Good stewardship partly to blame for water conflict

That sound you heard Tuesday was the other shoe falling.

Kansas put a pricetag on the water it contends Nebraska has not sent it under the Republican River Compact, $72 million.

Kansas figures Nebraska's made $63 million from water it didn't have coming, and added 15 percent as an incentive to comply plus cover Kansas' legal costs.

Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning says the type of calculation Kansas used hasn't held up in court before, and Nebraska is making strides toward compliance that should be taken into consideration.

The 1944 compact allocates 49 percent of the river's water to Nebraska, 40 percent to Kansas and 11 percent to Colorado.

Kansas sued Nebraska in 1998, alleging it wasn't getting its fair share of water, and last December, proposed shutting down wells in Nebraska within 2.5 miles of the river and its tributaries, as well as land in the basin where irrigation started after 2000. Those wells supply about 42 percent of the 1.2 million acres in Nebraska's portion of the river basin.

Kansas officials acknowledge that Nebraska is making progress, but want to keep the pressure on until they're getting the water they think they have coming.

However, we feel the current court rulings don't adequately take modern conservation practices into account.

Yes, pump irrigation has increased dramatically over the last six decades. But minimum tillage, center-pivot irrigation, Bureau of Reclamation dams, terraces and erosion control dams have dramatically reduced runoff reaching the Republican River as well.

Nebraska should not be penalized for good stewardship of the land.