New wells top 1,000

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BY ART HOVEY / Lincoln Journal Star

The Nebraska Department of Natural Resources added almost 1,600 new irrigation wells to its records in 2004. That's the third straight year the statewide total topped 1,000.

Natural Resources Director Roger Patterson, whose department now has the authority to declare the state's river basins fully appropriated or over appropriated, said "extended drought" is only part of an energetic well-drilling picture.

"The other thing is we have moratoriums going in certain part of the state," Patterson said. "And anytime there is anticipation of that happening, a lot of folks think, if they're ever going to drill a well, now's the time."

A brisk pace in well drilling could easily mean that heavily irrigated areas will arrive at the point of full appropriation of water that much quicker.

The numbers for 2004 were three times the annual number of new wells added to the state inventory as recently as 1999.

Even as those numbers surged past 1,000 in 2002, 2003 and 2004, moratoriums took effect in some or all of the territory of eight of the state's 23 natural resources districts.

But so far, the pace of drilling outside moratorium areas appears to be much more than a match for the drilling restrictions that go with concerns about diminished supplies of both ground and surface water in Nebraska and adjoining states.

In fact, the total of new well registrations in the last three years accounts for more than 44 percent of the overall total for the last 10 years. In the Grand Island-based Central Platte Natural Resources District, under a partial moratorium since late 2003, it's more than half.

The department has already wielded its appropriation hammer in areas along the Platte River west of Grand Island and along the Republican River near the Kansas border. The no-drilling dimensions could get bigger by the time an inventory of other river basins in the state is finished in January 2006.

But Patterson is trying to ease concerns about the tone of future announcements from his office. "We're hoping in the rest of the state that we can methodically do annual evaluations and we can let people know where they are before they get over-committed."

The prime corn-growing territory of the York-based Upper Big Blue Natural Resources District has the most irrigated acres of any NRD and the second most wells.

Rod DeBuhr, the NRD's water department manager, said most of the more than 400 new wells added in the last three years there reflect drought. In tightening its irrigation rules, the Upper Big Blue's board of directors has steered clear of a moratorium.

"They're not in favor of having haves and have-nots," DeBuhr said.

The Upper Big Blue strategy for water conservation puts the emphasis on possible allocation of water to all irrigation users if water levels continue to fall there.

However, DeBuhr does not rule out some recent drilling activity on the basis of concern about future water availability. "If I had some dryland ground and I had the financial wherewithal to do it, why wouldn't I want to get my piece of the pie, so to speak?"

As owner of the Henderson Irrigation Company in Henderson, Steve Buller said the increasing size of farms is also a factor for customers who turn to him for a new well.

That well is often part of a conversion from a more labor-intensive irrigation system that delivers water through ground-level, gravity-flow pipes from the end of the field to one that serves crops through a center-pivot from the middle of the field.

"With bigger farmers, you're more encouraged to save labor," Buller said, "which often means putting a center-pivot system in."

Buller, also a member of the Upper Big Blue board of directors, tries not to take anything for granted as he witnesses a new era of state water regulation.

"There's going to come a time," he said, "when the state is going to say 'We've got to be fair to everybody. And if we're shutting off drilling in this area, we have to do it for everybody, whether they have a problem or not.'"

Even though the Upper Big Blue is focused on allocation, "I also know that, on Jan. 1, 2006, Roger Patterson could declare our district over-appropriated."

Reach Art Hovey at 523-4949 or at ahovey@journalstar.com