Letter to the Editor

Augmentation projects and God's wishes

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

A recent opinion piece by a southern Kansas newspaper publisher that was published in the McCook Gazette contains inaccuracies and misinformation that warrant a response.

I must admit I am at some disadvantage responding to the newspaperman's comments. He is apparently privy to God's wishes: "Stop irrigating crops that God never meant to be grown on the High Plains," Hutchinson News publisher John Montgomery demands of Nebraska farmers. While I haven't received direct word from God as Mr. Montgomery apparently has, please bear with this mere mortal as I attempt to explain why our neighbor to the south has a few things wrong.

Mr. Montgomery suggests that augmentation projects such as NCORPE are wasteful. This ignores the fact that in the case of the NCORPE project, approximately 16,000 acres have been retired from irrigation to offset water that will augment Republican River stream flow. Because of this retirement of irrigated land, it is possible that the amount of water pumped under the project may not exceed what would have been pumped on the land over the long term had it remained an irrigated farm.

Ironically, the ground that was retired from irrigation is technically part of the Nebraska Sandhills, and undoubtedly the type of ground Mr. Montgomery would argue should not be irrigated. Additionally, the amount of water that would have to be pumped by the NCORPE project to maintain compliance would be considerably less if Kansas would agree that Nebraska should get 100% credit for augmentation water that is provided via the project.

The additional streamflow provided by the project will benefit Kansas by providing residents there more water, and benefit Nebraskans by providing water the State is obligated to without shutting down hundreds of thousands of irrigated acres. If hundreds of thousands of acres were shut down on a permanent basis as is desired by the State of Kansas, or if allocations in Nebraska's portion of the Republican Basin were reduced to approximately 5.9 inches in the Upper Republican NRD, 4.8 inches in the Middle Republican NRD and 3.6 inches in the Lower Republican NRD to annually achieve compact compliance solely through regulations, real waste would occur: Nebraska would be providing Kansas more water than what was necessary to maintain compliance. This is because in years of average and above average precipitation when Nebraska was not at risk of exceeding its compact allocation, Nebraska would be providing water to Kansas as if it were at risk of exceeding the allocation. Comparatively, it is expected the NCORPE project will have to be operated roughly one-third of the time to maintain compact compliance.

Mr. Montgomery also portrays augmentation in isolation, ignoring the many other actions that have been taken throughout the Republican Basin to conserve water and assure compact compliance. Allocations in Nebraska's portion of the Republican Basin average a little more than 11" an acre. Allocations in western Kansas average almost twice that amount and in southwest Kansas groundwater declines have averaged about 2 feet per year since 1996. This far exceeds rates of decline in the Republican Basin in Nebraska, which has the most stringent agricultural groundwater use rules in the country.

This management won't stop because of augmentation projects. In fact, the Upper, Middle and Lower Republican NRDs have actually made their water use rules more restrictive since the NCORPE project was launched. The steepest groundwater declines in Kansas -- some of them not far from Mr. Montgomery's office - are more than double the steepest declines in Nebraska. His argument that Nebraska's waste of groundwater resources is on a "whole other plane" is baffling when one considers these and other facts. Kansas, it should be said, is taking laudable steps to improve its aquifer preservation efforts and I don't wish to criticize their current management efforts. However, there should be a recognition of those management efforts and awareness of how they compare to Nebraska's before one levies criticism as harsh as what Mr. Montgomery unleashed from his office in Hutchinson.

Mr. Montgomery is accurate when he says the compact should be revisited. But instead of crossing our fingers and hoping it can somehow be modified to the benefit of all three states, we'll do all we can to comply with it, sending Kansas the water it is obligated to receive without unnecessarily crippling our economy in the process and wasting water by sending more downstream than what's needed.

Meanwhile, we'll continue actions in the Basin to preserve as much water as possible. We invite Mr. Montgomery up to Curtis to try some of what was recently judged to be the best tasting water in the country. He can even take a few bottles of it to Kansas to give folks a taste of what's coming their way.

Martin is chairman, of the Nebraska Cooperative Republican Platte Enhancement Project

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  • More of the same old tired story from a NRD that they're conserving water by pumping more. Mr. Martin, you did NOT retire 16,000 acres! You simply took the water off of those acres and ran it down a pipeline to enhance your own wasteful pumping. And you did this all on the backs of surface water irrigators in the basin. I dare you to come on here and tell the honest truth about how much of the N-Corpe water will be used by surface irrigators as you did in your "newsletter" a while back! It's time that our new governor, whoever that is, steps into this mess and cleans house. Either that or a river master. If you guys are doing so much to keep in compliance, then why are you scared to death of LB1074, which would do nothing more than force DNR to look at the river Basin and see that it is over appropriated? If it's not, then LB1074 has absolutely no effect on you at all. Tired of the same old tired rhetoric coming out of the NRDs.

    -- Posted by Surface Water on Thu, Mar 6, 2014, at 1:02 PM
  • If the plans are really fair to both groundwater and surface water users, treat those in the Middle and Lower the same as the Upper, does not dry up the aquifer, allows or rivers, ponds, streams and lakes to return to the same levels as before the pumping began, then thanks. If not, try harder.

    -- Posted by dennis on Fri, Mar 7, 2014, at 8:33 AM
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