WaterClaim

Fact Sheet Regarding

The Cooperative Agreement of 1997

The Cooperative Agreement of 2006

The Over-Appropriated Designation by LB962

By WaterClaim

1. The Federal Endangered Species Act requires the Fish and Wildlife Service to issue a permit to anyone who removes water from any river in the nation where endangered species might be. 

2. The Platte River has been determined to have four endangered species:  the piping plover, the least tern, the pallid sturgeon, and the whooping crane. 

3. In order to obtain Federal licenses to operate facilities such as the hydroelectric plant at Kingsley Dam, the State of Nebraska signed a Cooperative Agreement in 1997 promising that it would not make any new developments that would remove water from the Platte and that, if it did, it would compensate for those effects.  We call this the CA97 (Cooperative Agreement of 1997).

4. In 2004, the Nebraska Legislature passed LB962, which allowed the Department of Natural Resources to designate parts of Nebraska’s rivers as over-appropriated.  Any portion of a river, so designated, must create an Integrated Management Plan between the DNR and the NRDs that will reduce water usage to a fully appropriated status.  The DNR is still trying to decide what this means in acres or acre feet.  Rumor has the required reduction to be around 500,000 acres.  There are no official statements on the subject.  This is a very similar number to the increase in irrigated acres since 1997.

5. In August of 2006, the State of Nebraska determined that about 505,000 new irrigated acres were added to the Platte River Basin.  Nebraska had promised either to not allow these acres or to compensate for their effect.

6. The Cooperative Agreement of 2006 (CA06) assumes that the effects caused by the new uses since 1997 will already be addressed.  CA06 addresses the pre-1997 effects.  CA06 calls for about 417,000 acre feet of water to be added to the river and says that this water will be added to the river in the spring and fall. 

7. The COHYST computer model was developed for the purpose of determining the effect on the stream of each irrigated acre  during any given time period.  A well close to the stream will have a greater effect than a well far from the stream.  The COHYST model will determine how many irrigated acres must be taken out of production or what the allocation can be limited to for everyone so as to yield 417,000 acre feet.  The official results of the COHYST model have not yet been released.  They were due during the summer of 2006. 

8. CA06 calls for the 417,000 acre foot addition to the stream to happen over three 13-year phases.  The first phase requires no cash from Nebraska and 70,000 acre feet of reductions over what it has already made.  The next two phases require Nebraska to make much larger reductions that will have a dramatic effect on the economy of the State.

9. In total, Nebraska must eliminate

                                            i.      The effect of 505,000 new post-1997 acres as the effects occur.  These effects are small during the first few years but the effects on the stream grow rapidly with each passing year.

                                          ii.      70,000 acre feet in effects within 13 years.

                                        iii.      Another 180,000 acre feet in effects 13 to 39 years from now.

The conversion of acre feet into acres requires the use of the COHYST model that has not been released yet.  For example, if a well has a 33% depletion effect on the stream after 40 years then to increase the stream flow by 70,000 acre feet, one would need to stop irrigation on 70,000 divided by 0.33 to find the number of acres.  This example would result in 212,000 acres needing to be shut off to yield the desired increase in flow.  However, the same results could be achieved with many fewer acres by targeting the wells within one mile of the stream.  Wells within a mile of the stream may have a depletion factor as high as 90%, and wells 10 miles from the stream may have a depletion factor of only 1%.  The CA06 lays out the costs and number of acres required, depending on which of several various scenarios are chosen.

It is important to note that the increase of 505,000 irrigated acres has a minimal effect now; but over the next several decades, this effect will increase dramatically.  This effect and the consequences of how we adjust for these new acres has not been talked about by the public.

10. The CA06 changes when the river flows.  The change does not restore the stream to a historical flow but rather creates a new flow pattern that some believe will favor the fish and wildlife along the river.

11. When comparing the Platte River flows of the last 17 years with the 17 years prior to the construction of Kingsley Dam, one finds that:

                                            i.      Total stream flow during the most recent seventeen years is nearly 50% more than the flow of the seventeen years between 1935 and 1952.

                                          ii.      The dam has eliminated 90% of the dry stream days. Prior to the dam, the stream at Grand Island was dry 17% of the time. During the most recent seventeen years, the stream has only been dry 2% of the time.

                                        iii.      There have been more floods/stream surge days in the most recent seventeen years as compared to the seventeen pre-dam years.

12. The Platte River Basin had about 2,620,000 irrigated acres in 1997.  By the end of 2005, the Basin had increased its acreage to 3,125,000 acres.  These numbers are produced by The Governance Committee of the Platte River Recovery Implementation Program and the State of Nebraska.  Has the number of bushels of corn increased to match the increase in acres or has the reporting simply identified acres that were already in production but not on the records?

13. The average Platte River flow at Grand Island for 1935 through 2003 was 1,113,000 acre feet a year.  From 1994 through 2003, the river averaged 1,349,000 acre feet. The CA06 asks that 417,000 more acre feet be put in the river because this is how much the river has been shorted.  If we add 417,000 to the current average flow of 1.35 million acre feet we will have nearly twice the 68 year average flow in the river.   Even with the drought reduced flows of 2001, 2002, and 2003, the last 10 years are still above average on their flows. 

14. 90% of the reason Lake McConaughy is low is because of a drought in Wyoming.  Even Central Nebraska Public Power and Irrigation District acknowledges that ground water irrigation is causing at most 100,000 acre feet of depletion compared to the 900,000 acre feet the drought has caused.   Shutting off all of the groundwater irrigation wells west of McConaughy will cause at most an increase in flow of 100,000 acre feet after 40 years.  This is compared to the 68 year average flow of 1,113,000 acre feet.  It is frustrating when there is a shortage of water but it is important to base long term policy decisions on the facts and not on passion.