ART HOVEY / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Thursday, July 9, 2009 12:00 am
It's been three months since Nebraska's top water official changed his mind and decided not to rule out more irrigation development along rivers and streams in the Lower Platte River Basin.
Now, nine natural resources districts are holding hearings on regulations that allow limited irrigation expansion in an area that includes the Platte, Loup and Elkhorn rivers and much of the eastern and northern parts of the state.
NRDs, local controllers of groundwater use, are responding to a 2009 state law crafted as an alternative to a complete ban. In hunting terminology, it could be called the short-season substitute for open season and no season.
It will be in force for the next four years.
John Miyoshi, based in Wahoo with the Lower Platte North NRD, said he and his peers intend to use their new authority wisely so the state Department of Natural Resources never sees a ban as necessary.
"That should be the goal of all NRDs," Miyoshi said Wednesday. "And we're working with the Department of Natural Resources now to look ahead further than four years."
Department Director Brian Dunnigan made a preliminary decision in December that the Lower Platte was fully appropriated - that it had reached the balancing point between water supply and demand.
But irrigating farmers strenuously objected, and NRD officials said hydrological evidence did not support Dunnigan's conclusion. The only supportive testimony came from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and its concerns about the pallid sturgeon and other threatened and endangered species.
Dunnigan reversed course in March, citing errors in the way his staff calculated future water use, and state lawmakers charted a slightly kinder, gentler approach.
It allows an increase of 2,500 acres per year, or 20 percent of the irrigated base, whichever is less, in each NRD.
The Lower Platte North hearing on how to work within those caps is Friday in Wahoo. Others follow, including the Lower Platte South, Tuesday at the Ashland VFW Club, and the Lower Elkhorn, July 21, in Norfolk.
Stan Staab, general manager of the Lower Elkhorn, said the practical goal is complying with LB483, the Legislature's ban alternative.
"We're all jumping around to come up with ways to do that in our own way," Staab said. "And, of course, we have to stay within the 2,500 acres."
Staab acknowledged that another law, LB962, passed in 2004, requires Dunnigan to review river basins annually and to act, as necessary, to conserve the state's water resources.
That means Dunnigan could reimpose a ban as soon as Jan. 1.
If it happens, Staab said, it won't be because he and other local water officials sat on their hands in 2009.
"We do not want to be fully appropriated," he said. "We will manage in such a way as to not be fully appropriated, now or in the future."
Reach Art Hovey at 473-7223 or ahovey@journalstar.com.