HANSEN - With the press of a button Wednesday morning, water whirled under enormous gates, dry canal beds became wet and Magic Valley's irrigation season officially began.

The Twin Falls Canal Co. opened its main waterway system to nearly 5,000 irrigators by lifting the gates at the Forks south of Hansen, where the company's two main canals diverge from the Main Line that stems from the Murtaugh Dam.

About a dozen canal company dignitaries watched as Jon Crane, the company's diversion dam operator at the Forks, pressed a black button to open the gates. Within seconds, thousands of gallons of water rushed over the dry and rocky bottom of the High Line Canal, one of two main arterials.

TFCC director Vince Alberdi said the company has hosted the small spring ceremony for about a decade - ever since a former Times-News reporter suggested the company commemorate the beginning of the irrigation season like farmers celebrate the fall harvest.

"We had celebrations at harvest, but we never had anything to kick off the spring irrigation season," Alberdi said. "This symbolizes the bounty of the land, the cornucopia.

"But I don't know if we're going to have much of a cornucopia this year," he said.

The water outlook for this season is bleak. Mountain snowpacks that supply irrigation water are less than 75 percent of average in many cases, and the region is receiving less precipitation than farmers need.

As a result, the canal company will provide less water to their irrigators this season: 5/8 of an inch instead of the 3/4 of an inch offered last year.

Alberdi has said the company could scale back to just a half-inch later this summer.

Nevertheless, it was smiles only across the faces of the farmers and company board members at the Forks: It's another year, another water season and, hopefully, a bountiful one.

Times-News staff writer Matt Christensen covers the environment. He welcomes comments at 735-3243 and at matt.christensen@lee.net.