Handout 2

Handouts given at the Upper Republican NRD Public Information Meetings
held in Benkelman, Imperial, and Grant June 29 through July 1, 2004

Handout # 2

This information is taken from the data provided by the Department of Natural Resources and presented to the public by the Upper Republican NRD Board meeting on April 19, 2004.

The Water Pumped is the amount of aquifer water pumped in acre feet by the three Republican NRDs. For 1998, the three districts pumped 995,276 acre feet.

The Consumptive Use is the amount of water the Model says is removed from the stream flow. For 1998, the Model reports aquifer Consumptive Use of 186,256 acre feet.

The Well Contribution Factor (stated as a percentage) is the Consumptive Use number divided by the Water Pumped number. Logically, it should be fairly constant. It isn’t.

The 5-year averages are: Water Pumped 1,083,530; CU 192,348; WCF% 19%

This information uses the DNR’s own numbers. Note that as we pump more water, the Consumptive Use goes down.

That means one of three things:

According to the Model, we should pump more water, not less, in order to comply with the compact.
The Model has a serious flaw in it. In which case, why are we devastating our economy in order to comply with a seriously flawed system?
The information being provided to the NRD by the DNR is incorrect. In which case, the NRD should not make any commitments until the correct information is provided so that it can make intelligent decisions based on accurate data.

www.waterclaim.org

Page 2

The DNR reports that if a 10% reduction in usage had been made in 2001, it would have resulted in 1.16 acre feet saved for the stream for every 1000 acre feet not pumped. This is from the same report released to the public on April 19, 2004 by the URNRD. With virtually no savings coming from the reduction, why make the cut?

The following chart uses DNR numbers for columns 1 and 2. Column 3 assumes that the drought continues, that aquifer pumping stays at the 2002 level, and that the surface water usage is what the DNR predicts (that being 52,219 acre feet).

		1	2	3	4
	In Acre Feet	1998-2002 Average	Historical 2002	Projected 2004	Surface Water Unusable?
A	NE Allocation	289,062	226,086	226,086	226,086
B	Ground Water Use	192,348	176,604	176,604	176,604
C	Surface Water Use	99,087	85,205	52,219	10,000?
D	A-B-C	-2,373	-35,723	-2,737	39,482

If it proves to be impossible to make any surface diversions for irrigation in a drought year, then is this estimate of 52,219 available for compact compliance?

As surface water irrigation is very inefficient, would it not be more cost effective to purchase these water rights? Retiring a quick response well only gets a $0.19 return (or is it $0.12 or $0.30 or $0.14 or $0.21) for every dollar spent, whereas a surface water right gets a $1 return for every $1 spent.