State, and Federal hatcheries in the spring water area employ approximately 340 full time employees (of a total of 425 employed in fish farming throughout the state) in positions ranging from labor to highly paid fish farm administrators. In addition, farm operators employ one or more people to work on their fish farm ponds and obtain part of their farm income from the raising of fish for the processing plant by using the Snake River Plain Aquifer waters.

Total commercial sales would exceed $6,000,000.00. The last reported cost of trout production at the Federal Trout Hatchery was $1.12 per pound. If this figure is true today for the State and Federal operations, then we could add an

additional value of $672,000.00 for the public fish. Total economic value is, therefore, in excess of $6,672,000.00, and planned to increase considerably in 1973. This does not include the job value of those people who supply the industry with its needs. Fish feed, from Idaho and Utah, is the largest single expense in raising fish. Estimated fish feed usage is over $1,000,000.00 per year in the spring water fish farms alone.

Invested value in the commercial, State, and Federal fish farming units using the Snake River Plain Aquifer water is estimated to be in excess of $7,800,000.00 for land, buildings, and equipment and live inventory. These are investment values; replacement values would be higher!

Except for the government owned operations, all of these fish farms are tax payers to local, state, and federal governments.

Our concern, and that of the trout industry, is not the development of an additional irrigated farm project in Idaho, but rather the pumping of the spring waters from the aquifer on which we depend.

In a letter of April 4, 1969, from Assistant Secretary of the Interior James R. Smith to Senator Frank Church, the following comments were made by Assistant Secretary Smith:

"A good indication of the contribution of these springs to Snake River flows in the Hagerman Valley is the river gain between Buhl and the Lower Salmon Falls Dam. For this reach of river the average recorded gain is 4.080 cubic feet per second (c.f.s.) during July. The proposed peak pumping withdrawal for the Salmon Falls Division during this same period is 450 cfs. Therefore, the remaining ground water flows would be more than adequate to satisfy the 1,000 cfs required for the fish hatcheries."

A short time later, on January 26, 1970, Idaho Fish and Game Director John R. Woodworth wrote the following to me:

"Any impairment of the Snake River spring flow quantity or quality would have an extremely serious adverse effect on existing and future investments in fish production by both private and public sectors of the industry." The aquifer varies in its flow. The high flow is from July through November with the low period between December and June. The lowest flows seem to occur in April, May, and June, with a rather rapid buildup in June reaching the November peak. The springs come out at various levels so that some will go dry during the low periods. All the springs seem to drop in flow during the low periods. There have been some dry years when the springs stayed below their normal low period during the entire year and forced the cut back of some trout production. Trout production started in Idaho on the springs in 1928.

The Salmon Falls Division Plan calls for the pumping of the spring waters in exchange for the waters to be used on the Salmon Falls tract. In dry years, Snake River flows are fully appropriated by present users, and this is when pumping would be most needed by the Salmon Falls Division Plan. This is the time that the trout carried by the farmers reaches its inventory peak and they have the greatest need for water. A reduction of available water to them will result in the loss of trout. This will become a further problem in that the very years (the "dry years") that the Snake River is its lowest will also be the years that the springs are at their lowest. We, therefore, compound the problem with a resulting water shortage to the trout producers.

I draw your attention to the letter of Assistant Secretary Smith in which he states the flow to be 4,080 cfs, and to my earlier statements where the trout producers are now using or have filed on and plan to use 3,999 cfs. This leaves 81 cfs, and the Salmon Falls pumping project calls for 450 cfs. We contend that water is not available to carry out this Salmon Falls project without doing serious damage to trout production, and damage to the economy of the State of Idaho, as well as to public recreational fishing. We also stand to lose an important food source by reducing the production of Rainbow Trout for the table.

It is evident from the letter or Assistant Secretary Smith that little attention has been given to the trout farms as he comments that we use 1,000 cfs. This is a nice round figure, but not very factual.

The economics of this project just do not balance out. Here we have a going trout industry with a book value capital investment of over $7,800,000.00. A sales of products of over $6,762,000.00. A total employment of over 340 (of a total of 425 statewide) full time employees. A growing industry that is dependent on a large volume of quality water to produce its fish. An industry that pays taxes and asks for no government subsidies. An industry whose past record shows that it has excellent growth potential for the future.

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