Kansas delivers lump of coal to Nebraska neighbors

Republican River valley irrigators and property owners have just received the first bills related to the LB701 effort to comply with a 1943 compact, and even that effort faces a court challenge.

But now dire predictions have come true. Nebraska's measures won't be enough to convince Kansas that it is receiving the water it has coming. And, it wants cash for water it contends it was denied since a 2003 settlement, and a dollar amount attached to violations in the future -- estimated in the "tens of millions."

A letter issued by Kansas Attorney General Paul Morrison and the Kansas Division of Water Resources sent letters to Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning and Ann Bleed, director of the states Department of Natural Resources, threatened legal action unless Nebraska takes "drastic actions" proposed by Kansas.

Besides cash for damages or Nebraska profits resulting from the use of Kansas' water, and interest, Kansas is seeking an order for Nebraska to shut off all irrigation wells within 2.5 miles of the Republican River and its tributaries, shut off any irrigated acres added after 2000, and reduction of Nebraska's "consumptive use" of water to 175,000 acre feet, instead of the average of 210,000 acre feet Nebraska has used over the last five years.

That would require shutting down wells that water about 500,000 acres of the roughly 1.2 million irrigated acres in Nebraska's portion of the Republican River basin.

As an aside, the letter is one of the last official acts of Paul Morrison, who is resigning as the result of a scandal involving the wife of a former McCook city manager.

Nebraska's Attorney General Jon Bruning put a major spin on the letters, calling them "another step in the process of resolving the dispute."

Steve Smith, director of the WaterClaim advocacy group, called for emptying reservoirs along the river to meet Kansas' demands, or to augment the stream via water imports and/or wellfields in the basin.

Unfortunately, Nebraska is saddled with an out-of-date agreement that was drawn up when modern pump irrigation and conservation measures were far in the future. In hindsight, the Republican River Compact should have been renegotiated years ago to take current conditions into account.

Since that's impossible, our best hope is reaching a new settlement that won't devastate the Southwest Nebraska economy.