Idaho Department of Water Resources
Water supply, groundwater and aquifers, water rights, streamflow, drought, and water management by basin.
https://idwr.idaho.gov/ ยท State of Idaho
Pages built on this source
ESPA sentinel well levels
Manual depth-to-water measurements at 20 wells IDWR named and instruments to track the Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer, drawn from IDWR's statewide groundwater level archive.
- Organization
- Idaho Department of Water Resources
- Dataset
- Groundwater Level Data, Sentinel Wells network
- Geography
- 20 wells across the Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer (Bingham, Blaine, Bonneville, Cassia, Jerome, Lincoln, Minidoka and Power counties)
- Time coverage
- 2001-2026 (varies by well)
- Update frequency
- IDWR and USGS measure the network's spring round each year, usually in March or April
- Original file
- https://research.idwr.idaho.gov/gis/Spatial/GroundWater/GroundWaterLevels/GroundWaterLevels.zip
- Methodology
- https://idwr-groundwater-data.idaho.gov/
- License
- Public domain. Idaho Department of Water Resources public service data; IDWR notes the data may be provisional and subject to revision.
- Our copy
- Groundwater Level Data, Sentinel Wells network
Caveats
- The wells are IDWR's own 'sentinel well' network, set up to watch how the Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer responds to the 2015 settlement between the Surface Water Coalition and groundwater users, which set an annual pumping-reduction target for junior groundwater rights instead of curtailing them outright.
- A larger figure is a lower water table: it is the distance from the ground surface down to water, not an elevation. A rising figure over time means the aquifer fell at that well; a falling figure means it rose.
- Each year's figure is the well's own reading closest to April 1, IDWR's spring measurement round, kept only when a reading exists within 45 days of that date; a well not visited that spring has no figure for the year rather than a carried-forward one.
- IDWR describes this data as provisional and subject to revision.
Measures
- Depth to water (feet): Depth from the ground surface to the water table, measured by hand at an IDWR ESPA sentinel well.
Idaho water rights legal matters
Every legal matter the Idaho Department of Water Resources lists on its active and archived matter indexes: delivery calls, mitigation plans, administrative actions, settlements, and the district court and Idaho Supreme Court cases that follow them, each with its docket, status, and dated filing trail.
- Organization
- Idaho Department of Water Resources
- Dataset
- IDWR Legal Matters
- Geography
- Idaho
- Time coverage
- 1940-2026 (filing dates); matter status as of 2026-09-08
- Update frequency
- Continuous; IDWR updates each matter's page as filings occur
- Original file
- https://idwr.idaho.gov/legal-actions/
- Methodology
- https://idwr.idaho.gov/legal-matters/archived-matters/
- License
- Idaho public record.
- Our copy
- IDWR Legal Matters
Caveats
- Status is the IDWR index (active or archived) the matter appeared on at the retrieval date, not its posture today.
- Two published filing dates are typos (December 3, 2104, and October 27, 2105, on case CV-2015-1687); both are excluded from filing dates and counts.
Measures
- IDWR legal matters by type (count): Number of IDWR legal matters of each type, as of the retrieval date. A snapshot, not an annual series.
- IDWR filings by year (count): Number of individual filings across all IDWR legal matters, by the calendar year of the filing date, excluding two filings whose published date is a typo (see caveats).
This page was last updated .