Buhl is a city located in south central Idaho in Twin Falls County, on the old Oregon Trail. The city was founded in 1906 and named after Frank H. Buhl, a major investor in the Carey Act project that brought largescale irrigation to the area in the early 20th Century. The city is home to just over 4,100 residents. Typical of a rural region, Buhl’s economy is based largely on agriculture. In recent years, several food processing plants have set up in Buhl, including numerous fish hatcheries that produce a majority of the rainbow trout consumed in the United States. The fish hatchery exports have earned Buhl the distinction of being the Trout Capital of America.
Despite being close to the Snake River, the city of Buhl obtains all its drinking water from groundwater sources through multiple wells. Prior to 2009, the city did not treat the groundwater but only added chlorine in the form of bulk 12.5% sodium hypochlorite to provide a disinfectant residual. A combination of factors including changes in EPA and state DEQ regulatory requirements, growth of the residential population and growth of the industrial food processing customers forced the City of Buhl to build a new water treatment plant to provide filtration to address the naturally occurring arsenic present in the groundwater.