A Nebraska delegation will be meeting with Kansas officials Thursday to discuss the Republican River compact and settlement.

U.S. Reps. Tom Osborne, R-Neb., and Jerry Moran, R-Kan., and Attorneys General Jon Bruning of Nebraska and Phill Kline of Kansas will meet in Concordia, Kan., to discuss the compact.

Kansas says Nebraska is using more than its negotiated share of Republican River water.

A Kansas-Nebraska compact signed in 1943 allocated the annual water supply in the Republican River Basin, with Nebraska getting 49 percent, Kansas getting 40 percent and Colorado, 11 percent. The river starts in eastern Colorado, flows into Kansas and up to Nebraska and returns to Kansas in Republic County.

In 1998, Kansas went to the U.S. Supreme Court, claiming Nebraska had violated the compact by allowing the unimpeded development of thousands of wells drawing from the river and its tributaries.

“We settled the Kansas lawsuit in the best way we could,” said Bruning Tuesday at a meeting of the state’s 23 natural resources districts.

Bruning said the settlement included no monetary damages.

But Colorado hasn’t been so lucky: Last year it paid more than $34 million to Kansas as the result of a similar dispute over the Arkansas River.

With an ongoing drought, heavy irrigation pumping, depleted rivers and streams and the possibility that Nebraska will have to pay Kansas for using too much water, officials continue to grapple with solutions to the state’s water woes.

State Sen. Ed Schrock of Holdrege said Tuesday that irrigators need to consider holding off on drilling new irrigation wells before the state forces them to do it.

Sen. Chris Beutler of Lincoln has introduced an amendment that would allow the state to restrict pumping on wells drilled after 2001, saying the natural resource districts have failed to protect water.

Gov. Dave Heineman, also addressing the NRD meeting, said the state was considering several options to send more water down the Republican River, including buying water rights from Kansas.

The Governor’s Water Policy Task Force agreed in December that voters should be asked to give part of Nebraska’s sales tax to help with the growing list of water problems. The task force is seeking legislative backing for a ballot measure.

Additional state money will likely be needed to pay farmers not to irrigate land in some areas.

Officials said the state and the Bostwick Irrigation District are close to resolving all issues in a water deal. The state would  buy water from Bostwick that is held in the Harlan County Reservoir. That water would boost flows in the river downstream to Kansas.