Searching for sanctuary in Idaho (Boise, Pocatello: home, living in, price)

[nowhereman427]

Originally Posted by banjomike

Prices have also skyrocketed in Idaho Falls, Twin Falls, and Pocatello. It's not just the prices; I've never seen Idaho Falls in a housing shortage like this one.

I think Covid really escalated a lot of conditions that were already building before it showed up.

But, really, I don't know very much about why it is Old Mother Idaho, the state everyone thinks is Iowa all my life, and is still only widely known for its humble potatoes, has suddenly become so immensely superior as a desirable home state destination.

Yes seems to be every place is going up plus those areas in East Idaho Pokey, Twin Falls and Idaho Falls are growing fast and having a major employer INL coming in will increase need for more workers and homes.

[nowhereman427]

Originally Posted by 2011KTM530

I was talking to an old coworker who still lives in California. Everyone around in her neighborhood that is selling is moving to Idaho. 100%, that’s both shocking and different than in the past.

Everyone I have heard from is leaving this place too and this has been going on for years.

[oregonwoodsmoke]

Originally Posted by Curly Q. Bobalink

........... into the Pacific, where it doesn't do anyone much good. Tremendous resource, there, makes one wonder if some of it couldn't be piped down into Nevada (to make up for water diverted to Vegas). For a price, of course.

No. Just no.


If your idea of how to best manage Idaho is to give away the water, then go away. Don't move here and don't vote here.


The water that flows into the Pacific is recharging the ocean. If you take a quick peek at any science about water, you will see that water evaporates from the ocean and rains over the land. The water then works its way back to the ocean and starts its journey again. It's Mother Nature's method of recycling. It is a complete and dangerous falsehood that the water running into the Pacific doesn't do anyone much good.



Water in Idaho is not here to support Nevada. If you do any studying about water rights, you will find that as soon as you give even a tiny drop to anyone else, they immediately start suing for more and more and more. People are murdered over water rights. California has a horrible history of taking water by force, and we don't need to get Nevada started on that course of attacking Idaho in the courts and physically in order to get water.


I'll bet that the people of Colorado are wishing that their ancestors weren't so generous about giving their water rights to California.

[highplainsrunaway]

Water is definitely a big deal here in CO.
If it doesn't fall out of the sky, it doesn't exist.
CO gets 100% of it's water from precipitation.
Farmers on the east side of the state can make more money selling their water rights to Denver than they can on using it to grow crops.

[Curly Q. Bobalink]

Originally Posted by banjomike

Hi, Curly...
Idaho o has always been a dry state from top to bottom. Without our abundant snowpack, most of the state would be in permanent water shortage, and it was for a very long time; from 1864 to the late 1940s, the size and depth of our aquifer was unknown, and it's deeper than most of the domestic wells the hat were drilled needed to be.

I often say here the first water is quite often not the best water. Idaho's subterranean rock structures are all so porous or so fractured that the water they store is scattered everywhere underground, and no one knows for sure what feeds it or where it comes from.
So for at least 85 years, every water user presumed the only water that existed here was the stuff they could see. (Naturally enough; most of our observations of nature are true.)

But deep-well irrigation, along with the creation of the INL, changed that perception radically. Folks knew the aquifer existed long, long ago, but they never knew how large it was, how much water was in it, or how fast the water circulates in it.

Deep well irrigation itself created the need for secure water rights and claims. All those big pivot lines with their sprinklers one can see from the Interstates didn't exist until the 1960s, and many of those spud fields they water were still native steppe covered with sagebrush or native long-grass prairie back then.

The Idaho potato crop then was only 1/3 as large as it is now, or less. Vulcanism, the force that makes the aquifer what it is and our potatoes as tasty as they are, made irrigation very difficult in this naturally arid climate.

Spuds have a lot of nicknames that indicate their economic importance to Idaho. "Famous Potatoes" is the most polite, and was at first more of a hope than a secure declaration of fact.

With surface irrigation, a spud crop quality could be excellent, but the yield could be low. The crop needed careful, continuous attention to be both good and high yielding, but the equipment investment didn't have to be especially high.

The same equipment that was used on sugar beets could be used with potatoes. The beets were a hardier crop, one more resistant to early freeze or the blights that afflict potatoes, and spuds didn't make a farmer wealthy- sugar beets did, for many decades.

Beet sugar demanded high equipment investment, but the crop yield was so massive it justified the investment and killed the demand for the higher-cost cane sugar. Cane sugar was cheaper to turn into refined sugar, but demanded more human labor and had more limited crop yield.

So it was with potatoes. Once they were watered by sprinklers that delivered moisture precisely that was all uniformly cold and clean, Huge yields became common, and one good year could pay so high a farmer could ride out 3-4 bad years of low prices with no problems.

The sugar beet paid dependably, but never as high as spuds. If a farmer was a gambler, and lots of them are, he could turn his middle-class life into millionaire territory if he risked everything, drilled deep wells, invested in the electric power, the underground main water lines and the above-ground pivots and wheel line sprinklers.
And they all worked and paid off as planned. A good gross farm income on a large productive farm went from $300-500,000 yr. to $3 million yr.
Farmed by lots of Mormons, who do not normally gamble, but sure did when they began growing spuds.
Lose one crop and all was lost. Hit pay dirt on a good price year and become the richest man in the state.
Or the Governor. Or a Senator, or an industrialist.

Spuds needed the water, and the water was worth fighting over. Spuds became known as "Mormon cocaine" because the growers couldn't quit them, even when one year after another and another all failed to pay off.

Any year COULD pay off. As long as the farmer had the rights to enough water to irrigate his spuds. If that was lost, he might as well sell the farm and go to work in the spud house he once owned.

That's why Idaho's water is still mostly under Idaho's control. If Northrop and Grumman had decided to build airplanes here instead of California, that story would have had a different ending.

"Mormon Cocaine", LOL.

It was always my opinion (right or wrong) that the largest aquifers in the country were filled maybe ten thousand years ago, from the melting of the last ice age (or from previous melts, who knows). We (humans) weren't around to draw from them, so they are likely "ancient" waters. Even the Ogallala is depleting, but a recent study has shown the Nebraska Sand Hills are a likely recharge point for them. That would be a great place to re-direct river water, vs. complete discharge to the ocean, IMHO.

The point is, we need to get serious about fresh water resources in the U.S., the coastal folks who consider everything between New York and California to simply be "flyover country" are going to be in for a shock when there's no longer enough water available for Nebraska to export corn, Kansas to export wheat, Wyoming to export beef, and Idaho French fries start competing with Starbucks for their dollars. As you stated, much of what is now productive agricultural land was not that long ago prairie; deep wells, center-pivot irrigation and advances in mechanical farming changed all that in the last what, hundred years or so? Heck, IH only came out with the mechanized cotton picker in what, maybe 1950?

Bottom line, "Climate change" is only the tip of the iceberg of the things that can go wrong with seven-billion mouths to feed. A serous-enough disruption in the agricultural supply chain will make people yearn for 2020 as "The Good Old Days", and I sure do hope I'm not around to see it if it happens.

[Curly Q. Bobalink]

Originally Posted by oregonwoodsmoke

No. Just no.

If your idea of how to best manage Idaho is to give away the water, then go away. Don't move here and don't vote here.

The water that flows into the Pacific is recharging the ocean. If you take a quick peek at any science about water, you will see that water evaporates from the ocean and rains over the land. The water then works its way back to the ocean and starts its journey again. It's Mother Nature's method of recycling. It is a complete and dangerous falsehood that the water running into the Pacific doesn't do anyone much good.

Water in Idaho is not here to support Nevada. If you do any studying about water rights, you will find that as soon as you give even a tiny drop to anyone else, they immediately start suing for more and more and more. People are murdered over water rights. California has a horrible history of taking water by force, and we don't need to get Nevada started on that course of attacking Idaho in the courts and physically in order to get water.

I'll bet that the people of Colorado are wishing that their ancestors weren't so generous about giving their water rights to California.

I never said, "Give", it just occurred to me that Idaho (and Washington, for that matter) has a tremendous store of value in its river water that is "wasted" as it flows into the ocean. And by value, I mean its "absence of salt", and resultant dollar value. Pure water needs to be used over and over again if possible, until it loses its purity, and THEN left to flow into the ocean.

If you're familiar with the hydrologic cycle, you'll know that every drop of water you drink was once likely filtered through the kidneys of a brontosaurus or flushed down a commode in Los Angeles. Not a particularly appetizing thought, but hey, Nature. So yes, water needs to flow into the ocean to maintain the process, but we'd be smart (as humans, not Idahoans, Utahns, etc.) to get the maximum value from that water before allowing it to be "re-salinated", for lack of a better term. Because for it to become desalinated once again, as Nature does, takes a lot of sunight, and there's only so much produced on an annual basis. And "human-coerced desalination" as will likely have to be done on a large scale in California, takes a lot of resources and energy to produce.

One possible consequence of Global Warming is that it will produce more rainfall (and snowfall), and that may or may not be a Bad Thing, depending on where you live, it may be what re-fills Lakes Powell and Meade, and recharges the Ogallala, if managed correctly. I'm no Hydrologic Engineer, but I'd guess I'm not far off the mark of what they have already concluded years ago.

[nowhereman427]

We get the least amount of rainfall here. In fact we have had a long term drought.
Lots of sun and dry here.

[banjomike]

One of the oldest sayings in the west is still as true today as it ever was:

Whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting over.

[Racer46]

Originally Posted by nowhereman427

We get the least amount of rainfall here. In fact we have had a long term drought.
Lots of sun and dry here.

But the snow in Winter fills lakes and streams. Family in Twin Falls and no problems. It is growing in population though.

[Electrician4you]

We’re looking to do a move to Idaho. I’m not going to be in Boise that’s for sure. Outskirts or a close by town ...sure. Truthfully I feel sorry for the current residents of Boise and surrounding areas. The upward push of house prices are getting unsustainable for the local economy. Last two years we followed the costs fo houses in CDA and Boise area. Two years hell one year ago I could buy a nice house for 350k. That same house now would sell for 475/525. That’s a unsustainable price to a local. The only people buying will be outsiders with money. So there will be a lot of friction I’m sure.

We’re looking to buy in possibly Twin Falls or outside of CDA. But we will come up and take a look around early next year.