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WaterClaim

 WaterClaim is a Non-Profit organization created for the purpose of protecting your access to water.  For more information about WaterClaim, visit our web site at www.waterclaim.org or give us a call at (308) 882-3020.  Your participation in WaterClaim will help protect your access to water.

 The Upper Republican NRD is the most aggressive NRD in restricting water use.  The majority of board members have consistently voted to restrict your access to water more than any other NRD in the State.  This board represents you.  They are your elected representatives.  The State and the courts recognize them as speaking for you.  If you don’t like what they are saying, it is important that you make this known.  Otherwise, you can and will be ignored.

This NRD is considering several options on how to reduce water usage.  This public information meeting is their way of asking for your input.  Once these meetings are over, they will have a series of votes to implement policies based on the input they receive here. They will ask for your input on how you prefer to see your access to water increasingly restricted.  “Do you want to lose acres that you can irrigate, or do you want to reduce the amount of water you can use?”  The problem with this question is that it ignores other options that are available.  Any answer you give is bad.  If you limit your answers to the options the NRD gives you, then you are empowering them to use this input against you.  Insist that all options be considered.

The Republican River NRDs are set to ask the State to allow them to tax the irrigator for every acre inch of water pumped.  One proposal being considered will set a base amount of water that you may use and also have you pay a tax on every acre inch over that.  This idea has the very real potential of limiting the area to whatever the base allocation is set to, even if that is not the Board’s intent.  Before the NRDs make this policy, it should be carefully considered.  We should know what the risks might be of such a policy change.  We encourage you to oppose this idea until all of us, including NRD Board members, understand the risk we are taking with this new policy.

The State and the NRD believe that the right to use water for irrigation is something they can give or take as they please.  WaterClaim believes this idea is unconstitutional.  The Nebraska Constitution guarantees your right to irrigate.  As the NRD asks for your input, remember that you have the constitutional right to irrigate and that our options are not limited to what they are presenting.

If the NRDs implement the plans now under consideration, WaterClaim estimates there will be a $50,000,000 (fifty million) dollar loss in economic activity.  This translates into a devastating blow of about 2,000 jobs lost, of which 880 will come from the Upper Republican NRD. 

The State estimates that we will be in drought conditions 1 out of every 3 years.

For much more information about other options and what things you can do to protect your access to water, visit www.waterclaim.org or call (308) 882-3020.

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Questions that, to date, we cannot get answers to.  Maybe if you ask them?

1. When we pump water from the aquifer, what portion of that affects the stream flow?   Remember that all of the cuts you are being asked to make are based on this estimate.  The DNR has not released any official number and what numbers we have been able to compute from their other data calls into question the entire Model (the Compact uses this Model to determine water restrictions for compliance).

2. What is the lag effect for each district each year?  We do not want the definition of the lag effect; rather, how much does the DNR expect the area will have to reduce usage by each year to make up for the lag effect?  This is separate from any drought effect reductions.  The lag effect concept could eventually eliminate most irrigation.

3. What does the NRD estimate will be the economic impact of each level of reduction they are proposing?  The NRDs say studies have been done.  What were the results?  What is the cost comparison between different options?

4. What are the financial costs to the area if no reductions in usage are made?

5. What is the cost of pumping water into Harlan County Reservoir?  The NRD claims to have considered the option of pumping water into the stream above the reservoir.  The DNR claims to have considered pumping water into the stream at the border with Kansas .  What are the results of these studies, and what are the costs associated with these options?  How many wells would be involved?  Why is this option being rejected?

6. Who has higher access priority to water, surface water users or aquifer users?  In a water short year, does a surface irrigator get as much water as the law allows (36 acre inches per year) and then the aquifer users get what is left of the State allocation, or is there some other method of allocation?

7. Is my well considered a quick response well?  The NRD and the DNR have declined to identify the “stream.”  Quick response wells are wells within one mile of the center of the stream.  However, there is a very large difference in opinion as to how far up each tributary is defined as “stream.”  The cut off point on the tributary will have a major impact.  Where are those cutoff points, and why can’t they be specified now?

8. It is hoped that CREP will finance the retirement of 50,000 acres in the basin.  There are about 250,000 quick response acres in the three districts.  What happens to those people with a quick response well who must make a large reduction of between 25% and 50% in usage but they do not get CREP money because there is not enough for all?

9. What section of the law, specifically where in LB962, is there any authorization for the NRD to create a new tax?  As the NRD considers ways of raising money, what authority does it have to create a water tax?

10. What benefit does one NRD get by making a greater reduction in usage than other NRDs?

11. Why won’t the DNR release any official numbers, such as usage, lag effect, Virgin Water Supply, appropriation by district, or any of the numbers that are essential to the calculations?