Some Things to Know About Idaho: Water, Power, and Gas
A Brief Overview of where the Residents of Idaho Receive their Water, Power, and Gas From
Water
The main source of most Idahoans drinking and agricultural water supply comes from aquifers. The main ones being the Snake River Plain Aquifers which are split into Western and Eastern, the Lewiston Basin Aquifer, and the Spokane Valley Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer. All of those excluding the Western Snake River Plain Aquifer are classified as sole source aquifers which means they are the principal source of drinking water for an area.
As seen by the map above, these aquifers cover most of Idaho’s population and major cities outside of the Boise metro area (aka the Treasure Valley). The Spokane Valley Aquifer has the rare distinction in Idaho as being the only one designated as sensitive resource, meaning it has stricter standards than the normal ground water quality rules. This is due in part because it is the main source of drinking water to approximately 400,000 people. Not far behind it is The Eastern Snake River Plain Aquifer which is the sole source of drinking water to approximately 200,000 people and irrigates 3.8 million acres of farmland. While the Lewiston Basin Aquifer provides 68% of the drinking water to the Lewiston-Clarkston Valley.
Although not being covered by one of these sole source aquifers, the Treasure Valley still gets most of its drinking water from the less productive Western Snake River Aquifer.
The city of Boise has the distinction to be the only one in the valley that has its drinking water production outsourced from the local government. Instead it is the French-owned water, waste, and power conglomerate Veolia that controls the cities’ supply. They operate 83 wells which tap into the aquifer and provide approximately 70% of the drinking water. The remaining 30% is from the Boise River treated in the Marden Water Treatment Plant and the Columbia Water Treatment Plant. This is a similar story for every other city in the valley: well operations that use the Western Snake River Aquifer with cities like Meridian and Nampa having 25 and 17 respectively.
Power
Here are some quick facts about Idaho’s energy generation and usage according to the US Department of Energy’s profile on Idaho:
As seen, Idaho (along with another Pacific Northwest state, Washington) is one of the best states for low-cost and renewable electricity, mainly because of its extensive hydropower usage due to the prominence of the Snake River (and Columbia River). This can be easily illustrated using the Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s interactive map of power generation:
It displays every type of energy production facility in the northwest and its relative output using circle size. The massive blue bubbles you see are the dams that reside on the Columbia river, among which make up one or two of the top ten power-producing dams in the world. The reason I am showing the whole Pacific Northwest in this case is because each state in this region is bounded together when it comes to energy supply, as it is the federal government, under the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), that controls and distributes all the power from these 31 massive dams on the Columbia Plateau, providing 28% of the power to the whole region.
Other than the BPA, power production and control in Idaho is serviced by three companies: Idaho Power, Avista Utilities, and Rocky Mountain Power as seen by their service areas here:
All three of these (and the BPA) are part of the broader organization of NorthernGrid which is a transmission planning association of all the major utility providers in the Pacific Northwest and part of the Rocky Mountains that work together to set the region’s long term transmission plans.
Here are each of their 2023 Integrated Resource Plans (IRP) if you wanted to dive further into the specifics of their operations: Idaho Power, PacifiCorp (Rocky Mountain Power is subsidiary), and Avista Utilities (you will have to download the PDF from the website). For the purpose of this article, I will give a more in depth view of Idaho Power from their IRP as they are the main provider for most of Idaho.
Idaho Power’s energy mix reflects the numbers we saw previously at large for the state: 36.8% hydro, 17.3% market purchases, 15.4% natural gas, 13% coal, 9.8% wind, 5.4% solar, and 2.3% other. The market purchases category refers to the amount that Idaho Power must purchase from other service providers that are connected to the same regional transmission system, especially during peak-load periods. Now we can break those numbers down even further into their current existing resources and plants:
There are 17 hydroelectric projects currently in operation under the providers’ control. The biggest system, the Hells Canyon Complex, accounts for 70% of annual hydroelectric power, and around 30% of total electricity production (around 1,200 MW). Just to put in perspective the production of the dams under the jurisdiction of the BPA compared to those under others in the Northwest region, the largest power-producing dam that Idaho Power operates, the Brownlee, would just only crack the top 15 dams operated by the BPA.
The largest single plant that Idaho Power operates is the Jim Bridger coal plant which is one-third owned by them and two-thirds owned by PacifiCorp. However, due to the goal of 100% clean energy mix by 2045, they will be exiting coal-fired operations at the plant by 2030 and converting it as well as their other remaining coal-fired plant to natural gas.
You will probably notice that there does not seem to be any solar or wind energy existing resources. That is because Idaho Power does not run any renewable generating systems directly, instead choosing to sign PPAs (purchasing power agreements) with numerous renewable producing firms. So even though renewables other than hydro make up approximately 17.5% of the total energy mix, those sites are operated outside the control of Idaho Power. You can find a list of all current major projects here.
Natural Gas & Oil
Moving on from electrical power generation, this section will be about another form of energy production in natural gas and petroleum (oil). Here (the picture does not come out clearly so use the link to view) is a map of all the pipelines and natural gas distributors in the state of Idaho. The vast majority of Idaho’s population is fed by two pipeline distributaries: the main artery being the Northwest Pipeline under the operation of the Williams Companies with the branches being operated by Intermountain Gas to reach population centers that are not directly adjacent to the main pipeline. Now the issue is Idaho and the rest of the Pacific Northwest states do not contain any oil or shale fields of their own so they rely on these pipelines to import their natural gas and oil from elsewhere.
We can find the answers to how natural gas gets to the consumers and residents of Idaho in Intermountain Gas’ 2021 Integrated Resource Plan. According to them, they receive about 79% of their supply from Alberta and British Columbia. Alberta supplies are delivered to Intermountain via two Canadian pipelines (TransCanada Energy via NOVA Gas Transmission Ltd. (NOVA) and Foothills Pipe Lines Ltd. (Foothills)) and two U.S. pipelines (Gas Transmission Northwest (GTN) and Williams Northwest Pipeline (NWP)). Gas supplies from British Columbia are transported by Enbridge (Westcoast) to an interconnect with NWP near Sumas, WA. The remaining 21% of supply originates from the Rocky Mountains, mainly Wyoming’s oil fields.
Now the gas in your car is not the same as natural gas. Natural gas is exactly what the name implies: a gas mainly made up of methane; the gas in your car is a refined version of the liquid crude oil. Therefore it is necessary to have refineries to refine crude oil into states that are more usable. Here is a map of all the refineries in the US along with a picture of the closest ones to Idaho below.
As you can see there are only a few refineries directly in the area that are relevant to Idaho. Without knowing the full logistical landscape of each gas station company in the state, I can only make informed guesses as to which refineries are the most important. To do this I mentally overlay the refineries map with the map of the pipelines and a map of the Class 1 Freight Train Carriers, the two most substantial ways of transporting oil.
The best conclusion using this tactic is that the refineries in Washington, Salt Lake City, and Wyoming are the ones that mainly supply the stations in Idaho. The operators with 2 or more of these refineries are Silver Eagle Refining, HF Sinclair, and Marathon Petroleum. And looking at the capacity of each refinery, the largest gasoline and diesel fuel producing ones are in Washington (the biggest being HF Sinclair’s Puget Sound refinery in Anacortes), the Tesoro Refining & Marketing Company’s Salt Lake refinery (a subsidiary of Marathon), and HF Sinclair’s refinery in Sinclair, WY.