NRD may ban new irrigation in parts of Polk, Hamilton counties

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BY ART HOVEY / Lincoln Journal Star

Shrinking water resources for agriculture aren't just a problem for central and western Nebraska. The manager of the York-based Upper Big Blue Natural Resources District said Monday he considered it likely that state officials will declare portions of the NRD south of the Platte River between Grand Island and Columbus off limits to new irrigation by Jan. 1.

John Turnbull will be at the Geneva VFW at 7 p.m. Wednesday to expand on a forecast of water trouble reaching farther east through a state ban on new irrigation wells and on any other steps that would add irrigated acres.

"We're not trying to alarm people," Turnbull said. "We just want them to know what to expect."

Any action by the State Department of Natural Resources in some portion of the Upper Big Blue district would come on top of earlier decisions to stop irrigation development in about a dozen areas farther west along the Platte and Republican rivers.

The Legislature handed that LB962 authority to Natural Resources Director Roger Patterson last year during a continuing drought as a way to deal with the hydrologic connection between heavy groundwater pumping and the depletion of rivers, streams and reservoirs.

Patterson was unavailable for comment Monday afternoon.

The Platte, which soaks the soils near Ashland to provide Lincoln's drinking water, quit flowing each of the last several summers west of Columbus. The water that enters the Platte farther east from the Elkhorn and Loup rivers has kept things wet along the shoreline at Ashland.

"That's what LB962 was written to deal with is the conflicts between ground and surface water," Turnbull said.

He said in his earlier, similar appearances in Seward, Aurora and elsewhere, news about a possible stop to irrigation development this far east, and as soon as Jan. 1, has surprised water users.

"It was, ‘Wow, we didn't understand this was likely to happen,'" Turnbull said.

Among those who have been watching possibilities closely are well drillers Duane Potter of Silver Creek and Steve Buller of Henderson.

Both do much of their work in the boundaries of the Upper Big Blue.

"If the property is dry land (unirrigated)," said Buller, who is also a member of the NRD board, "you'll never be able to develop that. To me, that's much more dramatic than just my industry having to shut down or cut drilling in half."

Potter manages the branch office of a Grosch Irrigation business that started during the dry years of the 1930s.

"It's a major concern to us, as a company," Potter said of the state stepping in to regulate groundwater for the first time, "because it affects a major part of our business."

Roger Houdersheldt, Shelby farmer and chairman of the Upper Big Blue board of directors, thinks the water allocation rules the board put in place last year at the local level are the right way to manage the groundwater supply.

Meanwhile, Houdersheldt said he and many other Upper Big Blue irrigators are far from convinced that pumping from wells is a major factor on Platte flows in his area.

"Most of our guys have very little problem looking at some form of allocation, if it's a fair allocation," he said. "But they're really not happy about being tied in to the Platte."

Reach Art Hovey at 523-4949 or at ahovey@alltel.net.

What's next: John Turnbull, manager of the Upper Big Blue Natural Resources District based in York, will discuss the future of irrigated land in the region at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the VFW Hall in Geneva.