A group of southwest Nebraska irrigators has proposed drilling the Ogallala Aquifer to help fill Lake McConaughy, provide water to the Platte and Republican river basins and move some moisture to drought-stricken areas of the state where it is badly need. While it addresses pressing problems, it's a particularly bad idea.

A short-sighted solution to a long-term problem, putting 550 wells in the aquifer to pull out 450,000 acre-feet of divertable water annually could put the aquifer at permanent risk.

Put simply, once the giant underground "lake" is drained, it will take years to refill. That water is a resource that can be used only once and it should be used wisely.

Trying to beat a drought, a normal cyclical occurance on the Plains, by mining the aquifer very likely isn't the wisest use of the water and wouldn't happen anyway.

By the time the project made it through the political/bureaucratic process needed to approve such an endeavor, the current drought will either be long over or the state will have a far bigger environmental and economic problem that won't be solved by moving water down the Platte and Republican rivers.

The project would also invariably impact those currently utilizing water from the aquifer, whether it is nearby groundwater users who are irrigating their land or river systems, like the Loup, that are fed by the underground water from the aquifer. That could set landowners against their neighbors and one area of the state against another in competition for the precious resource.

On a more practical basis, the proposed project would also be prohibitively expensive. The cost estimate to sink the wells, pay landowners for their water rights, build 27 miles of pipeline and more than 100 miles of canals is a staggering $265 million.

Project proponents say that the federal government could pay for half of the project. That's a big could that needs to be translated into a "would" before the project goes much further. It doesn't make much sense to go through the permitting process that would require approval from a half-dozen or more government entities without some kind of funding assurance.

Steve Smith of Imperial, the founder and director of WaterClaim, the group of about 100 irrigators and other businesses making the proposal, says that he believes that Nebraska now has an anti-irrigation climate. Roger Patterson, director of the Department of Natural Resources disagrees.

That's a political fight that will likely be played out over the next few years in the Legislature, natural resources districts and maybe even a courtroom.

But those are far better venues to determine the future of the state's water than the risky, one-time-only venture drilling a bunch of wells in the Sandhills and draining the state's greatest natural resource.