ART HOVEY / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Friday, October 27, 2006 7:00 pm
Gov. Dave Heineman announced Friday that Nebraska will go forward with a three-state agreement for managing flows in the Platte River.
Some see the culmination of 10 years of negotiation as a regional and even national model for cooperation in protecting threatened or endangered species and conserving water.
Others believe Nebraska is opening itself up to hundreds of millions of dollars in cost and a sharp curtailment of its irrigation future.
With the downside in mind, Heineman said he waited to act until he had a formal opinion from Attorney General Jon Bruning on the legality of an exit strategy.
In an afternoon teleconference, the governor said Bruning assured him an agreement with Wyoming, Colorado and the U.S. Department of the Interior was not as binding as a river compact.
If Nebraska runs into unforeseen consequences, “I will not hesitate to withdraw,” Heineman said, “and I will do so forcefully.”
The known consequences of staying aboard include direct cash payments of $187 million from Wyoming, Colorado and the federal level, contributions of water to surface flows in the North Platte, South Platte and Platte channels from the three states, and a habitat mitigation area in central Nebraska.
The habitat area is meant to protect whooping cranes and two other bird species, the interior least tern and piping plover, and one fish, the pallid sturgeon, found primarily in the lower reaches of the Platte closer to the Missouri River.
In laying out his rationale for proceeding, Heineman acknowledged the agreement was not perfect and many in agriculture worry what it will mean to their livelihoods.
But the governor said it also offers “the most certainty” that irrigators will not have to engage in one-on-one consultations with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on water use that could threaten their annual farm program payments.
And, according to the governor, “it makes sure that agriculture will have a seat at the table in any discussions” of the future shaping of the river pact.
The Nebraska Farm Bureau Federation, the state’s largest farm organization, re-affirmed its support for Heineman’s decision late Friday.
“Farm Bureau is ready to work with the governor, the Legislature, the natural resources districts, and others in implementing the program and in working on the funding issues surrounding it,” spokesman Jay Rempe said in a prepared statement.
Ann Bleed, interim director of the Nebraska Department of Natural Resources, is among those celebrating the results of years of digging into details and tradeoffs.
“To me the most important aspect of the decision is that the states are at the table with the federal government to work through the endangered species problem,” Bleed said. “That has often not happened” in previous conflicts over the same subject.
But reservations about what’s ahead run much deeper than the Platte in the Grand Island offices of the Central Platte Natural Resources District.
The Central Platte is one of four NRDs to oppose Heineman’s decision, and its general manager, Ron Bishop, quickly pointed to an economic analysis sought by his board and provided Thursday by an Omaha consultant.
It suggested a Nebraska financial impact as large as $261 million in the early going.
Much of that amount is calculated from the highly uncertain total of Nebraska corn acres that will have to be taken out of irrigated status on a temporary or permanent basis. Bishop and his board expect the number to be high and permanent.
“First of all, we’re moving Nebraska back to where we were in 1997, as far as water consumption. And, on top of that, add another 150,000 acre feet of water; and, on top of that, the securing of 10,000 acres of habitat land along the river,” he said.
An acre foot of water is enough water to supply one or two families for a year.
Bishop estimated that 75 percent of the proposed habitat area is within Central Platte NRD boundaries west of Grand Island and that 75,000 or more acres could eventually be withdrawn from irrigation.
That move, no matter what its dimensions, is meant to diminish the effect of groundwater pumping on surface flows in the river.
“If we’re going to take that kind of acreage out of irrigation production,” Bishop said, “that will have a sizable impact on folks like seed-corn dealers and equipment dealers, car dealers . . . and then there’s the impact on grocery stores and all other businesses in towns.”
Although Nebraska agreed earlier to the principle of restoring Platte flows to 1997 benchmark levels, well drilling continued at a rapid pace until the state passed LB962 in 2004 and declared much of the Republican River Basin and the Platte River Basin west of Grand Island fully or over-appropriated.
Moratoriums on drilling quickly followed in the Central Platte NRD and elsewhere. But Bishop and others don’t apologize for all the drilling that took place between 1997 and the moratoriums. They say they stopped the drilling as soon as the state raised the red flag.
Others, including Dave Aiken, have a different view of what was going on earlier and who should be regarded as primarily accountable. Aiken, an agricultural and water-law specialist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said it’s “literally true” that the state didn’t step in until 2004.
“However, I think everybody knew — and certainly the Central Platte directors knew — that they were going to have wells in their district be determined to be hydrologically connected” to surface water. “It was just a question of how many,” he said. “I think it’s a little disingenuous that they want local control, except when they have to pay. And then it’s up to the state.”
Aiken doesn’t see it as a foregone conclusion that Nebraska will have to turn off the irrigation pumps over a large area permanently.
“There are a variety of things the state may be able to do to meet its obligations under the cooperative agreement,” he said. For example, “They can buy storage water in Lake McConaughy. And when the flows look low for endangered species, they can ask the Fish and Wildlife Service: ‘You want water? We’ve got water.’”
Reach Art Hovey at 523-4949 or at ahovey@alltel.net.
What happened — Nebraska will move forward with a three-state agreement for protecting four threatened or endangered species and managing Platte River flows, Gov. Dave Heineman announced Friday.
What it means — The federal government and the states will contribute cash, water and/or habitat area to the cause. Colorado’s share of the cash is $24 million and Wyoming’s $6 million. Nebraska doesn’t have to make a cash payment, but must provide all of the habitat area for the four threatened or endangered species.
What’s next — Cooperative agreement partners will meet with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to deal with such details as what the threatened or endangered species, including an estimated 200-230 whooping cranes, need to survive. The other three species are: piping plover, interior least tern and pallid sturgeon.