Gubernatorial Debate March 26, 2006

Gubernatorial Debate, March 26, 2006, before UNL students.

The following are verbatim quotes on the water question.

WaterClaim comments are in blue.

Question from Mike Tobias: Nebraska is using more than its share of Republican River water, as determined by the three State Compact. With a deadline for compliance approaching, some steps have been taken, paying farmers not to irrigate and buying water that is currently stored in the reservoir to send downstream. But, Kansas officials have told me that a so-called "good faith effort" will not be satisfactory and that it would be expensive for the State of Nebraska if we are not in compliance. What specific additional steps would you take or propose to help Nebraska comply with the Compact?

Heineman:

Mike, that is a very good question. I have identified water as the issue of the decade because it is so important to our State. Agriculture is the number 1 industry and we need to make sure there is water for agriculture as well as our cities. And, this is a situation that we did not get into overnight, and we are not going to get out very quickly. For the past few months, our office, the attorney General’s office, the Department of Natural Resources, the local NRDs, the local farmers who, I might add, have saved 25% to 30% below their allocation, and the Bostwick Irrigation District, we have worked to put together an agreement so that we can be more in compliance with our legal obligations relative to the Compact. The Bostwick Irrigation District has supported that with a vote of 172 to 14. That was the short term most immediate problem in the State, and we’ve got to move on. And, I applaud their efforts. Attorney General Bruning called it a historic step forward, and I certainly agree with him.

Now, long term, we’ve got to address water, trying to be as innovative as we can and yet practical. The fact of the matter is, right now, the Department of Natural Resources and the local NRDs are working on Integrated Water Management Plans to try to conserve water in the future. At the Federal level, we have received help from the Federal government regarding programs like CREP, EQIP, vegetation management. We are working with our Federal delegation, and this is one where I want to thank Congressman Tom Osborne. He’s been very good and part of our team effort on these issues. And, that is how we do best in this State. When we all work together as a team to address this most fundamental and important challenge in our State. Because water is very, very precious.

Nabity:

This is an area where we’ve got to manage water very, very carefully. I am going to make a couple of statements here. I am going to expand on them, and hopefully this will go around a couple of times. But, first of all, I believe that the Agreement that our State went to Kansas and signed in 2002 is flawed. And, the reason it is flawed is it took conservation off the table as a contributor as to why stream flows are depleting. Now if you pond, if you terrace, if you plant grasses, if you plant trees, water is not going to get back to the river. And I feel like that the people who were representing Nebraska sold out the irrigators in the State and put 100% of the responsibility on the irrigator. Now why this is such a bad deal is that if a farmer irrigates -- Let's just say he creates $5 dollars for the economy. You know, a buck might go to a seed company, a buck might go to a fertilizer company, you might have a buck to go to an irrigation company, and there are other people in the local town, the local community that make money, and the farmer nets a buck. If you shut down irrigation, you lose that $5 in the economy. If you pay the farmer a buck to stop farming, you destroy the small towns all across this State. And, why wouldn’t a farmer in the Bostwick Irrigation District say, “Yeah, pay me free money, that’s fine.” They weren’t going to take water out of the Harlan Reservoir anyway. So, it was free money.

What we need to do is spend money on a water transfer plan to move water from areas of surplus to areas of need. Two million acre feet of water come into this State and 8.5 million acre feet leave it and turn into salt water in the Gulf of Mexico. The money should have been spent on a water transfer plan to move water to areas of need so we can keep everybody farming. If you take people out of farming, our economy crashes. I hope to be the ‘water governor’ here in Nebraska who lays out a whole new strategic plan for managing water across the State.

Osborne

Obviously, this is very important. My family has been in the irrigation business for 50 years, and irrigation brings approximately $7 billion dollars per year into our economy [correct number is $4.5 billion] so it’s critical, and this is a big deal. I went down to Kansas and met with their attorney general, along with Jon Bruning, a few months ago and we informed them what we’re doing in Nebraska and I think they were surprised. They were pleased. It was a good first start. It was mentioned that we did do something called the Conservation Reserve Enhanced Program, which my office initiated and were able to get $158 million dollars coming to Nebraska -- $153 million of that is Federal money -- to retire 100,000 acres of land. Now, the way that this works is we take probably about 70,000 of those acres down in the Republican along with some EQIP money and the water Model indicates that even in dry years, which is the worst possible situation, we would get between 20,000 and 25,000 acre feet saved by this program [see attached table for correct amount credited due to CREP. Actual savings are 5,000 AF in year one, 10,000 in year two and 11,000 in year three]. We’re short about 30,000 acre feet each year right now. Also, I’ve put in an appropriation request for $5 million. We’ve also got a grant going from the RC&Ds and the people down in the Republican for a million and a half. Six and a half million dollars to spray vegetation in the river in that area. [This is a plan to kill trees along the Republican River.] Conservatively, we can save about 10,000 acre feet of water by spraying the vegetation and that probably could be more, but if you add 25 and 30, that’s the shortfall. Now, it’s going to take about 3 years to get that thing done so we may have a shortfall next year that won’t be quite as much, and the next year a little bit more; but eventually, within 3-4 years, I think we can handle the whole shortfall with Kansas and be in reasonably good shape. We will have to work together on this, and I think we have a lot of good things going for us and I think this is important.

[The first deadline is the end of 2007. Even by Mr. Osborne’s admission, the numbers do not add up to compliance by then. Mr. Osborne exaggerates the benefits of CREP and EQIP. The table that we link to shows the data the DNR has released to the public that contradicts the numbers he gives. We showed the DNR data to Mr. Osborne several days before the debate, but he chose to ignore the data that the DNR and the NRD use to make decisions.

As the questioner said, Kansas has stated that it will not accept good faith efforts that fail to comply.]

Rebut or new question, Mr. Nabity?

Nabity:

I’d like to keep talking about this because if you look at Central and Western Nebraska, you already have a population shrinking. With all due respect to Congressman Osborne, if you could go to a landowner and you say, “Look, quit farming. Here’s a buck, as opposed to keep farming and flow $5 through the economy and get your buck.” What you do is you put a whole bunch of businesses out. We’re talking 100,000 acres of land that people are going to quit farming. I got a telephone call from a guy named Dan Nelson from Curtis. He says, “You know what happened to me? I was renting ground from a gentleman, and the farming activity that we had on that guy’s ground…that kept my family in business…” This is a 25-year old guy who has a young family that’s trying to make it in farming. The CREP program gave the landowner so much money that he said, “I’m not going to mess around with this farming anymore. I’m going to quit.” And, then he could sell off all his irrigation equipment and get about $200 per acre on the irrigation equipment and this young man, Dan Nelson, doesn’t know if he’s going to be able to make it now because he cannot farm anymore. And, the chain reaction on this, economically, could be catastrophic for the State of Nebraska and somebody, as a Governor, has got to begin to defend the economic interests of this State and the small guys out there who are suffering at the hands of government actions that don’t follow through with what kinds of economic damage could occur to a State. We’ve got to think about this, especially when the science is flawed. How much responsibility does ground water irrigation contribute to the stream flow depletions versus Federal Conservation policies? Federal Conservation policies are not in the game right now and all the information is contained in the Department of Natural Resources, and the Governor won’t let the information out. So, we need reform here, and we need to protect the farmers.

Osborne:

I think we better rebut a little bit here. First of all, with all due respect to my friend David, conservation was figured in and I don’t necessarily like the Compact either with Kansas; but it was figured in, and it was part of the deal. I think we need to understand that. [This is not correct; Ann Bleed, interim director of the DNR says directly that conservation is not included. Lee Wilson, Nebraska technical leader, says that it was a directive from the State to exclude conservation from the Model.] The idea of transferring surplus water from someplace down in the Republican is fine if you’ve got a place where there’s surplus water. The Platte River west of Highway 183 is over-appropriated. The Republican River is over-appropriated. [False, the Republican River is fully appropriated, not over-appropriated.] So, where are you going to get the surplus water? [Osborne knows this is misleading. No water is moved that is not already being moved; therefore, there are no new depletions. 10 reasons water cannot be moved.] There is a plan to take $250 an acre, that is much more than CREP pays, and pay people in the Platte Valley to give up their irrigation rights, which transfers the same problem to the Platte and pipes the water down into the Republican, which might be good for the Republican, but I say, “Where’s the money going to come from?”

“Well, you need $5 million to buy the acreage, and that $5 million is going to come from the irrigators in the Republican.” [That is not what the proposal by WaterClaim says. You can read the entire proposal yourself here.] Are they going to want to do that? We’ve got the Federal government paying for this deal. And, so, the transfer issue is a little bit nebulous. [The proposal is not nebulous. It has been in the public since November 2004, and Mr. Osborne has had advance copies of the plan and spent several hours reviewing it. He has simply decided that it gains him more politically to side with the DNR than to state the facts correctly.] I don’t have any problem if someone can figure out a way to transfer water down there. It is possible. It is feasible. Geographically, we can do this thing. But, anyway, the other issue is the shortfall of people being driven out of farming. And, this is painful but somebody’s got to quit irrigating in order to come into compliance. We have two areas where more water is going out than it’s coming in. So, somebody has got to stop farming. So, we’re trying to compensate through agri-tourism, through hunting operations, other ways that you can use that CREP land. There are other things that you can do to still make a living. But, believe me, nobody wants to see irrigation go away any more than…I hate this thing. But, we’re going to do the very best that we can. [The bold faced statement is a direct quote. There are no typos in reporting what he said.]

Heineman:

Congressman, I want to help you out a little here. Dave is a little off-base. The fact of the matter is that out in Holdrege about a year ago, I guess it was, we’d been working on this CREP program -- Department of Agriculture, Game and Parks, Department of Natural Resources, with the US Department of Agriculture – and we had a signing ceremony at Holdrege. I signed on behalf of the State. Congressman Osborne was there to witness that historic agreement. I think that was the right thing to do. Again, water is an issue where we need to work together as Nebraskans, as friends, as neighbors. It is too critical, too important to our future. We all care about irrigators. I mean, I’ve said it over and over again, agriculture is the #1 issue in the State. The #1 industry in this State. In fact, this past week, we just held a news conference. A recent survey shows that, compared to ten years ago, where one in four jobs used to be related to agriculture and agribusiness, it is now one in three. I grew up in the McCook and Benkelman area. I know a little bit about southwest Nebraska and south central Nebraska. We’re concerned about agriculture. We’re concerned about those Main Street businesses and about agribusiness. And, that’s why we needed a short-term solution. Again, we’re all trying to work together – both the Federal delegations and the State government – to try to move this State forward. The one thing we need for sure is a little help from Mother Nature. We can talk about the drought all we want, but we need more moisture. Now, we may get a little break this year in the sense that Colorado has about 40% more snow-melt than they’ve had in previous years, [The Republican River gets none of its water from the Colorado snow pack, so this will not help Nebraska stay in compliance with the Agreement that was made with Kansas.] but again, I want to come back and say that water is the issue of the decade. I say that because we’ve got to keep a focus on it for such a long period of time to make sure we protect and maintain and sustain this very precious resource in our State.