I’m looking at a $3 million loss if this curtailment continues: Brian Murdock
East Idaho farmer Brian Murdock details the water restrictions that he and other farmers are facing on ‘The Bottom Line.’
Eastern Idaho farmers may soon be out of water after the state issued a major curtailment.
Brian Murdock, a farmer who resides in East Idaho, warned of the potential devastating impact of the order on his business during his appearance on "The Bottom Line," Wednesday.
"Well, as you said, the state of Idaho and the Idaho Department of Water Resources has issued this curtailment of 500,000 acres. And to help put that in perspective, that's basically 781 square miles of farm ground that is being taken out of production," Murdock stressed.
"And, of course, the worst problem is this is happening during a very plentiful water year. We have the reservoirs [that] are completely full, and when I mean full, they're dang near breaking. The rivers are running as high as they possibly can. Just trying to keep those dams from breaking," he added.
The Idaho Groundwater Appropriators, which represents agricultural, industrial and municipal ground water users across southeastern Idaho, described the order as the single largest curtailment of water use in state history. It would result in the drying up of hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland and could cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars in economic losses.
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Murdock continued his family’s 135-year-old legacy of growing potatoes and is facing a $3 million loss due to the state-issued order.
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"I’m one of the smaller farms. But, let me tell you the impact as a potato grower, I grow 23 million large orders of McDonald’s French fries and of the grain side of my operation, I grow 16 million loaves of bread," he explained.
Murdock told co-hosts Dagen McDowell and Sean Duffy that he amounts to less than one percent of what the curtailment is about. However, due to the issues surrounding farm ground and security, it is a "significant amount."
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In a press release issued last week, the governor said: "What people cannot see, especially in a ‘good’ water year, is what’s underground – the ongoing dwindling supply of water in the Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer. Water from the aquifer feeds the Snake River. Like we do as Idahoans, we are coming together and building some momentum around efforts to get ground water users in compliance with an approved mitigation plan."
Gov. Brad Little "has the ability and the constitution to end this curtailment. That’s part of his role and part of his job," Murdock said.
He believes that he and fellow farmers in the state are being "checkmated legally."
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"He’s [Idaho governor] choosing to try to make the two groups, us and this canal system, which down in southern Idaho, try to fight it out in what we call mitigation and come up with a private agreement among ourselves, rather than following the way the Idaho Constitution and the water law has kind of dictated that it should be," he argued
"We are not experiencing a full economic benefit of the resource," Murdock expressed.
The Idaho Department of Water Resources did not respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.
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