Ethanol and Transfers
Alcorn Energy of Troy Michigan has announced they will build Nebraska's largest ethanol plant exactly in the area that the Republican River Basin would like to source water for a transfer. This is between Bertrand and Loomis on highway 23. The effect of the ethanol plant will be to increase the value of the land in the immediate area and will increase the confidence of the landowners that there will be more demand for their corn. As a result, the area landowner will want substantially more money for their water than they would have wanted before the ethanol plant was announced. Even if someone can pay more money than what the corn sold to the plant will produce, the confidence in the economy of the area will substantially inflate the market. This will raise the cost for any transfer project and also raise the cost to the PRRIP program which is funded by the Federal Government, Colorado, and Wyoming for the purpose of putting more water into the Platte River through irrigation shutdown programs. In other words, the demand for water is growing and therefore the price of access to water is going up.